Madeleine L'Engle Dies

I just read this morning that Madeleine L'Engle passed away last Friday, September 7th. Her book, Walking on Water was not only life changing for me, but is probably the main reason why I remain in youth ministry. She wrote things like this:

"God is constantly creating, in us, through us, with us, and to co-create with God is our human calling."

"All life is story, story unravelling and revealing meaning."

"When I am grappling with ideas which are radical enough to upset grown-ups, then I am likely to put these ideas into a story which will be marketed for children, because children understand what their parents have rejected and forgotten."

"Each time an unexpected discovery is made in the world of knowledge, it shakes the religious establishment of the day. Now, we are often taught that it is unfaithful to question traditional religious beliefs, but I believe that we must question them continually - not God, not Christ, who are at the center of our lives as believers and creators - but what human beings say about God and about Christ; otherwise, like those of the church establishment of Galileo's day, we truly become God's frozen people. Galileo's discoveries did nothing whatsoever to change the nature of God; they threatened only man's rigid ideas of the nature of God. We must constantly be open to new revelation, which is another way of hearing God, with loving obedience."

"Success is one of the dirtiest temptations of the devil."

"Despite all our technology there is far more that we do not know than that we know, and the most terrible defect is our inability to tell right from wrong, to do horrible things for all the right reasons, and then to blunder inadvertently into doing something which turns out to be good. We try to make the loving, the creative decision, but we cannot know whether or not we are right."

What most inpired me in this particular book, but does not lend itself to a direct quote, is L'Engle describing how she wrote A Wrinkle in Time: to write her "children's book" she had to learn quantum physics and a load of theology. For a children's book? Yes. Because, as she wrote, a good children's book takes these very real, very deep realities and without boiling them down, puts them into a child's language. Yes! So this is what I try to do with youth ministry. I share what I'm learning with them. Kids have been changed and challenged by Miroslav Volf, NT Wright, Walter Brueggemann and more. The get it and want more of it! How great is that?

Thank-you Madeleine L'Engele for your contribution to our world and to my life and faith.

Peace,
Matt