Madeleine L'Engle

It's hard to let go anything we love

Madeleine L'Engle | September 2020 (Vol. XXXIII, No. 8)

It's hard to let go anything we love. We live in a world which teaches us to clutch. But when we clutch we're left with a fistful of ashes.

~ Madeleine L'Engle in A RING OF ENDLESS LIGHT

Unless we are creators we are not fully alive

Madeleine L'Engle | March 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 3)

Unless we are creators, we are not fully alive . . . Remember, the root word of humble and human is the same: humus: earth. We are dust. We are created; it is God who made us and not we ourselves. But we were made to be co-creators with our maker.

~ from WALKING ON WATER by Madeleine L'Engle

Blessing is an attitude toward all of life

Madeleine L'Engle | June 2012 (Vol. XXV, No. 6)

Blessing is an attitude toward all of life, transcending and moving beyond words. When family and friends gather around a table to break bread together, this is a blessing. When we harden our hearts against anyone, this is a cursing.

~ from THE IRRATIONAL SEASON by Madeleine L'Engle

In prayer the stilled voice learns to hold its peace

Madeleine L'Engle | March 2008 (Vol. XXI, No. 3)

In prayer the stilled voice learns to hold its peace,
to listen with the heart to silence that is joy, is
adoration. The self is shattered, all words torn apart
in this strange patterned time of contemplation that,
in time, breaks time, breaks words, breaks me, and then,
in silence, leaves me healed and mended.

~ Madeleine L'Engle

There is nothing so secular

Madeleine L'Engle | April 2006 (Vol. XIX, No. 4)

There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred.

~ Madeleine L'Engle

Love has to go through darkness and pain

Madeleine L'Engle | February 2001 (Vol. XIV, No. 2)

Love has to go through darkness and pain and endurance and a stark acceptance before it can come out into the far light of the sun.

~ from THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SUN by Madeleine L'Engle

The artist must be obedient to the work

Madeleine L'Engle | September 1999 (Vol. XII, No. 8)

The work comes to the artist and says, "Here I am, serve me." The artist must be obedient to the work.

~ Madeleine L'Engle

A place in the heart

Madeleine L'Engle | May 1996 (Vol. IX, No. 5)

Perhaps the City of God is not so much a place in space, as a place in the heart.

~ Madeleine L'Engle

Love is home

Madeleine L'Engle | February 1996 (Vol. IX, No. 2)

We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes... Our homesickness is alleviated only by love, the love that transcends our self-centeredness, our pettiness... When we are truly in love, not in the sense of romantic, erotic love, but in the sense of God's love for all that the Power of Love created, then our homesickness is alleviated. When we are in love we are no longer homesick, for Love is home.

~ from THE ROCK THAT IS HIGHER by Madeleine L'Engle

Confessions were always followed by immediate forgiveness

Madeleine L'Engle | November 1995 (Vol. VIII, No. 10)

Part of my bedtime routine when I was a child was to say my prayers with my parents and then confess any wrong I had done during the day. Sometimes I made my parents sad, and myself, too, but my confessions were always followed by immediate forgiveness, by assurances of love, the love of my parents, the love of God. I am grateful for the teaching given me by my parents, because it grounded me in an awareness of God's all-embracing love.

~ from THE ROCK THAT IS HIGHER by Madeleine L'Engle
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