Madeleine L'Engle Made Me Nicer and Smarter
Madeleine L'Engle is dead at 88. She died in a nursing home. No crazy suicide, no lover's pact with a polyamorous circus freak.
L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time series or at least the first three books in the 'quadrilogy' made me a far smarter, mildly nicer person. Over 4th and 5th grade, these books, those characters, that world truly opened my eyes to how vast our universe is. Not in a quantified scientific way, although that was touched on as well - but in a human/interpersonal slant. I got a sense for how tough our lives were and would be - "we" being teenagers, adults, children, humans. All of that truly impacted on me in a way that expanded my mind at a young age. It helped me get through those strange, awful, hazy pre-adolescent years.
I wished to meet her for several years. Especially more recently when I realized a good film had never been crafted from her stories. Obviously I never took the initiative to do that, and I won't feel any more guilt from it than I feel from any of the other two billion notions upon which I'm too lazy to act. But it does instigate a kind of sadness. Her work made me begin to realize the world was bigger than me.
Things have changed since 1995 of course. I grew up, and out, and up and out some more. Since then I've unfortunately crossed to run the other gamut; the world is far too vast for my taste now. Too many people pretending to be artists and politicians - pretending to care - make it nearly impossible in my current understanding for any one person to do a single goddamn thing of consequence. And even when they do it's either accidental or fleeting, because we've constructed for ourselves a system of observing the world in which everything is temporary and for entertainment purposes, and nothing is "relevant." That religion persists in this environment should be surprising, but it's not really - because we as individuals want everything to cater to us, our whims, our wants, our greed. And there's never been a better economic or social cache of greed and bloodlust and mortality-denial than religion.
I only see Madeleine L'Engle's own religious subtext now, in retrospect. It's different than how too many in this country write and talk about religion. Her books lack almost entirely the words of the religion - the Hail Marys, the Bible verses, the condemnation of this behavior or that sexual orientation. Her religion was agape, boundless love. Hers were fantastical tales grounding us to our place on Earth by reminding us to feel, to love, to empathize. If more quote-unquote "spiritual" people were that creative, that articulate and that passionate, perhaps our country wouldn't be the cultural sinkhole of the known universe. Since 1995 I've definitely become an atheist, but Madeleine L'Engle's characters even then didn't make me want to believe in God - they made me want to believe in us, you and me, our hearts and heads and our ability to share them. Not so much "me" - myself, my too-cleverness, my over-wit, my desperate and utterly human desire for attention and affection and, to overuse the word, relevance.
Madeleine L'Engle made me want to be smarter and compassionate because she had chosen to be smarter and more compassionate. And she wasn't afraid to imagine a world in which most of us are innately decent, but some of us must choose to reach beyond the median - because that alone is what saves us. That calculus is my hope, my engine even now. Not so egotistically as to assume that I am the savior of humanity, but that something I do or write or say or sing or direct will help someone choose to be smarter, more compassionate. I want to push, and I want to pull other people along with me. And that's a hell of a lot more lasting a notion than "terrorism" or toe-tapping politicians.
L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time series or at least the first three books in the 'quadrilogy' made me a far smarter, mildly nicer person. Over 4th and 5th grade, these books, those characters, that world truly opened my eyes to how vast our universe is. Not in a quantified scientific way, although that was touched on as well - but in a human/interpersonal slant. I got a sense for how tough our lives were and would be - "we" being teenagers, adults, children, humans. All of that truly impacted on me in a way that expanded my mind at a young age. It helped me get through those strange, awful, hazy pre-adolescent years.
I wished to meet her for several years. Especially more recently when I realized a good film had never been crafted from her stories. Obviously I never took the initiative to do that, and I won't feel any more guilt from it than I feel from any of the other two billion notions upon which I'm too lazy to act. But it does instigate a kind of sadness. Her work made me begin to realize the world was bigger than me.
Things have changed since 1995 of course. I grew up, and out, and up and out some more. Since then I've unfortunately crossed to run the other gamut; the world is far too vast for my taste now. Too many people pretending to be artists and politicians - pretending to care - make it nearly impossible in my current understanding for any one person to do a single goddamn thing of consequence. And even when they do it's either accidental or fleeting, because we've constructed for ourselves a system of observing the world in which everything is temporary and for entertainment purposes, and nothing is "relevant." That religion persists in this environment should be surprising, but it's not really - because we as individuals want everything to cater to us, our whims, our wants, our greed. And there's never been a better economic or social cache of greed and bloodlust and mortality-denial than religion.
I only see Madeleine L'Engle's own religious subtext now, in retrospect. It's different than how too many in this country write and talk about religion. Her books lack almost entirely the words of the religion - the Hail Marys, the Bible verses, the condemnation of this behavior or that sexual orientation. Her religion was agape, boundless love. Hers were fantastical tales grounding us to our place on Earth by reminding us to feel, to love, to empathize. If more quote-unquote "spiritual" people were that creative, that articulate and that passionate, perhaps our country wouldn't be the cultural sinkhole of the known universe. Since 1995 I've definitely become an atheist, but Madeleine L'Engle's characters even then didn't make me want to believe in God - they made me want to believe in us, you and me, our hearts and heads and our ability to share them. Not so much "me" - myself, my too-cleverness, my over-wit, my desperate and utterly human desire for attention and affection and, to overuse the word, relevance.
Madeleine L'Engle made me want to be smarter and compassionate because she had chosen to be smarter and more compassionate. And she wasn't afraid to imagine a world in which most of us are innately decent, but some of us must choose to reach beyond the median - because that alone is what saves us. That calculus is my hope, my engine even now. Not so egotistically as to assume that I am the savior of humanity, but that something I do or write or say or sing or direct will help someone choose to be smarter, more compassionate. I want to push, and I want to pull other people along with me. And that's a hell of a lot more lasting a notion than "terrorism" or toe-tapping politicians.