Back online with Madeleine L'Engle

Well, after I posted the info about my Vonage being out, the internet went to pot too and after that the water. But all is well now, with intermittent internet outages, but that has been for everyone, so I can live with that. It's when my house is the only house with the problem that I lose my cool. Misery loves company, I guess.

That said, in all my spare time not stolen from surfing the net and reading everyones blogs, I read all of Madeleine L'Engle's And it Was Good : Reflections on Beginnings,the first from her non-fictional work, the Genesis Trilogy. I love her voice. I don't always love everything she says, but honestly I really don't love everything any mere mortal says. And I really don't love everything I say -but digressing again...

It was a good read. L'Engle sometimes gets labled as a liberal - and maybe she was, but as far as I have read thus far, she is solid on her doctrines of Jesus, the Trinity, and her view of God is large with Him being the Supreme Creator and sustainer of the universe. She may err on the liberal side when it comes to social issues, but I am becoming less and less bothered - not because I agree, because on some of these issues, I don't agree with her at all. But because I hear what she is saying and her voice is a much kinder, gentler and frankly more respectful voice than I hear coming from those in the public eye with whom I would agree. For that I admire her.

So I want to share a few of my favorite quotes. FYI - she does tend to use language in order to shock, like saying she is "agnostic" knowing full well that's going to push people's buttons. I kind of like her spunk. :) So take what you will - and leave the rest.

From the chapter entitled The God Who is Free:
In our own daily lives, in smaller but nevertheless significant ways, how can we tell whose voice it is we are hearing?
Sometimes we can't, for the tempter is extremely clever, and is a superb mimic. but he always slips. If there is even a touch of any of the temptations offered Jesus after the baptism, then it is not the voice of the Holy Spirit we are hearing. If we are gently patted on the back and told that we have a particularly devout and effective prayer group, if we are complimented, ever so gently, on the depth of our spirituality, if we are set apart, even a little, from the rest of creation, then we can make a reasonable guess as to whose voice we are hearing."

From the chapter entitled Paradoxes in Prayer:

...I would like all the answers re:my prayer life, my spiritual life, handed me all tidily wrapped up. But I have learned that if I want neat unconflicting answers, I would have to go to some rigid sect where my free will would be denied. And so I learned to rejoice in questions.

At a church conference recently someone asked, "You have referred to your agnostic period. What happened to get you out of it?"
And I reply, joyfully, that I am still an agnostic, but then I was an unhappy one, seeking finite answers, and now I am a happy one, rejoicing in paradox. Agnostic means only that we do not know, and we finite creatures cannot know, in any intellectual or ultimate way, the infinite Lord, the undivided Trinity. Now I am able to accept my not-knowing- and yet, in a completely different way, in the old biblical way, I also know what I do not understand, and that is what my agnosticism means to me now. It does not mean that I do not believe; it is an acceptance that I am created, that I am asked to bear the light, knowing that this is the most wonderful of all vocations.

And from the chapter The God Who Cannot Fail:

And as long as I have even a small splinter of unlovingness lodged in my heart, how can I look down on or judge anybody else? Jesus says that I must not. I know that I cannot throw the first stone, and I hope that, no matter how many sinful prodigal sons are invited, I will still want to go to the party.