Several days ago, Luciano Pavarotti passed away. (I didn't comment on it - I thought others better equipped than I had made better eulogies).

And now, Madeline L'Engle has passed. (I sort of gasped when I read the headline this morning. Of course, she was 88 and had lived a very full life and it was of natural causes...but still, there are some you expect to keep going forever).

Over the past couple years, she has become one of my favorite writers, so I feel the need to say something.

I only read one of L'Engle's books as a child - her most famous one, "Wrinkle in Time." It was only as a teenager that I came to the other (2, at the time) books in the series (I re-read them recently - they made a bigger impression on me as an adult than they did as a teen).

But, more recently, I've come to her essays. I love her essays that touch on faith and art. One of the things she said, that I always carry with me, is that you can look at the universe and see "chaos" or "cosmos" - where "chaos" is disorder, lack-of-meaning, basically all the nihilistic stuff that certain philosophies espouse. But "cosmos" - that is a connectedness, the hope that there is a pattern or a plan to things. I don't think you necessarily have to be religious or even a Theist/Deist to believe in "cosmos" (but perhaps it's easier). I have to admit I agree with her on her assessment of art - that the art she related to best was the art where the artist looked at the universe and saw "cosmos." And that it was hard - and sometimes kind of depressing - to relate to art that only saw "chaos."

I am not saying this as well as she did.

L'Engle was in some ways what you might call an "unconventional" Christian. She was a very free-thinking Episcopalian - so much so that some would have had her "Time Quartet" books banned because they thought they were "too pagan" or "too New Age" for their children and their schools. In one of her essays, L'Engle talks about trying to calm an angry, angry woman who was challenging her about the use of unicorns in one of her books - that unicorns were a pagan symbol, and therefore unChristian and that L'Engle herself must be a New Ager....and L'Engle talks about quietly trying to explain to the woman that unicorns are also a Christ-symbol (and even if it weren't, should it MATTER? or that's what I'd add...)

At any rate - I read her essays and feel this tremendous love and peace emanating out from her writing. It helps to center me and makes me feel less "weird." And as someone who's always felt more or less "weird" in the world, I value highly anything that makes me feel less so. (And it makes me even more puzzled at those who are so very angry about her writing - have they actually READ it?)

I also have read one of her "grown-up" novels (though the novels aimed at children and teens are every bit as complex - and in some cases, more complex, especially in terms of moral questions asked - than your average best-seller for adults). It was called "A Severed Wasp" and it's one of those rare books that I press on people. It's not an EASY novel - there are points where I had to put the book down and walk away for a couple hours to a day because of the pain that some of the characters had to live through. (As it was for many in the early-midcentury time, the villains of the piece were the Nazis...what they did to one character, and the repercussions it had for several others). A choice must be made, a painful choice, one where the "conventionally right" choice actually has more bad repercussions than the "conventionally wrong" choice...I'm trying not to give too much away here. But it's an unbelievable book, it made me THINK and it made me care about the characters and I think it made me grow up a little bit more after I read it.

Once upon a time I said I wished I could go and meet Madeline L'Engle and shake her hand and thank her for everything she wrote. I guess I will not have the chance now.

Rest well, Madeline. You made the world a better place. And just as you had your own "personal saints" (including Bach and Einstein), I have come to regard you as one of MY own "personal saints."

Thank you.