Madeleine L'Engle

Husband was checking news online last night and he said to me, "Honey...Madeleine L'Engle died." I burst into tears. She was a soul mate. And I'm glad she's with God. She was 88. But I am missing her. Just knowing she's not alive on this planet with me.

A tribute from her book Walking on Water, Reflections on Faith and Art:

Time is to be treasured, worked with, never ignored. As the astrophysicists understand time now, it is not like a river, flowing in one direction, but more like a tree, with great branches and smaller limbs and twigs which may make it possible for us to move from one branch to another, as did Jesus and Moses and Elijah, as did St. Andrew and St. Francis when they talked with each other in that light of love which transcends all restrictions of time. Kairos. Real time. God's time. That time which breaks through chronos with a shock of joy, that time we do not recognize while we are experiencing it, but only afterwards, because kairos has nothing to do with chronological time. In kairos we are completely unself-conscious and yet paradoxically far more real than we can ever be when we are constantly checking our watches for chronological time. The saint in contemplation, lost (discovered) to self in the mind of God is in kairos. The artist at work is in kairos. The child at play, totally thrown outside himself in the game, be it building a sandcastle or making a daisy chain, is in kairos. In kairos we become what we are called to be as human beings, co-creators with God, touching the wonder of creation. This calling should not be limited to artists -- or saints -- but it is a fearful calling. Mana, taboo. It can destroy as well as bring into being.

so there you have it. I could have spent all night coming up with the perfect L'Engle quote, but that is what was in front of me when I opened one of her books. She is forever in kairos now, and maybe even more likely to touch our lives now without our knowing it.

Thank you, Madeleine.