The Madeleine L’Engle Conference a year later

Reposted from Sarah Arthur‘s facebook page, with permission.

Dear ones,

One year ago today I was wrapping up a glorious weekend co-directing 2019 Walking on Water: The Madeleine L’Engle Conference held at All Angels’ Church in NYC. A truly fantastic team of authors, musicians, visual artists, filmmakers, theatre educators, writing teachers, editors, booksellers, creatives, and nearly the entire church staff…everyone made it an unforgettable weekend–which is all the more poignant in retrospect, knowing now what we didn’t know then.

Madeleine L’Engle’s granddaughter, Charlotte Jones Voiklis, you are still pure magic (also sending virtual hugs to YOU, Léna Roy!), while M’s dear friend Barbara Braver has become one of those wise women I didn’t know I needed in my life. Katherine Paterson’s keynote “The Water is Wide” still rings in my ears, as does Audrey Assad’s music (“The Irrational Season,” anyone?). Madeleine’s new short story collection, “The Moment of Tenderness,” lovingly compiled by Charlotte and released in April, comforted us in those early dark days of the pandemic, while the new edition of M’s collected poems, “The Ordering of Love,” (with a foreword by yours truly) graced us too. If anything, these voices have grown more resonant.

There have been difficult changes along the way. NYC is a vastly different city now. Our nation is reeling from ongoing political destabilization–a situation that Madeleine understood all too well during the McCarthy era. Some of us are unemployed or underemployed or simply too overwhelmed to create much of anything right now (*raises hand*). Others have taken care of–or lost–loved ones during this dreadful pandemic, and/or fought the disease themselves. To our NYC friends, especially, and others who’ve had to move or change jobs: we send all our love and prayers.

There’s also much to celebrate! Sophfronia Scott is now the director of the first-ever Alma College MFA in Creative Writing (congratulations!), while the phenomenal team from We Need Diverse Books continues to add to our stack of nightstand reading (Sayantani DasGupta, you’re a total rockstar!). So many of these creatives have released new titles/films/stage-plays/music/events in the past year (Karina Yan Glaser’s new Vanderbeekers book and Peter Royston’s stage adaptation of M’s “A Wind in the Door” are both delightful); and several have marked major milestones (Joyce Yu-Jean Lee got married, y’all!). Without these things our world would be a darker place.

Dear Ones, though it’s been a year–and such a year–our hearts remain full. We’re in this together, and I can’t wait for the day when we’ll reconvene once again, to press forward in creativity and hope. In the meantime, as Madeleine said, “Like it or not, we either add to the darkness of indifference and out-and-out evil which surround us, or we light a candle to see by.” Light all those candles and together we’ll blaze out into the universe!