“I wish that we worried more about asking the right questions instead of being so hung up on finding answers.” – Madeleine L’Engle, “A Circle of Quiet”
We’re often told that college is a time to ask the “big questions.” Who am I? What do I want to do with my life?
I can easily give the “church answer” to some of these. I am a follower of Christ. I want to do what will glorify Him.
But how do I specifically live that out? How do I choose and balance my responsibilities as a college senior who knows a whole lot less about the world than she might think?
Acclaimed writer Madeleine L’Engle struggled with a similar idea, using writing as a form of contemplation.
L’Engle (1918-2007) is probably best known for her 1962 Newbery Medal-winning novel “A Wrinkle in Time.” Her other writings include sequels to this novel, a parallel series of novels, various essays and the collection known as the Crosswicks Journals.
Although I read “A Wrinkle in Time” in elementary school, it wasn’t until a few years ago when I picked up that series again that I was struck by the way L’Engle’s fiction reflects her Christian worldview. Though some of her specific beliefs bore criticism from others in the church, her redemptive vision shines through in her stories and, as I was about to discover, is more explicitly laid out in her nonfiction writing.
“A Circle of Quiet,” the first book in the Crosswicks Journals series, came into my hands over fall break in Chattanooga during my first trip to the magical land of McKay’s. The copy is slightly worn and boasts various highlighted and bracketed passages throughout from previous readers, but I like it better that way. I pay special attention to those passages. It’s like I’m reading together with those formerly unknown individuals, considering and dwelling on the same ideas across space and time.
I didn’t start reading this book immediately after purchasing it. I was that kid in grade school who always had a Star Wars novel or “The Fellowship of the Ring” rattling around in my backpack alongside the textbooks for each class and eagerly anticipated study hall time when I could dive back into my favorite fictional worlds instead of parsing sentences, but that habit did not follow me to college. My bookshelves at school are full of old favorites and a few yet-unread that I constantly look at, wish I had time to read, sigh and promptly scroll on my phone instead of using the time that I do indeed have. But the books I have read in college have stuck with me, maybe because being out of practice in devouring a new one every few days means that I now read slower and more intentionally.
I realized early on that this particular book wasn’t a text I could or should simply skim through to glean some information and be able to say I’d read it. Written during a summer spent at a family farm in Connecticut and published in 1972, “A Circle of Quiet” is a journal-like memoir. L’Engle ruminates on her teaching career, her path as a Christian and her development as a writer, offering wisdom from her relationships with others and her own pursuit of truth and meaning.
I wanted to respect the gravitas of this subject matter in the way I read the book. So each time I opened its slightly yellowed pages, I set my phone aside, grabbed a pencil and began poring over each chapter, underlining lines and passages I wanted to consider further and bracketing some of my favorites. Absorbed in L’Engle’s anecdotes and insights, I slipped back into the habit of reading without checking the time, which proved to be the same issue it had been back in high school when I’d wake up the next morning more tired than I’d been before those five hours of sleep (I know, to some of you five hours may be a luxury. I like my sleep, though).
A few nights ago, sitting in my bed with only the string lights for illumination, I finally finished “A Circle of Quiet.” I closed the cover, set it down and thought. L’Engle writes her way through so many aspects of life, from the nature of creativity to the responsibility of an educator and the character of progress. All of these come together to form the picture one woman understood of a world awaiting full redemption in Christ where the artist, the writer and the individual desperately pursue truth and beauty in all contexts of their lives.
I felt a little overwhelmed by some of her sweeping yet beautifully intricate insights. How does L’Engle seem to so adeptly balance asking and seeking answers? How is she so okay with admitting she does not or cannot know certain things? Was it God who drew me to this book that day in McKay’s, knowing how relevant I would find it to my own search for answers?
Am I asking the right questions?
At church this past Sunday, I looked at the displays honoring this year’s graduating high school seniors and thought about how long ago high school seems to me. Only three years separate us in that experience. But those three years mark a complete chapter in my life: a circle, beginning and ending with the same simultaneous trepidation and excitement I felt for move-in day in August 2018 on this very same campus. Yet now, the need for answers feels more urgent than ever.
What happens after graduation is a question I’ve been asking for some time now. I’ve pursued and am pursuing a variety of possible answers, but the uncertainty hangs around.
To truly ask a question with no idea as to its answer involves a certain level of dependence on the individual being asked. Asking makes us vulnerable. My specific questions and requests to God about my future aren’t in themselves what matter to my pursuit of righteousness. My act of prayer, my reliance on Him by fully admitting that I do not know, is.
Maybe the question does matter more than the answer, especially when asked of a holy and omniscient God. My requests involving the things of this earth may be sinful, but He is the perfect and complete answer to all of my deepest needs.
On this side of eternity, we should seek that answer in and through all that we do. We might express our search through creativity and art, which L’Engle calls “beauty crying out for more beauty.” But ultimately, we won’t always find the answers our self-focused hearts might crave.
And that is a good thing.
L’Engle seems to recognize that in her contemplations in “A Circle of Quiet.” She perhaps puts it best: “Thank you, God, for not giving in to my importunate demands.”
