Conference highlights and some photos!

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 All Angels’ Church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

The animating theme for the conference was taken from a quotation of Madeleine’s from Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art:

“In art we are once again able to do all the things we have forgotten; we are able to walk on water; we speak to the angels who call us; we move, unfettered, among the stars.”

Sarah Arthur. Photo credit: Lisa Beth Anderson

Sarah Arthur, who co-directed the conference with Brian Allain of Writing for Your Life, reminded us in her opening keynote that water is most often stormy, angels announce themselves with “Fear not!” (suggesting that our first instinct is exactly that), and that to move among the stars is not to commune with serene planets and stars suspended in the silent emptiness of space. If we do this, she said, “we do so on a kind of dare.” It’s a call to action.

We’ll be posting more about the event over the coming weeks — there was a lot of wisdom and passion in evidence over two days, and we want to spread the message far and wide — but I’m eager to share some highlights from the general sessions and other moments (there were nine other sessions, and if I tried to touch on each one, this post would be too long! You can still see the full schedule and amazing roster of speakers here).

Barbara Braver and Sarah Arthur led a spiritual and writing retreat for a sold-out group on Friday. Barbara prepared the participants by sharing poems (a later blog post will have those resources) and reflections on what it means to live with questions. Writing prompts in the afternoon from Sarah, time to write and reflect, and then sharing in small groups and finally all together, finished the afternoon.

Audrey Assad in concert. Photo by The Rev. Nate Lee.

While not part of the conference itself, All Angels’ hosted conference musician-in-residence Audrey Assad for a sold out concert on Friday night. Her music is deeply moving and added so much, helping set the tone and vibrational quality to the day.

Katherine Paterson’s Saturday keynote revealed that she has just finished a new novel whose protagonist Birdie I cannot wait to meet! She moved all in the audience with her words, especially when she herself go choked up talking about the privilege it is to touch young people’s lives.

I had the honor of closing the conference, and talked about how every single one of us is called to be creative, that we too in our creative output are, as Madeleine said in her Newbery Award acceptance speech, “capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly, being a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.” I also made myself cry at multiple points in the talk, but asked the audience to help me compose myself by taking some deep and slow breaths together.

We made an effort to try to capture the magic of the conference through video, audio, and still photography, and will be figuring out the best way to share moments so that they continue to have an impact.

If you attended the conference and took photos, please share them on social media with #LEngleConference, or send them to conference@madeleinelengle.com .

We also have a podcast in the works, and if you have a short takeaway from the day, or a response to the question “In what way does Madeleine inspire you to be creative? Why are you compelled to create the way you do?” please take a quick audio recording of your answer on your phone and send it to us. (Full disclosure: I don’t think I’ve got the question right, but if you know what I’m getting at — the “why” rather than the “how” — and have a better way of putting it, let me know!). Extra credit: we’d love different voices telling us what they think “Tesser well” means!

— Charlotte Jones Voiklis