The First Monday in Advent -- Madeline L'Engle

A Reflection on Madeleine L’Engle’s A Sky Full of Children (pp. 78-81)

One of my favorite things to do this time of year is to take our dog, Rosie, on a walk at night around Smith’s Point in Manchester, where we now live. While there are a few streetlights around the point, there are long stretches with no light whatsoever, other than what the moon and stars cast. As someone who until recently has lived most of his life in cities, with lots of ambient light pollution, I confess that I have not paid nearly enough attention to the beauty of the night sky with its dazzling array of stars. Wow!, what a remarkable sight it is.

Gazing at the night sky invites us into lots of deep questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place in it. One of the biggest questions in astrophysics, I’m told, is just how big the Universe is. In seeking to answer this question, scientists distinguish between the ‘observable universe,’ which is bound by the physical limit of the speed of light and what we can detect on that basis, and the actual ‘Universe,’ which of course may indeed be much larger, perhaps infinitely so, than what we can observe. Suffice it to say that, even limiting ourselves to the observable universe, its size is mind-boggling. Scientists estimate that there are at least 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe, containing more stars than grains of sand on the planet Earth.

In the midst of this vast cosmos, who are we? Madeline L’Engle reminds us in her short reflection that even within this grand “sky full of God’s children” we have the privilege of being created in God’s image, and that as impressive as the physical dimensions of the Universe may be, there is nothing more awesome, beautiful, and breath-taking than the love planted in our hearts that is the surest reflection of God’s grace.

Love is what makes it all meaningful; love is what holds humanity and the cosmos together; and Love is our deepest calling. And, she writes, Jesus Christ, who was present at the creation of this amazing Universe, is the perfect embodiment of the Love that is at the center of it all.

And so, she urges, during Advent, let us contemplate that moment “known only to God, when all the stars held their breath, when the galaxies paused in their dance for a fraction of a second, and the Word, who had called it into being, went with all his love into the womb of a young girl, and the universe started to breathe again, and the ancient harmonies resumed their song, and the angels clapped their hands for joy.” (p. 80).

You may think that you are a tiny speck in the great expanse of Creation -- and in one sense you are -- but you are also deeply important to God, valued, and loved. What small act of love might you do today for someone else that will let them know that they too are holy, beloved, and important to God?

Madeline L’Engle (1918-2007) was an award-winning writer perhaps best known for her book A Wrinkle in Time. What many do not know about her is that Ms. L’Engle was also for more than thirty years the Librarian at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, where she lived most of her life.