Fear Not !!!

News of the day is that Madeline L'Engle has passed on to her greater reward.

She was probably most famous in the wider world for her sci-fi series but the wife and I had an opportunity to spend a weekend retreat with her in the beautiful Texas Hill Country one January several years back. She led the retreat and based it upon her most recently published The Glorious Impossible. I took a few things with me from that retreat, a knowledge of how to compose a Collect, personalized autographs on a few of her books and the vivid memory of two of her comments.

First of all would be "BUTTONS". At some time during the weekend we discussed things that were superfluous. As an example she used the cuff buttons on a jacket. To this day I still think of some things as "BUTTONS".

The second and more important memory was of this great woman shouting out "Fear Not!" in reference to the Angel of the Lord's appearance to the shepherds announcing the birth of The Christ. She was, in all likelihood, the first to cause me to recognize the utter fear that those shepherds would have felt with the Angel's appearance, not in a small part due to its size and magnitude. I can imagine they were scared s&#tless. What else should have been said but "Fear Not!" Prior to that weekend I'd always thought of Angels in a childhood way: small and cute and cuddly, Cherubim if you will. Since then I've learned this is not so. Some time after that retreat, while in Europe, wife and I found an Angel that matches a wooden Creche we display at Advent and through the Christmas Season. It was much larger than any of the other figures and rightly so. I suppose it will be displayed even more prominently and proudly this Christmastide.

She was a wonderful, thought provoking and caring person and this world is a lesser place for her passing.

Tesser well Ms. L'Engle, and Fear Not!!!