Irrational Season, The

Crosswicks Journals #3

by Madeleine L'Engle

This journal follows the church year from Advent to Advent, reflecting on its seasons and spiritual rhythms reflected in the life of the church and the author's own life.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, Religion, Faith, Biography Memoir, Spirituality

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Madeleine L'Engle was an American writer of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young adult fiction, including A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels: A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. Her works reflect both her Christian faith and her strong interest in modern science.

Reviews

[Michele Morin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Battlefields, Slums, and Insane Asylums

I cannot abide bouillon in a mug, but I’m always a little sorry about that when I read the opening pages of Madeleine L’Engle’s The Irrational Season. She sips from her warm cup, gazes out her two a.m. window at the Hudson River, and begins an Advent reflection that meanders through the liturgical year and the seasons of her life, ending up at her country farmhouse just in time for the Michaelmas daisies.

Although she passed away in 2007 and the four volumes of The Crosswicks Journal series (The Irrational Season is number three) were published in the 1970’s, Madeleine’s musings are timeless. I find myself needing to reread them every so often just to be reminded that there are juicy words like anamnesis and eschaton and pusillanimous and that one could refer to a houseful of neighborhood kids as a “charm of children.” I turn and return to Madeleine L’Engle because her thoughts remind me that there is a Truth that can be expressed in poetry as well as in memoir and that manages to be both orthodox and startling.

On the subject of God — the Creator of a world that now includes “battlefields and slums and insane asylums” — Madeleine expresses both puzzlement and awe. “Why does God treat in such a peculiar way the creatures He loves so much that He sent His own Son to them?” Even so, she affirms that a “no” from God is often a prelude to a better “yes,” and that the “only God who seems to be worth believing in is impossible for mortal man to understand.”

Perhaps, as a story teller herself, she realized that her own life was His to plot.

On marriage and parenting, Madeleine was a delightful mixture of progressive and traditional thought: “A marriage is something which has to be created. When we were married, Hugh and I became a new entity, he as much as I.” She was a militant advocate for breastfeeding in an era in which it was considered backward, while at the same time setting boundaries in her home that protected her ability to continue with her writing.

Her faith was subject to “attacks of atheism,” but she also maintained that “anger [at God] is an affirmation of faith. You cannot get angry at someone who is not there.” Her writing informed her theology, and her theology informed her writing to the point where she gave her stories credit for “converting” her “back to Christianity.” Her portrayals of the incarnation are both homely and profound, exulting in the Word made flesh with each of her newborn babies and the touch of her husband’s warm foot under the blankets.

Madeleine L’Engle was at her best when she was describing the writing process and the relationship between a writer and her work. She attributed her success as a writer to her suffering and her unusual childhood, saying that her “best writing has been born of pain.” She saw little difference between praying and writing, and humbly attempted “to listen to the book” as she listened in prayer. Her advice to aspiring writers came from her own standard practice: “I read as much as possible, write every day, keep my vocabulary alive and changing, so that I will have an instrument on which to play the book if it does me the honor of coming to me and asking to be written.”

The Irrational Season is only one of the fifty books that came to Madeleine asking to be served.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This journal is on the heavy side with a lot of pondering on creation, the Christian church, and scripture. There is also a great deal on marriage, "to marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take," and having children, "an extraordinary act of creativity, and men suffer a great deprivation in being barred by their very nature from this most creative of all experiences."

[Cindy Rollins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third Crosswick Journal. It is a walk of thoughts through the church year. It some ways it is a departure from the first two, more abstract, not quite as personal, but in other ways it is very, very personal. The book is scattered with Madeleine's poems. At times reading someone's own poetry seems embarrassing, as if they are probably not very good, but I found these poems to be mostly thoughtful and deep, and with excellent tempo.

I feel a great affinity and kindredness with Madeleine. I don't always agree with her conclusions but I find them well worth reading.

[Wendy Hart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read this author's other work, I thought I would like this. I was disappointed. It didn't do much for me. It is not so much an autobiography but a collection of her personal views about a diverse range of topics including faith. The redeeming feature was the beautiful and highly original prose.

[Kendalyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's amazing to think that I came into 2023 not knowing what a footprint Madeleine L'Engle would leave on it with her Crosswicks journals. I still have yet to read the fourth one but the first three have shaped me and my growth so much this year. I SEE God more because of her and I'd like to think I love Him a little better. I'm also more in love with the mystery of Christianity and it's seeming contradictions. L'Engle has helped me reconcile my "not knowing" and view it instead as a different kind of "knowing." I want to wrap up Crosswicks and put them under everyone's trees.

"I sense a wish in some professional religion-mongers to make God possible, to make him comprehensible to the naked intellect, domesticate him so that he's easy to believe in. Every century the Church makes a fresh attempt to make Christianity acceptable. But an acceptable Christianity is not Christian; a comprehensible God is no more than an idol."

[Apryl Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my least favorite of L'Engle's books. Her faith is so evident in all her writing, but this one gives me twinges of religiosity. Not that she's got all the answers to the great mysteries, she's too wise for that! Instead, she lays out all her questions, and I feel as if I'm reading the spiritual musings from her journal. Rather, that she cut and pasted the church bits, and this is the first draft of another Austin story.

Deja vu, we've seen all of this before, but in the final versions. L'Engle's life and times are interwoven through all her stories, and it's so much better that way. She presents a much more realistic picture of belief through the characters she created than in this irrational account.

[Jaslyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Madeleine's nonfiction is very much full of Madeleine the writer, Madeleine the mother, Madeleine the teacher, Madeleine the dreamer who looks upon a world full of horror and despairs, Madeleine the doubter who looks upon a world full of beauty and wonder and dares to hope. There is so much of her heart and her mind and her love in here. This volume in her Crosswicks Journals in particular is full of musings on the Incarnation, on human brokenness, on the fragmented lowercase-c catholic church, on the community of the Trinity, on learning to love people, on art and writing, on motherhood, on marriage, on the preciousness of being alive.

I particularly loved (after reading Malcolm Guite's "Nathanael" yesterday) reading her thoughts on how "reasonable, chronological time was broken open, and he glimpsed real time, kairos, and was never the same again" (190)!

favourite bits (of many. I can't be bothered to type quotes from every other page, though):
- "The fact that Peter could see God, and thus be pure in heart despite all his faults and flaws, is ia great comfort, because it tells me that this purity, like every single one of the Beatitudes, is available to each of us, as sheer gift of grace, if we are willing to be vulnerable" (81)
- "... the Institution is not the Church; the Church is all of us flawed and fallen people who make up the Body of Christ" (167)
- "What is the Church?" Not the building in which I stand or sit, often uncomfortably, often irritably. Not any denomination of any kind - and the fact that the Body of Christ is broken by denominations is another cause for Satan's pleasure. Why can't we worship in our differing ways and still be One? I doubt if Christian unity will ever come through paperwork and red tape. The time has come for us to leap across boundaries" (141)
- "I know that when I am most monstrous, I am most in need of love. When my temper flares out of bounds it is usually set off by something unimportant which is on top of a series of events over which I have no control, which have made me helpless, and thus caused me anguish and frustration. I am not lovable when I am enraged, although it is when I most need love" (153)
- "...myth is the closest approximation to truth available to the finite human being. And the truth of myth is not limited by time or place. A myth tells of that which was true, is true, and will be true. If we allow it, myth will integrate intellect and intuition, night and day; our warring opposites are reconciled, male and female, spirit and flesh, desire and will, pain and joy, life and death" (114)
- "I am convinced that each work of art, be it a great work of genius or something very small, has its own life, and it will come to the artist, the composer or the writer or the painter, and say, "Here I am: compose me; or write me; or paint me"; and the job of the artist is to serve the work" (122)


// 1
I love this lady so much. She has such a strange and lovely way with words, and these books (while quite different from her Time Quartet in some ways) are so refreshing and thought-provoking. I always end up having to read them slow--this one in particular needed to be taken in in slow sips.

