I just learned today that one of my favorite writers is now in the presence of her Savior. Madeleine L'Engle died on September 6th of this year- but I know as surely as I'm sitting here that right now she is joyfully worshipping at the feet of Jesus. Her writing is full of vivid descriptions of creation joining together in one cosmic song of praise to the Creator for me to ever imagine otherwise.
These descriptions are why I love L'Engle so dearly. I wanted to quote from what she wrote at the end of "Walking on Water"
"Last spring I was giving a series of talks at the Cathedral of St. Peter, in St. Petersburg, Florida, and was staying with parishioners who had a house right by the water. I was unusually tired; into an already overcrowded schedule I'd had to interject trips to England and to Jerusalem, and in Jerusalem I'd fallen and bashed in my ribs ("You're wrinkled your ribs," the doctor reading the x-rays told me), and I was strapped up and in considerable pain. One afternoon I had a couple of hours to myself, and so I limped to the sea wall and stretched out and closed my eyes and tried to let go all my aches and pains and tiredness, to let go and simply be. And while I was lying there, eased by the cool breezes, the warm sun, bursts of bird song, I heard feet coming to me across the water. It was a sound I recognized, a familiar sound: the feet of Jesus coming towards me.
And then another noise broke in, and I was back in an aching body. But I had heard. For a moment in that hearing I was freed form the dirty devices of this world. I was more than I am. I was healed.
It is one of those impossibilities I believe in; and in believing, my own feet touch the surface of the lake, and I go to meet him, like Peter, walking on water.
But only if I die first, only if I am willing to die. I am mortal, flawed, trapped in my own skin, my own barely used brain, I do not understand this death, but I am learning to trust it. Only through this death can come the glory of resurrection; only through this death can come birth.
And I cannot do it myself. It is not easy to think of any kind of death as a gift, but it is prefigured for us in the mighty acts of Creation and Incarnation; in Crucifixion and Resurrection.
You are my helper and redeemer; make no long tarrying, O my God."
-Madeleine L'Engle, June 1980