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Genesis #2
A Stone for a Pillow: Journeys with Jacob
Book #2 of The Genesis Trilogy. This special reissue of a classic work of spirituality from the author of A Wrinkle in Time offers life-transforming insights on the rich heritage of the Bible and shows how the characters of this ancient text are relevant for living the good life now. Includes a new reader's guide.
In this book for the curious, spiritual seeker, Madeleine L'Engle offers relevant lessons drawn from the life of Jacob from the Old Testament. Here, the son of Isaac becomes a spiritual companion to L'Engle, equipping her to deal with earthly and psychological struggles. Throughout her journey, L'Engle offers contemporary answers to questions that burden modern day readers and believers.
With her customary fearlessness and candor, she broaches such topics as the significance of angels, redemption, sexual identity, forgiveness, and the seemingly constant conflict between good and evil.
Madeleine L'Engle possesses the same ambidextrous skill of storytelling as other literary giants, including C. S. Lewis and George MacDonald. Her fictional stories appeal to generations of readers, and are equally embraced in both the secular and religious markets. But, it is her ability in her nonfiction to engage with the historical text of the Bible through a dynamic unpacking of protagonists, antagonists, and matters of faith that establishes the Genesis Trilogy as a highly treasured collection of spiritual writings. A Stone for a Pillow acts as a compass for those traveling through the tumultuous landscape of faith in our cynical and divisive modern culture.
In this book for the curious, spiritual seeker, Madeleine L'Engle offers relevant lessons drawn from the life of Jacob from the Old Testament. Here, the son of Isaac becomes a spiritual companion to L'Engle, equipping her to deal with earthly and psychological struggles. Throughout her journey, L'Engle offers contemporary answers to questions that burden modern day readers and believers.
With her customary fearlessness and candor, she broaches such topics as the significance of angels, redemption, sexual identity, forgiveness, and the seemingly constant conflict between good and evil.
Madeleine L'Engle possesses the same ambidextrous skill of storytelling as other literary giants, including C. S. Lewis and George MacDonald. Her fictional stories appeal to generations of readers, and are equally embraced in both the secular and religious markets. But, it is her ability in her nonfiction to engage with the historical text of the Bible through a dynamic unpacking of protagonists, antagonists, and matters of faith that establishes the Genesis Trilogy as a highly treasured collection of spiritual writings. A Stone for a Pillow acts as a compass for those traveling through the tumultuous landscape of faith in our cynical and divisive modern culture.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
About the author
Madeleine L'Engle
189 books9,485 followersMadeleine 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
July 30, 2020
Slightly odd to begin the trology with the second book but I thoroughly enjoyed it, and apparently with each reading of her books I love Madeleine L'Engle more and more. She is precious and praise God for her.
February 8, 2021
I struggle to find more to say about the second book in this trilogy other than my 5* rating. I read a lot and am not always aware how I find the books that end up on my TBR or that I read. This trilogy though I know the path. A good friend and so far 100% spot on book suggester recommended Rachel Held Evan’s Inspired. When browsing for more by her these came up because she wrote the introduction. Fortunately, I’m the kind of reader that is easily distracted from what I think is next in line by an appealing available book and started the first one immediately. I’m grateful. Having only read Wrinkle in Time (which I might have to reread as I read outloud with kids and didn’t love) I didn’t know what to expect. But in reading I got exactly what I needed.
January 31, 2017
The rating is easy; the review is more difficult. I love Madeleine L'Engle and her writing, but this book doesn't feel "right" to me. I guess it would be easier to list what I like and don't like about it.
What I like:
L'Engle's writing style
The passages about Jacob--the subtitle of the book is "Journeys with Jacob." L'Engle spends a fair amount of time tracing Jacob's story from his tussles in-utero with his twin brother to his reconciliation with his brother at the end of their father's life. She connects Jacob's story to our own stories in deep and moving ways.