[Leigh Kramer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have adored L’Engle’s writing ever since I stumbled across A Wrinkle In Time as a young girl. I have heard rave reviews about The Crosswicks Journal for several years. I expected to love this one. But a few pages in, I realized the problem. Every friend who raved about The Crosswicks Journal is married and a mother. It is no wonder they viscerally related to L’Engle’s words. It is no wonder I did not.

Now I hasted to add there is much I can learn from someone’s thoughts about being married and a mother. I do not shy away from reading on these topics, but I am also mindful about when I do so. I am keenly aware of my singleness during the holidays and as such, I try to avoid anything that reminds me of it.

But I persevered. I'm glad I did. Even though I muttered to myself in places (she didn’t feel she was an adult until she got married at age 27?!), the rich insights were there. What she wrote about community in chapter 10 resonated deeply. “A family with closed doors is not a family.” YES, Madeleine! Though it will never be a favorite of mine, I could finally see why my friends loved this book.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book very slowly, over a long period of time so I could process and think on all this author was saying. It was rich, full, deep, wise, and at the same time, so relatable, real, and relevant.

[Becca · Rating 4 out of 5]

L'Engle explores the irrationality of God in a journey through events in the Christian Church's year, beginning with Advent then Christmas, and all the way through Holy Innocents, Epiphany, Lent, Good Friday, Easter, Christ's Ascension, Pentecost, then a chapter on the Trinity and one on the Transfiguration, and ending with Advent once again.

Of the first three Crosswicks Journals, this one focuses most directly on spirituality. L'Engle writes: "I understand Christianity as I understand art." She believes intellect and intuition must be united if we are to understand Christianity because God's ways are not our ways -- to us, they seem irrational.

I still don't exactly agree with many of her conclusions (either that or I haven't come to any firm conclusion on the matter myself), but I have experienced many of her struggles and can relate to her thought processes. Besides, if I'd read only books I can accept as 100% truth is have to stick to the Bible, and if I'd completely avoid people I disagree with I'd be a hermit. So I love this book because it puts controversies in a new light, making me everything for myself. This book requires several rereads! (I already read two of the chapters twice.)

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book, perhaps the Madeleine book that I am reading is always my favorite. Although theologically we are not always in sync, her deep spiritual emotion and her great love of people and Christ and writing always calls to me. All of the Crosswicks Journel books have been special but I especially liked the insertion of poetry in this one, as well as her working her way through the church calendar and discussing so many issues of faith and conscience.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tried reading the Crosswick Journals when I was a much younger woman. I did not like them. In retrospect, it's easy to see I didn't know what L'Engle was doing and wasn't ready anyway. I've come to them out of order this time around because of a book club, but that will soon be remedied. Either way, this wound up being a great read for Advent.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

This words of this book need to be chewed slowly, savoring, pondering, looking into oneself. This book was written a few decades ago, but feels like it could have been written in the last year. The truth of her words is heavy and points to birth and life through death

[Marisa Maloney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating 3.75 stars:

A book meant to be read over the course of the liturgical church year. Different essays spanning Easter to advent to many other church holidays I was unsafe of. Read with my sister as we would digest her writings. Lots of conversations about what Madeline believed theologically. Sometimes we agreed with her and sometimes we were left with more questions.

Always she prompted us to talk about what we believe.
Always there was her beautiful poems.
Always there was crazy stories of her family and people they knew.

I like a long slow read by Madeline. Thankful to have read it with my sister.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

My least favorite of The Crosswicks Journal volumes so far (A Circle of Quiet was 5* for me and The Summer of the Great-Grandmother was 4*). The chapters are structured to fit in with the Church year, from one Advent season to the next (which is why I started it in December), and the content is – appropriately, I suppose – densely theological. However, this makes it a lot less readable than the previous two books, which involve more straightforward autobiographical storytelling: memories of childhood and early marriage, anecdotes from small-town living, her mother’s dementia, and the everyday difficulties of balancing creative work with family life.

You get occasional snatches of all those themes here, but more often L’Engle will get lost in musings on scripture, the Trinity and other such Christian mysteries. The text is also punctuated by her very long and not particularly good religious poems. Thus the book languished on my bedside table for months; I was at risk of not finishing it at all until I gave myself permission to start skipping the poems at about halfway through. Once I ignored them, the narrative flowed much better.

