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Suncatcher: A Study of Madeleine L'Engle and Her Writing
by Carole Chase
reviewed by Chris Smith
In honor of Madeleine L'Engle's 80th birthday last November, Carole Chase
published a new edition of her tribute entitled Suncatcher: A Study of
Madeleine L'Engle and Her Writing. Like much of L'Engle's own work,
it is rather difficult to classify Suncatcher. One thing, however,
is certain: this work is not intended to be a volume of literary
criticism. Chase emphasizes this point by her choice to open the book with
a quote from Rilke:
Works of art are of an infinite solitude,
and no means of approach is so useless as criticism
Only love can touch and hold them
And be fair to them.
Despite Chase's further objections that it was not intended to be biographical, Suncatcher is probably best described as a spiritual biography. However, as such, it is far from typical, choosing to describe spiritual themes in L'Engle's life and thought by means of her writings. Such a presentation is extraordinarily powerful, as these themes are ones that not only radiate life and joy, but also challenge the reader to ponder his/her faith in the context of the contemporary world. Many of these themes are prophetic utterances in the desert wilderness of today's church, and Chase has done us a great favor by elaborating on these themes and guiding us to specific works in the L'Engle corpus when we hunger and thirst for more.
Suncatcher opens, after prefaces by L'Engle, Chase and Luci Shaw, with a chronology of L'Engle's life, which is filled with brief introductions to each of her works. This biographical sketch aptly serves as a springboard into a discussion of L'Englesque themes. Having just finished crafting a story of L'Engle's life, Chase launches into a description of Madeleine's belief that the Bible searches "for truth (rather than fact), and search[es] most deeply in story." In this section, Chase depicts L'Engle's approach to the Bible and her concerns about the restrictive nature of strictly "literalist" approaches, and also examines the frequent usage of Scripture in her works. From the "Word," Chase proceeds to discuss its Giver, "the Creator of Galaxies. "In describing L'Engle's theology proper, Chase reiterates L'Engle's challenge to us to reconsider our notions of God and what we know of "el" (the Hebrew name for God often used by L'Engle) from the Scriptures, in light of our scientific knowledge of the natural world.
Chase next moves the focus of discussion from the "Creator" to the (human) creature -- i.e., the "light-bearer." One of the key issues she wrestles with in this section is: what is our nature, as humans, and how then should we relate to the Creator? The themes of the next two chapters focus on human relations, first in the smaller family unit, and then in the larger context of the local community of believers. Chase captures the essence of our need for a community of worship in a quote from L'Engle's The Irrational Season:
Dare we come together, then, vulnerable, open, free?
Yes! Around your table we
knew the Holy Spirit, come to bless
the food, the host, the hour, the willing guest.
Once again, Chase flows onward to discuss an even higher level of human connection -- that of Creation as a whole. This section is named "The Butterfly Effect," a title that stems from L'Engle's fervent interest in contemporary science. The essence of the "butterfly effect" -- a principle of quantum mechanics -- is that all of Creation, as close as our own fingers or as far away as the most distant galaxy, is inter-connected and inter-dependent. Not only is everything inter-related, but Creation is also endowed with mystery, and thus we cannot fully know what the results of any given action will be. Thus, L'Engle advises, we must be extra-ordinarily careful in our actions, lest our seemingly "harmless" evil should propagate an even greater evil elsewhere. The next section of the book discusses one such evil that L'Engle believes has indeed wreaked greater evils, and that is the oppression of women. Here Chase presents L'Engle's feminism -- i.e., feminism in the classic sense of "believ[ing] in and advocat[ing] equal rights for both sexes." Toward this end, L'Engle is neither militant nor vengeful, seeking instead by teaching and example to restore a loving paradigm of gender-equality.
In Suncatcher's final chapter, Chase examines the question, "Is Madeleine L'Engle a mystic?" This passage is superb because it exhibits, though not explicitly, another L'Engle theme. In "A Stone for a Pillow," L'Engle talks of "redeeming the symbols," meaning that we should not necessarily accept the negative connotations that society gives to certain terms and symbols, but instead creatively transform these symbols by imbuing them with new and loving meanings. Carole Chase, indeed, has done precisely this with the term "mystic," developing her own definition, not accepting the typically derogatory connotations used in today's world. L'Engle, she concludes, is indeed a mystic -- one who seeks to know the mysterious yet omnipotent Creator-God through meditation and prayer, and one who is, on occasion, graciously permitted to experience the awesomeness of el.
In as far as Chase's aim is expressed by her choice of the Rilke quote, I believe she has succeeded. She has provided us with a clearly loving and knowledgeable account of L'Engle's works, with the fluidity of a biographical narrative. Suncatcher is definitely a great starting place for those new to L'Engle's writings, and yet has much to offer the seasoned L'Engle fan. Novice and expert alike will appreciate the book's many useful appendices, including places to look for more on L'Engle, lists of characters in L'Engle's works, the text of her Newbery Medal acceptance speech, and much more. The great themes in L'Engle's work shine radiantly through Chase's well-crafted framework. However, these themes are not outstanding in and of themselves, but rather -- as the book's title indicates -- because they catch the beams of universal Truth and vibrantly refract them in a beautiful unified spectrum.
InnisFree Press, 1998. ISBN: 1-880913-31-3.
