Guest blog post: Sharing Madeleine, sharing cosmos

“This question of the meaning of being, and dying and being, is behind the telling of stories around tribal fires at night; behind the drawing of animals on the walls of caves; the singing of melodies of love in spring, and of the death of green in autumn. It is part of the deepest longing of the human psyche, a recurrent ache in the hearts of all God’s creatures.”

— Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

 

“Recurrent ache” is the only way to describe what I felt in my bones as I read and processed Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art.

The book was published in 1972, but it didn’t find its way into my life until 2017. I was years-deep in my love for Madeleine, fueled mostly by the Time series and The Crosswicks Journals. In Madeleine I’d found a kindred spirit and a mentor. Someone who thought deeply about her faith in Jesus and wasn’t afraid to wrestle with it. Someone who saw compassion and empathy as powerful. Still today, whenever I read something she wrote, I experience what C.S. Lewis describes as friendship being born: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”

I don’t remember how Walking on Water landed in my lap. Did I buy it myself? Maybe someone sent it to me? Regardless, it changed my life. I’m not an artist, but I am a creator, and this book helped me understand that. As Madeleine says, “What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint or clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living.” And later: “God is constantly creating, in us, through us, with us, and to co-create with God is our human calling.”

I can’t tell you how much I needed to hear that.

And after hearing it, I needed even more—that’s where that recurrent ache came in—to tell people about it. Specifically, my people.

I’m a church administrator. My husband and I have been attending this church since its first service in 2006, and I came on staff almost 11 years ago. Being part of our church has been one of the most meaningful experiences of my life. The people with whom I share these pews are my family. And some members of that family are struggling to find meaning in their daily work; to figure out why their work matters; and to understand what the heck they are even doing here in the first place.

Madeleine also says this in Walking on Water: “Stories are able to help us become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos we see despite all the chaos.”

I found myself needing to Name these friends, to bring some cosmos to the chaos they were feeling. I needed to Name their work as good.

So I gave into the impulse that Madeleine talks about. I gave in and told stories about my friends to my friends. Through a series of letters I noticed for them ways in which they are co-creators with their Maker—how they, too, are bringing cosmos to chaos in their daily work.

You can read the letters here: Cosmos to Chaos | Letters About Work. It’s my hope that in reading their stories you’ll find echoes of your own…and leave feeling a bit more whole.

Valerie Catrow is a church administrator, wife, mother, and friend who lives in Richmond, Virginia. She reads often and writes a bit. You can read some of her writing at val.catrow.net. Twitter and IG: @valeriecatrow

 

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