Books I Read This Year (2016)

I set a goal for myself to read 100 books a year. Some years I make that goal. Some years I do not. This year I did, though I didn't intend to set out to read the entire Stephen King canon. What can I say? Things happen. (And I didn't quite read everything he's published... )

American Folk Songs for Christmas – Ruth Crawford Seeger
Treasury of Christmas Music – William L. Reed
The International Book of Christmas Carols – Walter Ehret
The Return of the Star of Bethlehem – Kenneth Boa
Towards a Church of the Poor – Julio de Santa Anna
Sharing the Word through the Liturgical Year – Gustavo Gutiérrez
Nosferatu: An Opera Libretto – Dana Gioia
The Night Church – Whitley Strieber
God Eating: A Study in Christianity and Cannibalism – J.T. Lloyd
We Should All Be Feminists – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas  - Troy Little
Bible Stories for Adults – James K. Morrow
Swell Foop – Piers Anthony
Pop Sonnets: Shakespearean Spins on Your Favorite Songs – Erik Didriksen
Emma – Howard Zinn
The Children of Men – P.D. James
The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
The Lottery and Other Stories – Shirley Jackson
Stephen King: The First Decade – Joseph Reino
Sphere – Michael Chrichton
Chomsky on Anarchism – Noam Chomsky
The Complete Fiction – H.P. Lovecraft
The Wolf’s Hour – Robert McCammon
Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas – Mari Sandoz
Selected Stories: Family Matters – Symphony Space
The Best American Travel Writing -  Bill Bryson
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble – William Steig
Resurrection – Leo Tolstoy
House of Leaves – Mark Danielewski
Many Waters – Madeline L’Engle
A Swiftly Tilting Planet – Madeline L’Engle
Wind in the Door – Madeline L’Engle
A Wrinkle in Time – Madeline L’Engle
Chairman Mao Meets the Apostle Paul: Christianity, Communism and the Hope of China – Khiok-Khng Yeo
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Pontypool Changes Everything – Tony Burgess
The Oath – Frank Peretti
Will & Kate – Dawn Volz
Bob Dylan and Philosphy: It’s All Right Ma, I’m Only Thinking – Peter J. Vernezze, Carl J. Porter, James S. Spiegel
Dr. Faustus – Christopher Marlow
Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life – Herman Melville
The Producers – Mel Brooks
Leaving Iowa – Tim Clue
The Orthodox Heretic – Peter Rollins
Wool – Hugh Howely
Joe Hill: The IWW & the Making of a Revolutionary Working Class Counterculture – Franklin Rosemont
Praying with John of the Cross – Wayne Simsic
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – Ian Fleming
Life and Fate – Vasily Grossman
Lost Horizons – James Hilton
How to Pray when You’re Pissed at God: Or Anyone Else for that Matter – Ian Punnett
The Haunted House and Other Spooky Poems and Tales – Vic Crume
The Shroud Codex  - Jerome R. Corsi
Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse – John Joseph Adams
Mein Kampf – Adolf Hitler
Prophet – Frank Peretti
Countdown to Sunday: A Daily Guide for Those Who Dare To Preach – Chris Erdman
Hitler: 1936 – 1945 Nemesis – Ian Kershaw
Hitler: 1889 – 1936 Hubris – Ian Kershaw

Stephen King -
The Gunsligner
The Drawing of the Three
The Waste Lands
Wizard and Glass
Wolves of the Calla
Song of Susanna
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams
The Tommyknockers
Misery
Skeleton Crew
Doctor Sleep
The Shining
Insomnia
The Dead Zone
Four Past Midnight
Rose Madder
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
Mr. Mercedes
The Dark Half
Dream Catcher
‘Salem’s Lot
From a Buick 8
The Regulators
Hearts in Atlantis
Gerald’s Game
Everything’s Eventual
Blockade Billy
The Eyes of the Dragon
Desperation
Cujo
Black House
The Talisman
The Long Walk
Roadwork
Rage
The Running Man
Lisey’s Story
Under the Dome
Different Seasons
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
The Stand
11 / 22 / 63