I have a copy of the final Crosswicks book on the shelf, so will give it a little while and then try that one, hoping L’Engle will be back on form.

Some favorite lines:

“Art for me is the great integrater, and I understand Christianity as I understand art.”

“If our usual response to an annoying situation is a curse, we’re likely to meet emergencies with a curse. In the little events of daily living we have the opportunity to condition our reflexes, which are built up out of ordinary things. And we learn to bless first of all by being blessed. … Blessing is an attitude toward all of life, transcending and moving beyond words.”

She asks a friend who is a city Chief of Health: “Are we going to be able to save planet earth?” / “She replied calmly, ‘No. Not unless we’re willing to make drastic changes in our standard of living. Not unless we’re willing to go back to being as cold in winter as our grandparents were, and as hot in summer.” THIS WAS PUBLISHED IN 1977, and refers to a conversation from a few years earlier. More than 40 years later, we’re still careening towards destruction. No one is willing to give up a convenience or comfort. Once these habits are adopted they turn into necessities, or even rights, in our minds. Can we ever go back? Only if we’re forced to by the collapse of industrialized society... [sorry, rant over]

“I stumbled back into Church after years away, not out of intellectual conviction, but intuitive need. I had learned through sorry experience that I cannot do it alone. I am often so irritated in church that I can manage to sit through the service with a reasonably good grace only by writing poetry or memorizing my favorite Psalms. If I go to services with reasonable regularity it is largely because I believe that if I am attempting to understand what it means to be Christian, this cannot be done in lofty isolation.”

[Elizabeth Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know the way words come completely alive the first time you read them—the kairos of it? And the immediate shattering of the moment as soon as it’s begun, when life becomes chronos once again? This happened for me throughout the reading of this book. Lots of deep sighs. Lots of scribbling furiously in the margins. Lots of trying to hold onto the magic only to have it inevitably slip away. Madeleine has seen behind the veil, and writes about spirituality and incarnation with curiosity, luminosity, and the loveliness of an ordinary woman caught in the rain.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally! My dad and I just finished this today. It's L'Engle, so we liked it. I don't agree with everything she says, and I don't like all her poems, but this book is easy to read, and the parts that are good are really good! I love that L'Engle isn't afraid to get personal and to share her own experiences with faith and doubt to help her readers. She genuinely cares, which shows in her fiction and in her nonfiction, and this is what makes her so special.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent, pithy, inspirational. I may not agree with all of her theology and conclusions but I appreciate Madeleine's honesty and vulnerability in sharing her struggles with agnosticism and other things throughout, and her heart. Being that she is from a different tradition of faith than the way I was raised as a Protestant, I loved the new-to-me ways of marking seasons throughout the year besides just Advent and Easter, and the deliberate ways of remembrance.

[Laura (Book Scrounger) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this year-long read from Madeleine L'Engle, even when it covered difficult topics (death, loss of faith, hatred). I'd only read her fiction before this, so it was interesting to get a glimpse into the way she balances her many roles in life, her religious views, and other things. While I don't belong to the same type of church as she did, I'm sure we agree on more than not, and it is encouraging to read the different perspectives that still revolve around the same faith.

This book has an essay for many of the main events of the Liturgical calendar (from Advent to Advent), many of which I had to look up because I don't tend to follow it. I didn't always "get" the connection between each chapter and the calendar event, and sometimes the essays rambled a bit, but overall I found enough to glean from here to make it worth the read.

[Anna Wilkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poetry in this book was to die for. I am honestly so sad that Madeline L'Engle has passed from this life. Reading these journals has made her feel like my type of person or maybe what I hope the future version of me is like. I could listen to her musings on God and life and writing continually. I also just can't get over the impeccable timing of these books in my life this year. Though I've had them on my To Read list for years, I just felt like I had to pick the first two up "now" earlier in the year. The topics coincided perfectly with what was going on in my life. And no matter how much I wanted to move on to the next books, I felt like I should wait until this season and I had no way of knowing how that would be perfect timing as well. I also really enjoyed reading about her experiences with intercessory prayer, speaking in tongues, and her thoughts on Pentecost from her much more liturgical faith background. Beautiful, all around.

[Marissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book just wasn't for me at the moment. Too meandering, too much a jumble. Too many sentences starting with 'and' or 'but'. (Normally, I would be the last person in the world to notice something like that, but it was so irritatingly excessive.) I remember really enjoying the first Crosswicks a few years ago, but this one didn't work for me. I felt like Madeline was either railing at God, or stalwartly insisting on the unknowableness of things, or inventing her own theology to suit her feelings.

[MargaretDH]

I'm not going to rate this, because I'm not sure it would be helpful to me or others.

For many years, L'Engle was writer-in-residence in an Episcopalian cathedral. This book is a series of essays on the church calendar, and in them she explores her faith and the rhythms of the year. I'm not a person of faith, so I appreciated this more on the level of gaining a deeper understanding of L'Engle and her own world view. If you are a person of faith, you might really enjoy this. L'Engle is honest and curious, and talks about both her doubts and the joys of her belief.

[Molly Grimmius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read with Marisa… given to me by Marisa as we read all theses cross wick essays. We read this starting last November as the essays follow the church liturgical year. It was reflections sometimes on that specific day and her reflections of that day on her faith, personal stories, struggles with belief, beautiful moments of faith…. Sometimes she was so many places at once with stories and entomology and conversations of deep thinking philosophy. Sometimes I agreed so much with what she said and underlined a lot… others times I didn’t agree with her thoughts. I appreciate her honesty so much especially with the matters of faith and her struggle with it.
The conversations with Marisa were by far the best. I especially enjoyed reading it tied to specific dates in the church calendar.

[Earth&Silver · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not certain I am in consistent agreement with the author, especially on her understanding of particularity vs principle, and her feelings on life-extending medical measures. But I love how she makes me think, and interweaves the spiritual with the commonplace, and snatches of poetry with her prose. And her talk about lightside and nightside of the soul, and needing to understand our shadows, appeals to me deeply.

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the things I love most about Madeleine is that she is not bound by what others consider right and true. She’s willing to ask the questions. She pushes the bounds. And while I don’t agree with all of her conclusions, her musings about God and her poetry make me more awed by God and his creation. Like, for real, who other than Madeleine has ever considered the perspective of Noah’s wife??? Not me!

[Hannah K · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one really did not capture my imagination in the same way that the other Crosswicks Journals have. I don't know why, but I didn't enjoy her free verse poetry interspersed throughout the book. A couple of the poems were good, but for the most part I wished she had stuck with the prose that I was expecting having read the other books in the series.

I did appreciate the tie-ins to the church calendar/seasons.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time was one of my favorite books as a kid.
I haven't picked up much of her work for adults, but I happened to have this one on my Kindle.
It follows the seasons of the church year, and L'Engle adds her thoughts and poems.

Some of her doctrinal statements I do not agree with, but overall her thinking about Christianity and its place in the world bears pondering.
But I'd rather read it in a fictional book than one like this :)

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Similar to the other Crosswicks Journals this book contains her reflections on life. Reading these feels a lot like spending time with a favorite aunt. This book is organized around the liturgical calendar. It's interesting to read so much about her own theology. She's not as conservative as I am. I wish I could ask her some questions.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say? Madeleine L'Engle's thoughtful and honest writing and the liturgical year. A magic recipe for me. I can't count the times I thought "Yes, that's how I feel!" whether she was describing the mystery of the Trinity or her moments of atheism. So often, in Christianity, we are taught to hide our doubts instead of face them and accept them as part of life.

Having read the first two of the Crosswicks journals, I was pleased that this one included a lot of her poetry, with which I was not familiar. The poems often made me think about a Bible narrative or concept in a new way, and almost always made me smile.

[Evangeline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Madeleine's writing is both intelligent and emotional, heady and extremely accessible.
She is honest about her doubt, her anger, her messiness, and everything else, yet it paints a picture of a Christian life that is all the stronger for it.

So comforting and encouraging and convicting. I will be rereading these books until I die.