Meeting Madeleine

I didn’t discover Madeleine L’Engle the way most people do, by reading A Wrinkle in Time as a child. When my then-husband went off to the University of Syracuse to pursue a master’s in fine arts, I curled up on our sofa and read Madeleine’s very intimate Crosswick Journals, as well as Two-Part Invention, a memoir about her marriage to Hugh Franklin. In the memoir, I discovered that Madeleine loved playing J.S. Bach on the piano to relieve her stress. When I read that, I knew she was a kindred spirit. 

In 1991, I stood in line at our local independent to meet Madeleine and ask her to sign several books. As I waited, I practiced what I would say to her. “Hi, my name is Laura. I love you.” “Hi, I’m Laura. Your books have changed my life.” By the time I made it to the table where she was sitting, I was a nervous wreck. She looked up at me and smiled. “Hi, I’m Laura, it’s so nice to meet you.” I presented her with two books and she signed them both with the inscription, “Fear Not!” followed by her name. 

I knew this was a Biblical reference: Every time an angel appears in the New Testament it says, “Fear Not!” It makes sense if you think about it: You’re minding your own business baking bread or tending sheep and suddenly an angel appears. Wouldn’t you be afraid? Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, Zachariah, and the women at the tomb. “Fear Not!” And now an angel named Madeleine was telling me to “Fear Not!” I didn’t understand at the time, but later I did.

Our children grew up reading A Wrinkle in Time and other Madeleine stories about Meg Murry, Calvin O’Keefe, and the Austin family. Madeleine became part of our household—tucked away on a bookshelf or sneaked under covers with a flashlight. 

Not long after this, Madeleine came under attack from evangelical Christian circles. I found this strange because she called herself a Christian and I’d read her journals and musings about faith and believed with all my heart she was one. Madeleine said she believed that “All will be redeemed in God’s fullness of time, all, not just the small portion of the population who have been given the grace to know and accept Christ. All the strayed and stolen sheep. All the little lost ones.” Well, that started a firestorm of book bannings and burnings. 

Then Madeleine came to Durham to speak at a lecture series at Duke University. If she was a heretic, and many people believed she was, then I would go with an open mind and find out for myself. So I sat in Duke Chapel for two days and listened intently, trying to catch her saying something damning. And, for the life of me, I never heard a single thing. I walked out the door that afternoon convinced that Madeleine was simply (or not so simply) a Christian mystic; that she on God’s side and he was on hers.

“When you write, don’t think. Write.”

– Madeleine L’Engle

Five years later, I got a job writing for an international relief organization. I read that Madeleine was doing a writer’s weekend at a small retreat center in Chapel Hill and I had to go. My director gave me his blessing and said they’d even pay my way.

I couldn’t believe my luck. I was going to spend a weekend sitting at the feet of the person who’d written A Wrinkle in Time. I don’t remember much about the weekend except there were about a dozen of us there, all women. We’d share a meal, then gather in the meeting area, which was more like a living room, and sit in a circle while Madeleine talked. 

“When you write, don’t think. Write,” she said. “Because if you think, you’ll get in the way, you’ll think you’re in control. And you’re not.” 

No longer a freelancer, I was now a full-time staff writer thinking about writing in a new way. What exactly would I write when I could finally write what I wanted to? I’d had an idea for a trilogy—three historic novels set at the beginning of the 20^th century—but other than that, I was pretty uninspired. 

I hoped to catch Madeleine alone before the weekend ended, but once again I had no idea what I would say. Was I longing for a word of wisdom?  Some nuggets of writing truth to carry into the great abyss of my writing-to-come?

I did get that moment alone with Madeleine. I shared a story about my parents and she told me I needed to write it down. It took twenty years, but I finally wrote it down in my memoir.

As for her admonition to “Fear Not?” I’m still working on that.

Who is your favorite writer? How have they inspired your writing? Have you ever met them? Please leave a comment, below.