Eternity Breaks Into Our Bounded Time

The nativity stories – read during Christmas (and this is still Christmas) – found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, treat the birth of Jesus as a historical event.  Luke seems especially keen to fix historical dates to his story of Jesus’ birth, telling us that it occurred in the days of Caesar Augustus, and when Quirinius was governor of Syria. That the conflicting details of these two accounts of his birth have led theologians and historians to debate the veracity and historicity, is to be set aside this morning.  It’s enough to accept them as historical stories – stories located within the human perception of the flow of time and space.  This is the kind of time we might describe as chronos time – clock time. (L’Engle, 93)[i]

This is the kind of time that had a beginning, that exists because of masses in motion throughout the universe; this chronos time moves inexorably one second after sequential second, tick, tick, tick, 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour into the future.  This is the kind of time in which we live most of our lives. 

But our lectionary readings for this last Sunday of the Christmas season include reading from John’s gospel as well as a reading from the apocryphal (or deuterocanonical) book Sirach that each reflect upon the timeless working of God’s presence in  kairos time, non-linear time (wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey), the kind of time that Madeline L’Engle describes as, “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.” (L’Engle, 98)

It is in the beginning with God.  It is with God before the beginning. It is the timelessness before time, the when before the when when there was only silence.  And it is in this timeless time that we hear the voice of Wisdom – the voice, the word of God speaking.

“I came forth from the mouth of the Most High,

    and covered the earth like a mist.

I dwelt in the highest heavens,

    and my throne was in a pillar of cloud.

Alone I compassed the vault of heaven

    and traversed the depths of the abyss.

Over waves of the sea, over all the earth,

    and over every people and nation I have held sway.

Among all these I sought a resting place;

    in whose territory should I abide?[ii]

Wisdom, she speaks to us, calls us, raising her voice for us to hear.  She was there in the timelessness before time; she was there at the beginning when there were no heights and no depths.[iii]  Wisdom as the spoken word of God, came forth and covered the Earth like a mist, over the sea, over the waves, into the vaults of heaven and down through the depths of the abyss.  Wisdom filled time and space.

Yet it was not enough that God and the Wisdom of God should inhabit a timelessness that remains inaccessible to us.  “God who is Spirit at work in the tragic and beautiful world to vivify and renew all creatures through the gracious power of her indwelling, liberating love, is present yet again through the very particular history of one human being, Jesus of Nazareth.  The one who is divine love, gift, and friend, becomes manifest in time in a concrete gestalt, the loving gifting, and befriending first-century Jewish carpenter turned prophet (Johnson, 150).”[iv]

“Then the Creator of all things gave me a command,

and my Creator chose the place for my tent.

He said, ‘Make your dwelling in Jacob,

and in Israel receive your inheritance.’

Before the ages, in the beginning, he created me,

and for all the ages I shall not cease to be.

In the holy tent I ministered before him,

and so I was established in Zion.

Thus in the beloved city he gave me a resting place,

and in Jerusalem was my domain.

I took root in an honored people,

in the portion of the Lord, his heritage.[v]

When the chronos-time was right, the kairos-time burst in upon us. Eternity broke into our bounded time.  “In the hopeless time of sin” when “shadows deep had fallen,”[vi]  when our darkened lives were bounded by birth and death – the timeless word of God was spoken and the Wisdom of God became enfleshed as Mary’s little boy. 

Paul describes Jesus as the wisdom of God, saying, “…we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. [vii]  This is wisdom that to outsiders and those who refuse to believe, would seem foolish, weak, frail and helpless.

And the Word became flesh, putting her tent down among us, dwelling in space and time – in ordinary clock time.  (It is fitting then, that “Ordinary Time” follows Christmas in the Church’s liturgical calendar…”)  And we have seen this glory, living among us, living within us.

Our lives, once bounded by the fixed constraints of time and space, bookended by birth and death are now opened.  We are lifted up into the kairos time of God. We are free. We have light and life in Jesus of Nazareth.

Hear the Word of God, the Voice of Wisdom as she calls to us this morning:

“Come to me, you who desire me,

and eat your fill of my fruits.

For the memory of me is sweeter than honey,

and the possession of me sweeter than the honeycomb.

Those who eat of me will hunger for more,

 and those who drink of me will thirst for more.

