Dear Madeleine,

It's funny that I've only gained the courage to write to you now, now when you can't read what I've written, won't ever read it. But I've written a letter to you every week of my life for ten years, ever since I pulled A Ring of Endless Light out of the bookshelf, randomly. Only one childish letter did I send to you, and I've regretted every week for ten years the childish thoughts I put into it. I've rewritten that letter a thousand times in my mind, Madeleine, trying on but always discarding the language, because it was never enough.

My gawky teenage self got through high school largely because of you. In your stories, then your poetry, then your prose, I found page after page of pure light; it seemed as if the little, dark world I was living in was pushed back, back by your words. Vicky Austin was lifted up in light and so was I, with her, and simply by reading those--alive!--words it was as though we were all fighting with all our might against everything that was ugly in the world. I could only think in terms of light and dark after I read that first novel. I still can only think in those terms, Madeleine.

Everyone talks about worldviews these days. Everyone has a right to their own, it seems. Well, I suppose I am not creative enough to think up my own, so I've borrowed yours. Oh dear, dear Madeleine, so many times when I've drifted by myself in a wide sea of metaphors, of breaking disasters, of loneliness, I've turned to your words, your bracing, heartening words, and found strength in them. Both as a writer and as a person, I've grown up with your firm hands guiding my steps and my words, helping me, subtly, peripherally.

Madeleine, I read your rather cross-sounding, and slightly maddening, direction to writers the other night when I couldn't sleep, that we should never cry while we are writing. If we cry while we write a moving scene, you wrote, we should invariably trash the pages, brace ourselves, and begin again. Only by writing with dry eyes can we see our characters properly, you wrote. Dear Madeleine, I'm sorry to say that it is impossible for me to write this minute without weeping.

Damn, damn this ugly, brutal, awful, horrible darkness, that lets Death in to claim people like you. You, Madeleine, should never have succumbed to Death, of all things. You know better. How many years have I cherished the fact that my greatest mentor was still here with me, separated by a bit of geography, but always here, somewhere, to keep writing, keep adding to the Canon? But you are not here any longer. You've left me alone, Madeleine. How could you?

I don't mean to rebuke. I did rebuke you when you let Joshua die, I remember. I cried and cried and felt as if everything beautiful had dried up, when he died. But you had no choice about that, I know. And you knew when writing, better than I did while reading, that He makes everything beautiful in time, and that even Joshua's death was part of the pattern...

I've been thinking about the pattern a lot lately, Madeleine. Sometimes it seems as if there are too many pointless things that happen, things that really don't make sense, and I suspect never will. Sometimes I wonder if it can really be true that there is a pattern. When I love too much. When there is more in me that is broken than whole. When I look at the world, really look at it, and see its horrors. Darfur, Madeleine, what about Darfur? And what about Rwanda? Madeleine, I know you've seen your fair share of horrors, both in your personal life and in the world around you. But you always believed, anyway, in Beauty. And in angels.

I read about your death on CNN, just now. I got home from watching a silly movie at the theatre, and then I found that link someone sent to me, and I followed it to find that some reporter dared to write about your death as if you were someone ordinary, as if you were just an old lady who used to be important, and who died. How could you die, Madeleine? How could I read about it on CNN?

I wonder how long it will take before I stop feeling your presence.

I suspect I never will.

There are too many thoughts in me, too much grief in me, and it is too difficult to write what I am trying to say. I suppose what I need to say is thank you, for everything. For being so courageous, for flinging that stone into Goliath's forehead again and again. And for affirming the pattern no matter how many times you, yourself were lost in darkness.

I believe with all my heart that you are being lifted up in light, Madeleine, like Vicky was and is, like I am sometimes. Perhaps you are right now looking at the pattern from a better vantage point, and what looks like a labyrinth of sorrow to us is really a bit of a joke to you. The paradigm has shifted for you. I suppose I've got to stop writing for a moment and figure out how things are going to work now that my paradigm has shifted too--but then again, I don't think you'd advise me to stop writing, even for a moment. By writing we can figure things out. Even death.

Dear Madeleine, I know you'd say your death is also part of the pattern. And if He makes everything beautiful in time, it doesn't take any time at all, or any stretch of the imagination, to see the beauty that filled up the world because you lived. Madeleine, I won't stop. Not ever.

Earth to earth
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust.

The Lord bless her
and keep her,
the Lord make his face to shine upon her
and be gracious unto her,
the Lord lift up his countenance upon her,
and give her peace.

Alleluia and amen.

Love,

Julienne

And summer is over

And summer is over

Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep.

The alarm clock sounds, aggressively, and ends with one fell swoop the dream of summer. Awake, arise, get out of bed, because the coffee and the car are waiting, and a few miles away a set of yellowed classrooms wait too, for the stomp and clatter of a thousand students.

It is morning, and summer is over, and school has begun again, and summer is over, and summer is over. Groan.

Up off the side of the bed and vertical, sort of. Stomp down the stairs. Eyes pinched shut need the pungent wedge of that blessed aroma. Toast? Who could eat toast at a time like this? Glare at the table-top, glare at the plate, glare at the world until the idea of being awake becomes less painful. Stomp back up the stairs.

Shower. Bag. Money. Phone. Books. Forgetting things. Agenda? Timetable? Summer is over. Summer is over. Out the door and into the car and we're off, finding our way through rush hour, through the noisy chaos of traffic which flattens itself against the car windows as we drive.

We walk past the beer tent and the pancake tent and the loud music in the quad, to the doors, and then inside... and the schedule is a living thing now, and our feet move to its rythym... up and down escalators, through, past doors, back and forth, through the clamour of a thousand like-moving feet. On the first day everyone is here. There is a shimmering thread of excitement that thrums through the air above our heads.

And there is a low-lying thread of dread, regret that clings to our flipflopped-feet, trying to pull us back out the door. It can't be autumn yet... summer can't be over yet. But it is. The year, the real year, has begun. After months and months I've finally learned, only just learned, what summer is all about, and how to unwind, how to let the tension in my shoulders slip away under that blissful sunshine, or under the smooth, cool surface of a lake.

But summer is over, and now I'll have to re-learn, we'll all have to learn, how to pull our minds out of the heat and heartbeat of summer, and find ourselves again in the swirl of autumn, the rushing, eclectic momentum of deadlines and discovery.