"I, who live by words, am wordless when I try my words in prayer. All language turns to silence. Prayer will take my words and then reveal their emptiness. 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. I leave, returned to language, for I see through words, even when all words are ended. I, who live by words, am wordless when I turn me to the Word to pray. Amen"  from Word by Madeleine L’Engle

As someone who also lives by words, or at least pursues them, I was saddened by the death this past week of Madeleine L’Engle. Her words have inspired me, challenged me, and given me great joy. From her poetry to her early novels about young actors making a life in New York City, I have identified with her images of the Holy, her raw, earthy way of speaking of the Divine. I have great memories of reading
A Wrinkle In Time to elementary students who begged for just one more chapter so they could find out what happens to Charles Wallace, a central character caught in time travel based on the concept of quantum physics.Then there was the account of her life as a caretaker for her husband Hugh, whom she adored, as he struggled with the battle he lost to cancer. I commend them all to you.

I don’t know about you but I am always searching for a writer who can make my own thoughts clearer to me. It is a rare find….to read in print or hear spoken the words that make clear a thought or feeling that seems to float at the edge of our experience, not yet formed but spinning wildly trying to be born. But when it happens and we awake to the "ah-hah!’ of our own understanding of something, it feels like a mysterious gift from beyond. That was often my experience when I read Madeleine L’Engle. Her words cut through my own fledgling sounds and helped me come to a greater understanding, form words of meaning.

It was her words that my husband and I included on the birth announcement for our second son, born December 8th, during Advent. "This is the irrational season, when love bloom bright and wild. Had Mary been filled with reason, there’d been no room for the child."

The act of bringing life into the world is not the stuff of rationality, or reason, or common sense. Bringing a child into the world takes courage and hope and love…..all residents of the irrational world. And yet, aren’t each of us thankful for such irrationality? I was thankful to L’Engle who shaped the words meant to describe Mary’s irrational act that also spoke to that of all humanity.

Madeleine L’Engle, today, I honor your memory and all the beauty and richness you brought to the printed page. Thank you for giving words to those deep places that needed the inspiration of your spirit to find their way into the world.