Whoever obeys me will not be put to shame,

and those who work with me will not sin.”[viii]

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[i] L’Engle, Madeline Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, Harold Shaw Publishers, Wheaton IL, 1980.

[ii] Sirach 24:3 – 7 (NRSV)

[iii] Proverbs 8: 22 - 24

[iv] Johnson, Elizabeth A. She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse,

The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, NY, 1998.

[v] Sirach 24: 8 – 12 (NRSV)

[vi] Traditional Catalonian Christmas carol Lo Desembre Congelat (Cold December Flies Away)

[vii] 1 Corinthians 1: 23– 24

[viii] Sirach 24: 19 – 22 (NRSV)

What I’ve Read this Year- 2013

These are not  listed in the order I read them, or in order of my favor, or alphabetical order either... just a list.  My reviews and comments are in the links

Fiction
Stephen R. Lawhead – The Silver Hand
Stephen R. Lawhead – The Endless Knot

Stephen R. Lawhead - Byzantium

Alan Goldsher - Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion
Seth Grahame-Smith - Unholy Night

Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time

Madeleine L'Engle -A Wind in the Door

Madeleine L’Engle - A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Madeleine L'Engle - Many Waters

Katy Stauber - Revolution World

Robert A. Heinlein - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Ace Collins -Jefferson Burke and the Secret of the Lost Scroll

C.S. Lewis - Out of the Silent Planet

C.S. Lewis – Perelandra

C.S. Lewis - That Hideous Strength

Franz Kafka -The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories

Paul L. Maier - Pontius Pilate: A Novel

Jonathan Maberry - Rot and Ruin

Walter Wangerin Jr. - The Book of the Dun Cow

Tad Williams - The Dragonbone Chair

Tad Williams - Stone of Farewell

Tad Williams - To Green Angel Tower (Parts 1 & 2)

Philip K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle

Philip K. Dick - VALIS

Phillip K. Dick - A Scanner Darkly

Philip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Philip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Philip K. Dick - A Maze of Death

Jim Butcher - Summer Knight

Brandon Sanderson - The Rithmatist

Frank Herbert – Dune

Frank Herbert - Dune Messiah

Frank Herbert - Children of Dune

Orson Scott Card - Seventh Son

Orson Scott Card - Red Prophet

Orson Scott Card - Prentice Alvin

Orson Scott Card – Heartfire

Orson Scott Card - Alvin Journeyman

Orson Scott Card - The Crystal City

Ben Bova - Jupiter

George R.R. Martin - A Game of Thrones

Cullen Bunn - Deadpool Killustrated  

Clive Barker -The Thief of Always

Richard Adams - Watership Down

Robert Penn Warren - The Cave

Glenn Beck - Agenda 21

William Shakespeare - Hamlet

Henning Mankell - Faceless Killers

Henning Mankell - The Dogs of Riga

Newt Gingrich - 1945  

Dan Brown - Inferno

William Golding - The Inheritors

William Golding - Lord of the Flies

Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness  

Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita

Stephen King - Carrie

Stephen King - Joyland

Stephen King - From a Buick 8

Stephen King - The Shining

Stephen King - Firestarter

Stephen King - The Dark Half

Stephen King - Dolores Claiborne

Kim Paffenroth- Dying to Live

Matt Bronleewe - Illuminated

Jeff Lindsay - Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Non-Fiction

John Dominic Crossan - Who Killed Jesus?  Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus

Madeleine L'Engle - Bright Evening Star: Mystery of the Incarnation

James F. McGrath - The Burial Of Jesus: History And Faith

John P. Meier - A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. Volume One, The Roots of the Problem and the Person

Deborah Blum - The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

Richard A. Burridge - Faith Odyssey: A Journey through Life

Archibald MacLeish - J.B.

