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 change, and Madeleine was guiding me.
As amazing as it is that I remember that moment, I don’t recall reading the book. I remember thinking that I knew the book was true. But I do remember distinctly the next time Madeleine came into my life. I was in eighth grade: rebellious, full of angst, and yet still a reader. One day while browsing the library, the name “L’Engle” caught my eye, and I pulled off the shelf A Ring of Endless Light. I read about the Austin family next, then I completed the Time Trilogy. I bought a copy of A Wrinkle in Time and re-read it over and over. I read whatever was in the library. I found a few spiritual reflection books and finally read about Poly O’Keefe. I’d become obsessed.
By college, I started buying old books online. I was now a collector. I had a list of all her published books and started checking them off. It was during this time that I wrote Madeleine a letter while she was at St. John the Divine. I was thrilled to receive a reply (though a little bummed that it wasn’t from her but instead from Léna Roy, her granddaughter). Madeleine was getting older. I was too late! I would not be able to attend her writing seminars or to correspond or look forward to new books. I was to only learn from her legacy. So I set out to do that.
In January 2017, I made a commitment to read all of Madeleine’s books as they were chronologically published. This was in conjunction with the celebration surrounding Madeleine’s 100th birthday preparation and the release of the Wrinkle in Time movie. As of today, I have 13 books left.
I have just finished the Austin family chronicles with Troubling a Star, and my journey has brought me closer to Madeleine the writer, the mother, and the friend. I have also traced my own faith journey that began with A Wrinkle in Time (but that is a story to tell another day).
So far, I treasure the Crosswick Journals the most because they are purely Madeleine. She isn’t veiling her life and her stories within another character; she features herself. I first read A Circle of Quiet at around age 16 and at once knew that Madeleine was a kindred spirit. As I began rereading the Crosswick Journals as an adult, I examine how far I’ve come from the anxious, unsure young woman I was to the brave person I am. The books make me ask, How much dreaming does it take to live deliberately? How much of my introversion benefits from my choices to make the most of my life?
My choices have led me to a life of nurturing and teaching. We can’t let our mind fight our hearts constantly. This is where I find validation of my profession, my calling, as a teacher. IQ can’t measure love; a test can’t ever measure who a person truly is. When we try to help children find “self” we simply have to show compassion and teach empathy. They will in turn develop a true self as they practice love.
Madeleine expounds on this idea: “How do we teach a child—our own, or those in a classroom—to have compassion: to allow people to be different; to understand that like is not equal; to experiment; to laugh; to love; to accept the fact that the most important questions a human being can ask do not have—or need—answers.” Madeleine equates this to fanning a flame in children.
In contrast, I feel that a general lack of self in adults is reflected in our maddening political climate. Madeleine talks about the tendency to not be brave enough to rebel when it is needed, but instead to follow the crowd. She says that we should be afraid of people who deal with generalities and not particulars. Our leaders today have exploited a culture of stunted maturity. But if we speak to the generalities—the madness in our country has mostly to do with a “cause” or multiple “causes” that people have embraced. Many have placed a false hero at the helm of their mission. There are many who aren’t self-aware enough to know their own mind and choose for themselves. It is all smoke and mirrors on the part of the administration to wrest power from the weak. The scary part is not knowing the administration’s end game.
However, I am in particular speaking of those I love who I have admired in the past. They are family whom I love and who I consider to be nurturing, loving people. In this climate, however, they have become consumed by hate, prejudice, and the generalities that are being fed to them. There are individuals who can’t seem to understand that the people they should love the most, those closest to them, are alienated and hurt with the maxims of their causes, such as “make American great again.”
In a bold move for her time, Madeleine compares these types of reactions to falling for communism. She quotes E.M. Forster’s essay, “Two Cheers for Democracy”: “I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” How did we become a nation of people willing to turn against each other for the sake of “causes”? How can my family have turned against those they love and chosen country over friends?
Madeleine continues, “This is a statement no good communist should accept, a communist will–or should–betray any friend, parent, child, for the party. When we choose a generality, an idea, a cause, instead of a person, when this becomes the accepted, the required thing to do, when it doesn’t matter if villages are destroyed by bombs, traffic deaths become statistics, starving babies can be forgotten.”
It is reassuring that when Madeleine wrote A Circle of Quiet she was in her 50s. She was naïve and always questioning. She knows there is constantly a battle for self and it takes place in the mind. Now in my late 30s, I am just now beginning to understand this battle.
Melissa Giggey spends most of her time reading and writing with teenagers in a classroom and exploring life and adventure as a mom in Gainesville, Georgia, but reads voraciously and writes on her blog, is on Twitter @giggsteach, and Instagram @melissagiggey.
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