The Rock That Is Higher: Story as Truth

by Madeleine L'Engle

Despite our clumsy efforts at inclusive language, Scripture was written in a masculine world, which is a sign of things skewed and out of order. Where were the daughters of God? But we can’t rewrite Scripture, though there have been some forlorn attempts to do so. The God of Scripture is seen through male eyes (Jacob, Moses, David), so what we are given is only a partial vision of God. Jesus gave us the full vision. In his lifetime he astoundingly reconciled male and female, harmonizing all aspects of the human being. This terrified the religious leaders of his day, and still seems to terrify many people.

But where, ultimately, is that home that we long for? It is not the Garden, for we cannot go back to the Garden. When the human beings left the Garden, it was forever. So where is the home for which we are so homesick? It is something that is still to come; it is that towards which all Creation is groaning in travail.

We are homesick not so much for something that was, and was lost, as for something that will be, and is to be found.

Life is full of questions, and we are free to ask them, to understand, occasionally, that we are not going to get an answer, or at least not the answer we expect, and then we are called to move on. But I believe that God encourages us to ask questions.

Certain women made us astonished,

But grateful that I was not taught a God of anger and vengeance, but a God of love. I am grateful that I was not taught that I had to earn lots and lots of merit badges in order to receive God’s love. I was taught that God’s love is so great that it cannot possibly be earned. It is the infinitely wonderful gift of our Maker. We are loved, just as we are, each one of us unique, unlike anybody else, loved by God, because this is how God made us.

We are not meant to be plaster saints who are never frightened or angry. These are human emotions and few people can avoid them. However, we are not meant to be stuck in them, but to turn to God and move on.

When it is time for me to face either anger or forgiveness, then I believe I will be given the courage to do so.

I wish the church would be brave enough to acknowledge that there are questions to which, during our mortal lives, we have no answers.

I do not believe in the medieval versions of heaven and hell. Heaven, for one thing, sounds unutterably dull, and I do not believe that God is ever dull.

No, it was not my mother who made me reluctant to be grown-up, but some of the women around her who had closed in, shut down, lost interest in new ideas, went to church to be safe, not challenged, who had forgotten how to play, forgotten story, forgotten how to laugh.

But there is, alas, no doubt that we are becoming a vocabulary-deprived nation—nay,

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.

Abba/Amma, Maker, Creator.

If I felt I had to deserve God’s Yes answers I’d be miserable indeed. God says Yes whenever possible because it is our Maker’s pleasure to give us pleasure.

What has happened to Christianity that there is so little joy?

If my faith is secure, what am I afraid of? The answer is, of course, that my faith is not as secure as it ought to be.

And it’s okay for me to be angry as long as I move through the anger and let it go.

I must accept the price of fatigue and the pain of a still healing body.

And I am dependent on faith in God, who pushes me in my work, sends me to places I am not at all sure I want to go.

perhaps indifference is nothing more than a buffer against fear.

Dr. Ott points out that “our sense of self-worth has become based on what we possess, and our language has evolved to reflect this. We not only have material possessions, we have children. When we cannot sleep, we have insomnia. We have even replaced ‘my head hurts’ with ‘I have a headache.’ ” We have sex rather than making love. We even “have” the Bible. How do we get rid of this “have, have, have” mentality and return to “I am, I will be, I am hopeful, I love, I am joyful”?

we want our work to be accepted, but if we write or paint or compose only with worldly success in mind, we fail.

In the Book of Wisdom in the Apocrypha, hagia Sophia—the true princess, the wise old woman—is described thus: “For within her is a spirit intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, active, incisive, unsullied, lucid, invulnerable, benevolent, sharp, irresistible, beneficent, loving to humankind, steadfast, dependable, unperturbed….”

We’d like to think of monsters as something outside us, but there are also many monsters within, and we don’t want to recognize them,

I know that when I am being monstrous I am being my least lovable, and yet it is only love that will stop me from being monstrous. And even at times when no human being may be able to see through the monstrousness and give me the love that will heal me, God can. There have been times when I have flung myself at God in rage and anguish and have felt myself loved and protected under the shadow of the almighty wings

And when we meet our Creator, we will be judged for all our turnings away, all our inhumanity to each other, but it will be the judgment of inexorable love, and in the end we will know the mercy of God which is beyond all comprehension.

The seed that goes into the ground and dies does not look like the oak tree or the lilac bush or the snowdrop that comes up in the spring. But we will recognize each other, because our sight will have changed as much as our bodies: we will know each other in a deeper way than was ever possible in life, no matter how close and intimate our human bond has been.

As Bonhoeffer said, Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate….Costly grace is the Gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which [we] must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs [us] our lives, and it is grace because it gives [us] the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it loves the sinner.

In my church, the Episcopal church, less and less is demanded of us. Where no demands are made on us, the human psyche withers, and when a cause for grief comes we aren’t able to cope with it.

we’ve been dreaming wrong, dreaming nightmares.

And again I feel the Holy Spirit cautioning me to be patient.