Marvin Meyer -Judas: The Definitive Collection of Gospels and Legends about the Infamous Apostle of Jesus  

Irwin Ginsburgh - First, Man Then, Adam! A Scientific Interpretation of the Book of Genesis

Charles R. Pellegrino - Return to Sodom and Gomorrah: Bible Stories from Archaeologists

Laurence Gardner - Bloodline of the Holy Grail (here, here, and here)

John Larsson - 1929

Edward Jay Epstein - The Annals of Unsolved Crime

Jay Michaelson - God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality

Langston Hughes - Langston Hughes

Thomas Cahill - Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus

Bill Bryson - Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States

Marion L. Soards - Scripture and Homosexuality: Biblical Authority and the Church Today

Valerie Mindlin - The Epic of the Maccabees

E.P. Sanders - The Historical Figure of Jesus

Travis Walton - Fire in the Sky: The Walton Experience

Louis Untermeyer - The Pan Book of Limericks

Lee Gurga  - Haiku: A Poet's Guide

Susan Stryker - The Transgender Studies Reader

Joseph Reino - Stephen King the First Decade: Carrie to Pet Sematary

Sandra Lowerre - The Cross Dressing Female Saints in Wynkyn De Worde's 1495 Edition of the Vitas Patrum: A Study and Edition of the Lives of Saints Pelage, Maryne, Eufrosyne, Eugene and Mary of Egypt

Kenneth E Bailey - Open Hearts in Bethlehem: A Christmas Drama

Raymond E. Brown - An Adult Christ at Christmas

Michael J. Nelson - Mike Nelson's Mind over Matters

Jason Draper – A Brief History Album Covers

Marcella Althaus-Reid - Indecent Theology

It Is Good To Be Here, But We Cannot Remain

Today is Transfiguration Sunday.  In the Church liturgical calendar this is the last Sunday of the season of Epiphany, the last Sunday before the season of Lent which begins on Wednesday – Ash Wednesday.  It marks a transition both in our worship and in the life of Jesus as described by the gospel writers.  The transfiguration of Jesus upon the mountain top marked a turning point, of sorts, in his ministry path.  From that mountain he turned from teaching and healing in Galilee towards the confrontation and rejection he knew he must face in Jerusalem.

In many churches today is the last Sunday until Resurrection Sunday when any “Alleluias” will be sung. Alleluias are ‘put away’ during this season that the church focuses on penitence; they won’t be sung until the Easter morning’s glorious announcement, “He is risen from the dead!”   Transfiguration Sunday is a day of transition, a day of both dazzling displays of blindingly brilliant glory and also a day fraught with the heavy foreshadows of death. 

The story, as we have it in Luke, begins “now about 8 days after this…” - And at this we should begin to take notice, we who have read through the story more than once.  We will know that the eighth day is the resurrection day.  If Jesus was crucified and buried on the day before the Sabbath, and he was in the tomb all during that seventh day’s rest, it was on the 8^th day that he was raised up.  But, we who have read through the story more than once know this.  The disciples who followed Jesus then didn’t yet understand these things.

So, about 8 days after Peter’s confession that Jesus is the “Christ of God,” Jesus took Peter, James, and John up the mountainside to pray. Neither Mark nor Matthew relates that point in their telling of this story, (and John doesn’t tell this story in his gospel) but Luke does.  Jesus took his friends up the mountain in order to pray.  Prayer is significant in Luke.  In fact, Jesus prays more frequently in Luke’s gospel than the others. 

At his baptism, Jesus prays and the Holy Spirit descends upon him (Luke 3:21-22).  Before Jesus chooses his disciples he spends the entire night in payer.  (Luke 6: 12 – 16) When Peter makes his confession that Jesus is the “Christ of God,” it is after a time of private prayer. (Luke 9: 18 – 20) 

And now, Jesus is taking three of his disciples, three of his closest friends up the side of the mountain to pray.  It isn’t certain which mountain Jesus and his friends were climbing, but according to Christian tradition it was Mount Tabor in lower Galilee - an isolated hill rising abruptly from the surrounding landscape. 

But whether or not it was Mount Tabor or not is not strictly important.   Just as today, Transfiguration Sunday, marks a transition from one Church season to another, mountains are places of transition from the earthly below to the heavenly above.  They are places where one can meet with God, places where one can leave the world of the natural and the mundane and to ascend into very heavens. Jesus is not merely taking his friends on a nature hike so that they can appreciate the splendor and beauty of the landscape below them; he is taking them to a place where they can experience the divine presence away from the cares and troubles of the world below.