L'Engle's unavoidance of her own flaws and shortcomings
Her embracing of God's love and Jesus's sacrifice
Her astounding knowledge of Scripture, theology, astrophysics, poetry...the woman was a genius
The time spent reading with my dad, which doesn't seem like it has anything to do with Madeleine, but it does. My dad really likes her writing, and when we're not reading one of her books, he says, "I miss Madeleine." We get into good conversations that are inspired by her writing.
What I don't like:
I just realized that the listing doesn't help because I still can't put into words why this book is three stars and not the typical L'Engle four. Part of it is, I think, a lack of depth, which seems weird to write because there's always a depth to L'Engle's writing...
I need to just write then possibly edit but begin by getting the odd thoughts out and see what I can keep and what I can scale back. L'Engle's husband died in the late eighties. When she wrote this book, he wasn't even sick yet. Still, there's a weird sort of undercurrent in the book of impending doom. I know that sounds silly, but I feel it. It's as if L'Engle is trying to make peace with a world in which bad things happen. You know, she's lived through World War II, the Cold War, the Soviet Union still exists, computers haven't taken over the world yet but are about to, terrorists strike all over the world, her beloved Manhattan has become a hotbed for crime (even her church is robbed by a seemingly respectable new employee). She does claim that there are evil forces in the world and that the reason we have sin and suffering is that creation hasn't been redeemed, yet there seems to be a part of her that's only exposing it, so she can hide from it. It's uncomfortable to read in a way that her book about her husband's illness and death (Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage) isn't. Maybe it's the fact that so many of the ills destroying L'Engle's world are still destroying ours. There are devastation and destruction at every point in history since history began, but there's an otherworldy quality to the ones impacting ours. There's hope of redemption ultimately, but...I guess this is the plainest way to say it: if God gives us free will, that freedom extends even to the decision to be saved or not to be saved, to be redeemed in the end or not, and L'Engle hopes that even the devil will be redeemed, but then, has he not been denied his choice to "reign in hell rather than to serve in heaven"? Yes, God promises redemption, but He won't force even that on any of us, humans or angels. There's nothing wrong with hope, but the refusal to see the truth that not everyone wants to be saved is difficult to get past. Again, it's a sort of willful closing of the eyes, one that acknowledges the devastation to turn away from it.
I don't know what else to say about this book. I do like it as a continuation of L'Engle's analysis of and association with the major stories in Genesis, and I would recommend it as a linking book, but it didn't add much to the depth of insight I've gotten from most of her other books, including And It Was Good: Reflections on Beginnings, the first book in the Genesis Trilogy.
What I like:
L'Engle's writing style
The passages about Jacob--the subtitle of the book is "Journeys with Jacob." L'Engle spends a fair amount of time tracing Jacob's story from his tussles in-utero with his twin brother to his reconciliation with his brother at the end of their father's life. She connects Jacob's story to our own stories in deep and moving ways.
L'Engle's unavoidance of her own flaws and shortcomings
Her embracing of God's love and Jesus's sacrifice
Her astounding knowledge of Scripture, theology, astrophysics, poetry...the woman was a genius
The time spent reading with my dad, which doesn't seem like it has anything to do with Madeleine, but it does. My dad really likes her writing, and when we're not reading one of her books, he says, "I miss Madeleine." We get into good conversations that are inspired by her writing.
What I don't like:
I just realized that the listing doesn't help because I still can't put into words why this book is three stars and not the typical L'Engle four. Part of it is, I think, a lack of depth, which seems weird to write because there's always a depth to L'Engle's writing...
