Comfort Food

Whenever I find myself in a place of doubt and fear, I reach for my favorite comfort food, the writings of Madeleine L'Engle. Yesterday I read her Newberry Honor book, "A Ring of Endless Light" for probably the twentieth time or so. Maybe more. Something about her books help me reach out for God again when I feel myself shrinking back into fear and self pity and doubt. Her books have been a great source of hope and strength for me as long as I can remember. I don't know which teacher first put "A Wrinkle in Time" in my hands, but I am so grateful. I long to write books like this. Books that help restore and refresh readers. Books that remind us how big and how small the universe is. Books that comfort and challenge at the same time. She is definitely my hero and my role model. A Spiritual giant. A mentor. And though we've never met, she feels like a friend. Thank God for Madeleine L'Engle. Here is the poem by Henry Vaughan from which she derives the title of the book:

I saw Eternity the other night,

Like a great ring of pure and endless light,

All calm, as it was bright,

And round beneath it, Time, hours, days, years

Driven by spheres

Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world

And all her train were hurled.

There is in God, some say,

A deep but dazzling darkness: as men here

Say it is late and dusky, because they

See not all clear.

O for that Night, where I in him

Might live invisible and dim!