And there, atop this holy hill, Jesus prayed.  And as he was praying something happened. His appearance was changed – his face, his clothes were altered.  He was (to borrow a word from Matthew and Mark’s gospel) transfigured.  His face shined.  His robes were dazzling white.  He assumed the appearance of the glory of heaven.  And there were two men with him, speaking to him, Moses and Elijah.

(as an irreverent and irrelevant aside – I’ve always wondered how the disciples recognized them?  Did they recognize Moses and Elijah from their photographs?)

And we who have read through the stories of the bible a time or two are going recognize something here as well, well several somethings, really.  Luke has almost overloaded this story with connections backwards and forwards.  Not only is this mountain a place in which one can move from earth to heaven, but in Luke’s telling of the story it becomes a place to move backwards and forwards through the history of the people of God.

Here in this mountain top experience Jesus meets with two heroes of the faith – men, for the Jewish disciples, Peter, James and John, would have represented the nearly the whole history of their faith – Moses and Elijah,  the messengers of old, representatives of the Law and the Prophets.  And these two men, as well, had experienced their own mountain top encounters with God: Moses on Mount Sinai as he received the tablets of the ten commandments, and Elijah on Mount Horeb where he stood with his cloak pulled over his face as the Lord passed by and spoke to him in that “still small voice.” 

And they were speaking to Jesus about his “departure” that he was to accomplish in Jerusalem- in Greek that is, his “exodus.” As I said, Luke has made this mountain top a place where time and space have become thin.  This place, this event connects both backwards to the exodus in which Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt and forward to Jesus’ death in Jerusalem. 

And the disciples?  What of them?  What were they doing during all of this?  They were sleeping.  As Jesus spent the night praying atop the mountain, his disciples, his friends were sleeping – just as they will when Jesus prays atop the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem the night of his arrest.  Time and space are thin atop the mountain the story connects forward and backward.

But Peter and the others awaken enough to notice that something is going on.  They see Jesus’ transfigured appearance, they see him speaking with Moses and Elijah, and they are overwhelmed by the glory of the moment.  And Peter, as he so often did, blurted out without thinking, “Master! It is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses, and one for Elijah…”  Let’s build a shrine here on this very place.  Let’s preserve this very moment in time.  But Peter did not really know what he was saying.

As he said this, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and the six of them entered into the cloud – Jesus, Moses, Elijah, and Peter, James and John.   Time and space are almost irrelevant here.  Booths and tents cannot mark or preserve this moment.  In this cloud we are in the presence of God. The cloud that led the people of Israel through the wilderness, the cloud that covered the mountain as Moses met with God, the cloud that settled upon Solomon’ Temple.  We are in the presence of God.  Overshadowed by his presence.  And it is not insignificant that Luke has used the word “overshadowed” here.  It is the same word he used when the Spirit of God overshadowed Mary (and these are the only two times the word is used in the NT.) 

And they were afraid as they entered the cloud.  How could they not be afraid?  They are moving through time and space into the timelessness of God’s presence. Moving out of mere chronos clock time and into kairos .

The Greek language has two words for time, chronos and kairos.  Chronos refers to chronological or sequential time, the tick, tick, tick, of the clock hands one moment following after another.  Kairos signifies a time between, moments of indeterminate time in which something special happens. Chronos is quantitative and measurable.   Kairos is qualitative and cannot be measured or marked or preserved.  It can only be experienced.

“Jesus took John and James and Peter up the mountain in ordinary, daily chronos; during the glory of the Transfiguration they were dwelling in kairos.”  [i]

And there in the timeless they experienced that transcendental oneness with God.  They heard the voice of God speaking to them , “This is my son, my chosen.  Listen to him.”  The voice encouraged them to hear Jesus the same way that they would hear Moses and Elijah, to receive him the same way they would receive the Law and the Prophets.  To follow him as they would those messengers of old.

And they were overwhelmed by this experience.  They were afraid.  How could they not been afraid?  When it was all over they told no one about it? How could they?  Kairos time isn’t quantifiable, isn’t measurable.  It must be experienced.  And those who have not shared the experience will not be able to understand.  How could they have told anyone about the things they heard and the things they saw?  They barely understood them themselves.  It wasn’t until after Jesus’ resurrection that they were able to put words to the experience.

