Earlier this week I relished a custard-filled pączki, just on time. You can set your watches to these Polish fried dough things showing up in Midwestern convenience stores, just in time for Fat Tuesday. By Wednesday they’ll grow stale (and half price!). See, Wednesday (Feb. 26) marks the beginning of Lent. Lent is the 40 […]
By RuthAnn Deveney Over the weekend, I re-read Two-Part Invention, which is my very favorite Madeleine book. This memoir is about her 40-year-marriage with actor Hugh Franklin, going back and forth in time between their early courtship and maturing marriage with Hugh’s battle with cancer. It is, as I warn people, very sad. I probably […]
By Melissa Giggey I was a scrappy little tomboy standing in front of my fifth-grade teacher’s bookshelf, scanning all the possibilities. I remember with vivid detail the moment I laid eyes on the pink and blue spine of A Wrinkle in Time. I was intrigued. It was almost a magnetic pull. I was about to […]
Dear Ones, Katherine Paterson gave a moving keynote address at the November 2019 Walking on Water conference. She talked about her writing process, what it means to have readers, and Birdie, the protagonist of her latest novel, still awaiting publisher’s edits. She moved the audience (and herself) to tears, and reminded us, as Madeleine said, […]
By Peter Royston In the book Literature Into Film, author Linda Costanzo Cahir writes, “Every act of translation is simultaneously an act of interpretation,” and that “Through the process of translation, a new text emerges — a unique entity — not a mutation of the original matter, but a fully new work.” Madeleine L’Engle would […]
Dear Ones, A typical 100-year-old birthday party does a lot of looking back on a life well lived — but when we celebrated what would’ve been Madeleine’s 100th year, we wanted to do a lot of looking ahead, too. After all, what’s better than for Madeleine’s words and wisdom to echo throughout others’ lives and […]
Dear Ones, As we close in on Christmas, we’re honored to share with you a poem from The Ordering of Love: New and Collected Poems of Madeleine L’Engle. Consider this reflection a preview of the more substantial gift: a re-release of The Ordering of Love by Convergent Books. Complete with a new foreword by Sarah […]
Dear Ones, On the way to work, I pass a house with a sign out front: “REMEMBER: Jesus is the Reason for the Season.” The sign’s a common enough sight in the Midwest every December … but I wonder as I drive by: Wouldn’t Madeleine have found that yard sign lacking? For Christians, Jesus certainly […]
Dear ones, Few seasons have us as toss’d and torn in different directions as the holidays do. If you’re already tired (or just anticipating the fatigue), allow us to offer you, um, A Circle of Quiet (see what I did there?). Today I’m so happy to share a reflection from Barbara Braver, Madeleine’s friend and […]
Dear Ones, Well, after more than a year of planning, Walking on Water: The Madeleine L’Engle Conference is behind us. Envisioned not as a fan conference but rather a gathering of seekers looking to deepen their creative lives, about 150 attendees, 30 panelists and session leaders, and a dozen or so volunteers came together at […]