Madeleine L'Engle is one of the wisest people I know, and as it is sunday and I'm getting ready to go to yet another church conference of sorts (ward conference--blah), here is one of her beautiful thoughts on the subject of religion and the millenium-o-rama:
"The Second Coming. The Coming of the Kingdom.
What does that mean?
My son-in-law Alan was asked once by a pious woman if our feet would be wafted from the earth, at the time of the Second Coming, before Jesus’s feet touched ground. Ouch. That kind of literalism is not what it’s about.
For the simple fact is that we are not capable of knowing what it’s about. The Coming of the Kingdom is creation coming to be what it was meant to be, the joy and glory of all creation working together with the Creator. In literal language none of it makes much sense, and I can only go once again to my adolescent analogy of the planet on which all sentient life was sightless. If nobody could see, other sense would take over, and everybody would get along perfectly well. But if you tried to explain the joy of sight to anybody on that planet you couldn’t do it. Nobody could understand something so glorious and so totally out of an eyeless frame of reference. Multiply that gap between a blind planet and a seeing one a billion times and we’ll still be far from understanding the difference between creation, now, and creation in the fullness of the kingdom. But I am slowly learning that it is something to be awaited with joy and not terror. "
The Irrational Season, p. 3-4
(ps. some more thoughts on faith...)
3 comments:
I too love L'Engle. I found her words healing at a time when I needed healing. I feasted on everything I could find that she wrote. I wish she could write forever... I still read "Ring of Endless Light about once every 18 months.
Sue
I love L'Engle too. I read her tons and tons while studying for my thesis--her and Kathrine Patterson (Jacob have I loved) are wise beautiful writers of thoughts, not just books.
A HA! It is my mother's fault that I adore "Ring of Endless Light". Who can help but love Madeleine L'Engle? Really?
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