i usually read l'engle books in less than 2 weeks. however, despite my daily reading, it took me two months to finish this one. it was hard for me and i'm not sure why, though i did end up with a more underlined/noted book than usual. maybe it was just heavy with truth. but i loved it. :)

There's a bit of fluff between, but then there are these absolute jewels of wisdom:
"I am using myth in its ancient meaning--that which was true, that which is true, that which will be true, that strange truth which is as elusive as home."

"As I read Scripture I saw that God used strange people to do the work of Love, ordinary people who were just like the rest of us, not perfect, not morally virtuous, but people who listened to God and, often reluctantly, did what was asked of them."

"Story helps us with the questions that have no answers. I wish the Church (of all denominations) would be brave enough to acknowledge that there are questions which, during our mortal lives, are not going to be answered. There are no answers to the wonder of Creation, the marvel of the Incarnation, the glory of the Resurrection. Too many answers lead to smug self-righteousness and--even worse--to human beings, rather than God, deciding who is and who is not loved by the Maker. Can't we trust God?"

"God is constantly breaking human rules in order to offer the greater rule of love, speaking through people shunned by society."

"It is only when we are not rigid in our expectations of our communities and when our doors are wide open, that [Christ] may choose to come, with the stranger, into our midst."

"Almost everything good can be abused, but that doesn't make the original good any less good, and if it's fun, it may well be joy in the Lord and in Creation, not sin. When we deny our legitimate pleasures we are denying the Incarnation for Jesus came to affirm, not deny."

"[T]he hysterical need for a common enemy is an enemy of story. If the only way we can believe that our faith is valid is by accusing another faith of being false, then our faith is shaky indeed."

""It is easier for a single human being to be open and willing to change than it is for an institution, but if enough of us single creatures are open to God's amazing revelations, our institutions will ultimately come alone with us. Long before the church institution was ready, many individuals were willing to accept that the earth is round and is a planet circling a parent sun in one of countless galaxies. An institution, be it religious, medical, legal, or educational, tends to move very slowly, holding onto the status quo, afraid of rocking the boat, loath to accept the familiar ideas may have to be left behind.We shouldn't wait for the institutions to do the changing, but be willing to change ourselves, and if we become more open, more loving, more interdependent through the lavishness of God's love, then we can and will make a difference.”

"Someone who loudly affirms Jesus as his personal Savior may be further from knowing the Lord than someone who lovingly longs to be able to do so and hardly dares, knowing the enormity of such an affirmation and the incredible responsibility it brings."

"I structure my life in the daily readings of Morning and Evening Prayer, and in the Eucharist. Then, when tragedy strikes unexpectedly, as it so often does, the framework for grief is already there."

I really did not enjoy this one. We have a lot of theological differences but also the book didn’t seem as focused as I would have liked.

She doesn't so much "write" as "have a conversation"

Didn't finish

Some good little nuggets, but this book was SO hard to read. Some topics are stretched on and on; I found it hard to follow and stay attentive.

The Rock that is Higher appears to be a book about storytelling, but half of it is a memoir detailing L’Engle’s slow recovery from a car crash at age 72. In her usually winsome way, she writes about how stories help to make us human. Those were the parts I loved best about the book.

Tolkien, G. K. Chesteron and C.S. Lewis all wrote about Christianity being the “truest” myth. In their case they are not referring to myth as “an unfounded or false notion,” but as “sacred tales that explain the world and man’s experience.” L’Engle is firmly in their camp, but she goes much farther than they do in declaring that most of the Bible is not to be taken literally. On page 166 there is the cryptic sentence: “Do you believe in the literal fact of [Christ’s] resurrection? NO! I believe in the resurrection!”

She spends a large portion of the book defending God’s reputation, saying that the “tribal god” of the Old Testament was the result of the primitive view of God held by Old Testament writers. Any mention of God’s wrath is a misunderstanding of His true character, since, in her opinion, all wrath is necessarily vindictive and sinful. (She seems to forget that wrath is mentioned in the New Testament too.)

Although I disagree with her on many theological points, that does not mean I cannot appreciate her fine writing. I still consider her Wrinkle in Time trilogy to be a masterpiece of YA fiction.

Stunning as always

Meandered a bit, but there were some parts that resonated with me.

L'Engle discusses "story as truth" again in this one, mainly writing about the Christian story, but eventually moving beyond the Bible. She discusses grief, pain, joy, redemption, scripture, love, and home, all illustrated in story. The cool part for me, the last time I read it, was that the story she dwelt on most was that of King David -- and I was reading the books of Samuel at the same time. Lovely coincidence.
She discusses all this throughout her own healing process after a terrible car accident. I, too, was in a healing process so a lot of what she had to say - about anger, grief, etc -- made a lot of sense.

I can't recommend this book too highly. The idea that the words we use to describe an experience are almost more important than whatever it is that is being described is very useful in dealing with events in one's own life and relating to other people.

