Reading with Joy — Chapter Five

“All through the universe it’s being fought, all through the cosmos, and my but it’s a grand and exciting battle.”

— Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

Welcome back to my summer book club! Today we discuss chapter five of A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. This week, the Murry children encounter the Happy Medium and wrestle with how to be stewards of the light in the face of the great darkness which surrounds our world and traps their father. Joining me is my incomparable sister, Sarah Clarkson, who reminds us that God reaches us in even a fallen and broken world by sending us beauty in the things we often dismiss as peripheral to our lives. In nature, literature, and art, we encounter reminders that God can take broken things and make them beautiful—maybe even us. Our conversation traversed dimensions, time, the Trinity, the nature of evil, and the myriad agents of light God has used in the great battle against the darkness. Jump in to this week’s discussion!

It’s not too late to join in!

This is how the book club works: I’ll post an episode per chapter each week on Monday, which you can listen to in preparation for discussion. Then, I’ll post discussion questions on this website, my instagram, my twitter, and my Facebook. (full disclosure: I think discussion tends to go best on Instagram and Facebook). Post your thoughts, comments, questions on these threads as a way to engage the text. I also encourage you to discuss the book in real life (or over Facetime, given our weird times!) with a real friend… it’s so much more fun! In that spirit, each week I’ll have a different guest discussing each chapter with me.

A Wrinkle in Time (Time Quintet)

By Madeleine L'Engle







Today’s Guest: Sarah Clarkson

Sarah Clarkson is a writer, sometimes theologian, wife of a marvelous Dutchman named Thomas, mother of the elfin children Lilian and Samuel, and a newly-arrived resident of West Sussex in England (where her husband is a curate) She graduated from Wycliffe Hall in Oxford with a MSt in theology, where she also spent a proud year as president of the Oxford University C. S. Lewis Society. Through blogs, books, and her current research, she explores the theological significance of story, the intersection of theology and imagination, and the formative power of beauty. She has just begun work on a book called Beauty Never Lies, the story of her own wrestle with mental illness and the beauty that pervaded and transformed her darkness and taught her to hunger after hope.

You can follow Sarah's literary adventures at sarahclarkson.com, follow her on Instagram @sarahwanders, or check out her Twitter @thoroughlyalive

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:Both Meg and Charles Wallace react very emotionally to the Black Thing, but this is seen as appropriate and right. Might emotions, even negative ones, be holy or helpful?What do the historic resisters of the Black Thing have in common? What point do you think L’Engle is trying to make?
















Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

By Clarkson, Sarah
























Girls' Club: Cultivating Lasting Friendship in a Lonely World

By Clarkson, Sally, Clarkson, Joy, Clarkson, Sarah







P.S. Patreon book club…

We’ll be reading and discussion Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love on my Patreon. It is the first book written in english by a woman, and describes her visions of Christ after a near death experience. It is a classic in the Christian mystical tradition, and has encouraged me very much. I'll do the podcast book club for the $10 tier (podcasts belonging in that tier originally). So if you want to join the book club, make sure you're in that tier by June 15th (but wait till after June 1st, if you want to avoid getting charged for May). 

Find out more here.