I need to just write then possibly edit but begin by getting the odd thoughts out and see what I can keep and what I can scale back. L'Engle's husband died in the late eighties. When she wrote this book, he wasn't even sick yet. Still, there's a weird sort of undercurrent in the book of impending doom. I know that sounds silly, but I feel it. It's as if L'Engle is trying to make peace with a world in which bad things happen. You know, she's lived through World War II, the Cold War, the Soviet Union still exists, computers haven't taken over the world yet but are about to, terrorists strike all over the world, her beloved Manhattan has become a hotbed for crime (even her church is robbed by a seemingly respectable new employee). She does claim that there are evil forces in the world and that the reason we have sin and suffering is that creation hasn't been redeemed, yet there seems to be a part of her that's only exposing it, so she can hide from it. It's uncomfortable to read in a way that her book about her husband's illness and death (Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage) isn't. Maybe it's the fact that so many of the ills destroying L'Engle's world are still destroying ours. There are devastation and destruction at every point in history since history began, but there's an otherworldy quality to the ones impacting ours. There's hope of redemption ultimately, but...I guess this is the plainest way to say it: if God gives us free will, that freedom extends even to the decision to be saved or not to be saved, to be redeemed in the end or not, and L'Engle hopes that even the devil will be redeemed, but then, has he not been denied his choice to "reign in hell rather than to serve in heaven"? Yes, God promises redemption, but He won't force even that on any of us, humans or angels. There's nothing wrong with hope, but the refusal to see the truth that not everyone wants to be saved is difficult to get past. Again, it's a sort of willful closing of the eyes, one that acknowledges the devastation to turn away from it.
I don't know what else to say about this book. I do like it as a continuation of L'Engle's analysis of and association with the major stories in Genesis, and I would recommend it as a linking book, but it didn't add much to the depth of insight I've gotten from most of her other books, including And It Was Good: Reflections on Beginnings, the first book in the Genesis Trilogy.
March 21, 2026
The best two words to describe this superb book by Madeleine L'Engle are: wise and inspirational.
In the Old Testament book of Genesis, Jacob is quickly sent away to his uncle's home hundreds of miles away to get him away from the murderous wrath of his twin brother Esau, and along the way, he sleeps one night using a stone for a pillow. He dreamed there was a ladder extending to heaven with angels ascending and descending. God appeared to Jacob, promising not only protection but also affirming the covenant God made with Jacob's grandfather, Abraham.
L'Engle uses this story and all the others about Jacob in Genesis, to show how these ancient stories are still relevant and important for us today as we wrestle with our faith and religious beliefs in an evermore secular society.
Some of the issues about which she so brilliantly writes include:
• Separating ourselves as individuals and as churches from the rest of the world is fraught with peril. Always remember that we are all interconnected.
• We cannot hear God unless we listen. We will not notice the angels in our lives unless we open our eyes and pay attention.
• We need to rediscover the sacred in our lives, and one simple and powerful way to begin this is with a family meal—all seated together.
• We are called to pray for those who are different from us, including those we revile as enemies. How do we do this?
• God doesn't cause accidents, injuries, illnesses, and death, but God may use these discomforts and tragedies in our lives to help us and expand our way of thinking and being. In other words, God gives us blessings in our anguish. We just have to look for them.
• Physics. Yes, Madeleine L'Engle is fascinated with what she calls the extraordinary world of particle physics. "My response to my discovery of Einstein's theories of relativity and Planck's quantum theory was to write 'A Wrinkle in Time,' as I struggled to understand the wonders of the Creator and creation." Who would have thought that?
Filled with wisdom and inspiration, this is a book to treasure especially if you need a "faith booster."
Bonus: The foreword is by Rachel Held Evans. IYKYK
In the Old Testament book of Genesis, Jacob is quickly sent away to his uncle's home hundreds of miles away to get him away from the murderous wrath of his twin brother Esau, and along the way, he sleeps one night using a stone for a pillow. He dreamed there was a ladder extending to heaven with angels ascending and descending. God appeared to Jacob, promising not only protection but also affirming the covenant God made with Jacob's grandfather, Abraham.
L'Engle uses this story and all the others about Jacob in Genesis, to show how these ancient stories are still relevant and important for us today as we wrestle with our faith and religious beliefs in an evermore secular society.
Some of the issues about which she so brilliantly writes include:
• Separating ourselves as individuals and as churches from the rest of the world is fraught with peril. Always remember that we are all interconnected.
• We cannot hear God unless we listen. We will not notice the angels in our lives unless we open our eyes and pay attention.
