Requiescat In Pace

This is it. I'm going in. After toying with the idea for several years now, I'm taking the blog plunge. Why now? It may sound strange, but it's because my writing hero has died.

Madeleine L'Engle died Thursday, September 6, 2007. Her passing is a seismic event in my life. I was first exposed to her work via a radio dramatization of A Wrinkle in Time, aired on KVPR from Fresno. In junior high, I found the book in our school library, and it was off to the races! From that point on, I read everything of hers I could get my hands on. I still have not read all of her 63 books, but I'm getting close.

She saved me, in many respects, and I'm learning as I troll the nets and blogosphere that I'm not the only one. She never forgot what it was to be a stupid, gawky teenager. She never forgot what it was to be kid for whom the imaginative sphere was more real than the adult 'reality.'

She preached against hero-worship, something I really needed to hear back then. She talked about needing to notice our heroes' clay feet before we put them up on pedestals. She was my hero. She was human. She had clay feet, too. But she taught me to live and to not despise my own intelligence or difference. She taught me that art and writing and music and intellect and soul and theology and science and math all go hand-in-hand in universe.

She taught me joy, joie-de-vivre, and the beauty of work -- good, hard, physical and mental work. She taught me to listen for the music of spheres.

It's hard to put into words how much she will be missed. Thank God she wrote. I have 63 books to revisit when I need certain grounding.

Oh, to hear the conversations she's having right now with Einstein, Bach, Jesus, and her beloved Hugh! May the souls of these faithful departed rest it peace, and may light perpetual shine upon them!

As she accepted the Margaret Edwards Award, which is the American Library Association's Lifetime Achievement Award For Writing in the Field of Young Adult Literature, in 1998, she said this:

"Someone said, 'It's all been done before.'
"Yes, I agreed, but we all have to say it in our own voice."

This blog is begun in her honor, as I attempt to say it in my own voice.