I read this as my 2020 Lenten bedtime book.

It was a wonderful choice. Considering story - and true story - in to the Gospel, King David, and interwoven with her own life events was a beautiful way to study the incarnation and Resurrection.

L'Engle and I have theological disagreements, but she always makes me think and her perspective helps me to understand others with whom I may disagree in specifics but not essentials.

Her long career as a storyteller makes her eminently qualified to contemplate Story as Truth (and I compare with Mattie Ross in True Grit who calls lying "stories" - an all to frequent mischaracterization). I've been tracking what she calls chronos/kairos through other books - Pieper Leisure the Basis of Culture and Makoto Fujimura's Refractions. Her final chapters - Creative Act, Redemptive Act, and Resurrection were so encouraging and perfect during this past Holy Week. She talks about Myth and Fairy Tales in ways confirm much I read from Angelina Stanford.

"Story makes us more human, and until we become fully human we will not be ready for home." p38

"This is because Scripture is true. Truth is deeper and wider and much more demanding than many people would like, but Jesus promised that it would set us free." p 49

"We do not need faith for facts; we do need faith for truth." pg 94

"It is, I suspect, fear of story, fear of imagination, fear of the unexplainable. The less vocabulary we have, the more limited our words, the more frightening the imagination becomes." p 102

He grinned. ... "You're much better when you don't think."

And that is true. It doesn't mean that I must never think. It doesn't mean that he hadn't been training me [to co-lead studies] for a good many years. It doesn'tm ean that I didn't have a full barrel to draw from. It does mean that the creative actions do not come from the cognitive part of the brain alone, but from a much larger area. When I write, I realized, I do not think. I write. If I think when I am writing, it doesn't work. I can think before I write; I can think after I write, but when I am actually writing, what I do is write. This is always the instruction I give at writers' workshops: "Don't think. Write." And I put a time limit to the assignments. "You may not work on this for more than an hour. If you're not finished at the end of an hour, that's all right. Stop." It's a lot easier to write without thinking if there's a time limit. p 144

"Many of the symbols which are now purported to be New Age, or, even worse, signs of devil worship, are Christian symbols. Indeed they may be misused and distorted by groups which are not Christian (a black mass is a blasphemous distortion of the Christian Eucharist), but that does not mean we need to toss them out and hand them over to the enemy! Give up the rainbow as a glorious sign of God's covenant with his people? Never! Give up the crescent moon and the stars and call them symbols of S--n rather than visible signs of the glory of God's creation? Never! The enemy can't have them unless we weakly and thoughtlessly relinquish our very own heritage." pg 185

"Too much Christian art relies so heavily on being Christian that the artist forgets that it also must be good art." pg 200

"... the people I know, in literature and in life, whose chief concern is fulfilling themselves, are always empty." p 202

"In the fairy tale we find hope of interrelatedness, and sometimes this hope comes because fairy tales deal forthrightly with brokenness. ... In fairy tales, and in life, there is risk--risk of failure, of horror, of death. But there is no despair. Rather, there is an unspoken affirmation of the ultimate happy ending." p 225-226

Once there was a man who was a Namer. That is what he was called by God to be, and to do. Out of the earth,in the days of the beginnings, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would name them: and whatever Adam called every living creature, that was its name.

Adam's vocation as a son was to be a Namer; that was how he was to co-create with the Maker of the Universe. If you name somebody or something, you discover that the act of Naming is very closely connected with the act of loving, and hating is involved with unNaming--taking a person's name away causing anyone to be an anonymous digit, annihilating the spirit.

When we are unNamed, we are broken; all around us we see fragmented, mutilated people. And the world offers little help for healing, for knitting up the "raveled sleeve of care." p 229-230

"And is the importunate widow a witch or a wise woman? It all depends. Witches do not have either humility or a sense of humor; wise women can laugh." pg 247

"We are not privileged because we deserve to be. Privilege accepted should mean responsibility accepted." pg 253

"Meditation is the practise of death and resurrection." pg 263

"But the beast and the princess and the journey [of fairy tale] are not without us, but within us, and we ourselves are the kingdom over which they are now to rule." pg 263

"People who try to sell us cheap grace equate integrity with self-indulgence, freedom with anarchy, liberation with chaos. It doesn't work. Only discipline and obedience to the strict law of love allow us to be free. It is only the daily discipline of work at my desk which frees a book to be bore. It is only the discipline of daily prayer which allows the freedom of meditation and contemplation. A river isn't a river when it overflows it banks. The stars would be raging, flaming destruction if they had not been set in their beautiful courses. So with grief; each day of our lives is preparation for grief, preparation for living in Jesus so he may live in us." pg 273

She ends with He is risen indeed! (italics hers, pg 296) which was perfect to finish with yesteray.

May the Lord help us to understand the many facets of story.