“We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.  For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’  We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.”  (2 Peter 1: 16 – 18)

But those moments of kairos time are fleeting.  We cannot live in them.  The regularity of Chronos reasserts itself and we are brought back into the ‘real world.’   We cannot stay on the mountain.  The cloud dispersed and Peter and James and John were alone with Jesus again.  And he led them back down the mountain into the cares and concerns of the world. 

Almost immediately he was mobbed by the crowd and by the man, desperate for his son, and by the feckless disciples.  He and his disciples had just experience that intimate oneness with God, a holy and sacred experience with the Divine, and now he’s confronted by the petty, and suffering, and the obtuse, and the ordinary.  Is it any wonder that Jesus sounds so exasperated when he says to them, “O you unbelieving and perverse generation! How long shall I stay with you and put up with you?” (Luke 9:41)

But we cannot stay in those mountain-top experiences.  The world below calls us, needs us.

I think is significant, also, that the two men who spoke with Jesus in that experience were great leaders of unfinished works.  Moses led the people out of Egypt, led them through the wilderness, led them right up to the Promised Land, but died before he could enter it. His work was carried on by Joshua.  And Elijah, the great hero of the Jewish faith did many miracles in Israel, but left his work to his disciple, Elisha, who did twice as many as his teacher. 

So too with Jesus.  He began a great work – but left it for his followers to continue.  We must come down off the mountain to continue that great work – to share the good news of the kingdom of God and to make disciples of all people.

We must come down from the mountain top experiences and face the concerns of this world; we must meet with the father whose son is desperately ill.  We must face the rejection and persecution that must come.  We must move forward through the ordinary and painful experiences – but we can do this because we have been changed.

We have been changed.  We have been transformed, reborn.  We have been altered. In that encounter with God we have been transfigured.  And we carry within us the dazzling display of his glory.  It is this glory that we are to take with us into the world.

It is good for us to be here on the mountain, but we cannot remain. 

---

[i] L’Engle Madeline Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, North Point Press, New York, NY, 1980. Pg. 93

What I’m Reading: A Wrinkle in Time

I first read Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time when I was in 5^th grade.  I loved it then – even if I didn’t understand it all.  It was wonderful to read of lonely misfit kids like myself. They were nerdy and unpopular, like me. And I loved them.  It was perfect. It was wonderful.  I have, in the years since, read, and re-read Wrinkle and the following books in the series.  In fact I have read everything of hers that I could get my hands on.  Reading and re-reading them over and over and over again.   I say this without embarrassment – I love Madeline L’Engle.  And I have ever since I picked up that battered paperback in the school library.

There was an adaption of the book made for television a few years ago – but I refused to watch it.  (It was Disney after all!)  When asked in an interview if the film met her expectations, Madeline L’Engle responded, “Yes.  I expected it to be bad, and it was.” [i]  In her book Bright Evening Star L’Engle writes about reading the screenplay for this televised version of her book, and knowing immediately that it was going to be bad.  On the cover page was the title A Wrinkle in Time followed by the tagline “Love is Power.”  That’s when she knew that the screenplay author had failed to understand her book.

Because Love (capital L Love) is not power. Love is giving away power.

And though I am older and have read, and re-read this book many times over, this still baffles me.  I am still learning how to give myself away.

I have children now.  Two of them, one of each kind.  And they both love to read.  But, and I cannot understand this, they have thus far refused to read A Wrinkle in Time and the rest of the books concerning the Murry and O’Keefe families.  I am flummoxed. I am bewildered. How can they not want to read this book?  I want them to read it and to love it as much as I have.  I bought my daughter her very own copy of the book so she wouldn’t have to feel weird about reading my copy…  I’ve suggested it to them both. I’ve encouraged them.  I’ve even considered bribing them to read it.

But I think that this may not be right.  If they are to love it (capital L love it) then it cannot be forced upon them.  They will have to come to its wonder and its mystery of their own.

And even though I have refused to watch (or to even acknowledge the Disneyfied movie, I would like to see this opera based on the book:

The Film About The Opera About The Book: A Wrinkle in Time from Mark Birnbaum Productions on Vimeo.

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[i] http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2004/05/06/i-dare-you.html