Religion/Theology Bookshelf:
Next book in my religious books section is Penguins and Golden Calves: Icons and Idols in Antarctica and Other Unexpected Places
Madeleine L’Engle, obviously, is a highly successful novelist – one of the most successful novelists for young adults in the history of the genre. She’s spectacular. But she also has a series of other kinds of books out, and I love those too. She has 4 volumes of her “journals” out – but each one has a different theme: one is about living a creative life, one is about taking care of her mother with Alzheimer’s, one is about incorporating the Bible and its teachings into your life, and the last one (my favorite) is about her marriage. But alongside of these books (called “The Crosswicks Journals Series”), she also has written a ton of religious-themed books (the best known is the Genesis Series). She must be 90 years old now, and she’s still writing – but for the most part, she has only published contemplative religious books in the last ten years. I think her last novel was Troubling a Star, an addition to her Vicky Austin series – but that was quite some time ago.
Anyway, enough background. Penguins and Golden Calves is a book where she ruminates on the difference between idols and icons. The excerpt below is from that book. It’s awesome. When I heard her speak, in 1996, she told this story.
EXCERPT FROM Penguins and Golden Calves: Icons and Idols in Antarctica and Other Unexpected Places
Children are often better believers than we are. A young friend of mine who works in a day-care center one day overheard a little boy say, “I want to die,” and he meant it. She swept him into her lap to try and find out what was wrong that he should feel and say such a thing … Everything was wrong. His parents were drinking, fighting, screaming, throwing furniture. His anguish at the violence at home had focused into a terror that someone was going to come take him away in the night. My young friend said to him, “I’m going to fix that for you. I’m going to send four guardian angels, one to stand at each corner of your bed. They will spread their wings around you, and you will be enclosed in their love, and no one will be able to take you away.”
The next morning when he came to the day-care center she hurried to him, asking, “How did it go last night?”
He responded very seriously, “I think we can cut down on the angel guard. One will be enough. The flapping of their wings kept me awake.”
As you might say, heart crack.
Total heart-crack, right??? It kills me. Precious little child.