• We need to rediscover the sacred in our lives, and one simple and powerful way to begin this is with a family meal—all seated together.
• We are called to pray for those who are different from us, including those we revile as enemies. How do we do this?
• God doesn't cause accidents, injuries, illnesses, and death, but God may use these discomforts and tragedies in our lives to help us and expand our way of thinking and being. In other words, God gives us blessings in our anguish. We just have to look for them.
• Physics. Yes, Madeleine L'Engle is fascinated with what she calls the extraordinary world of particle physics. "My response to my discovery of Einstein's theories of relativity and Planck's quantum theory was to write 'A Wrinkle in Time,' as I struggled to understand the wonders of the Creator and creation." Who would have thought that?
Filled with wisdom and inspiration, this is a book to treasure especially if you need a "faith booster."
Bonus: The foreword is by Rachel Held Evans. IYKYK
November 22, 2020
This author always astounds me with her brilliance-from physics to scripture to world religions. She was so ahead of her time with this book that covered some very relevant topics for today. I also appreciate her openness yet no nonsense approach.
December 4, 2024
love u maddi but what tf was this
September 20, 2026
“the trinary computer will have positive polarity, negative polarity, and neutral polarity. Or: yes/no/mu. Mu means that neither yes nor no is a workable answer.”
“Thomas Traherne wrote: Should God give Himself and all worlds to you, and you refuse them, it would be to no purpose. Should He love you and magnify you, should He give His son to die for you, and command all angels and men to love you, should He exalt you in His throne and give you dominion over all His works and you neglect them, it would be to no purpose. Should He make you in His image, and employ all His Wisdom and power to fill eternity with treasures, and you despise them, it would be in vain. In all these things you have to do; and therefore all your actions are great and magnificent, being of infinite importance in all eyes; while all creatures stand in expectation of what will be the result of your liberty….It is by your love that you enjoy all His delights, and are delightful to Him.”
“For Jacob the house of God was not a building, not an enclosure, but an open place with earth for the floor, heaven for the roof”
“If we look at the makeup of the word disaster, dis-aster, we see dis, which means separation, and aster, which means star. So dis-aster is separation from the stars. Such separation is disaster indeed. When we are separated from the stars, the sea, each other, we are in danger of being separated from God.”
“Jacob was a more complicated character than his father. It took him considerable time and several incredible encounters with the divine Presence before he decided to accept as his own God the God of his father”
“He tried to bargain with God, but he found that his bargaining did not work. Ultimately he dropped all his deviousness and cheating and, naked before God, accepted El Shaddai.”
“Jacob’s God was the God who was in the story.”
“we let our concept of God become static”
“There is nothing about crime and punishment in the makeup of that word. It simply means to be at one with God. Jesus on the cross was so at-one with God that death died there on Golgotha”
“Jacob, too, learned to weep bitterly, but he was an old man before he came to an understanding of himself which included acceptance of repentance without fear.”
“He cheats, but he knows that he cheats; he never tries to fool himself into thinking that he is more honest than he is”
“he entreated God, as the Hebrew patriarchs never hesitated to do”
“Scripture makes it clear that we are never to stay in one place, one way of thinking, but to move on, out into the wilderness”
“How did we get hung up on “goodness” as a criterion? If that were so, God would not have called Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob. Especially not Jacob. It is quite clear that Jacob was not “good.” Nor was he particularly religious; he was slow to accept the God of his fathers. But even before he had decided to call their God his God, too, he made altars, upon which he poured sacred oil. How many altars Jacob made!”
““Master, in the old days there were people who could see God. Why is it that nobody sees God nowadays?” The old man answered, “My child, nowadays nobody can stoop so low.””
“Ernest L. Boyer, Jr., in A Way in the World, writes, “Forgiveness is, then, a renewal, and for love to grow it must be renewed every day. This renewal is not one that seeks somehow to return to the past, however; rather, it seeks to revitalize the present. To carry a grudge is to live in the past, to live with the bitterness of disappointment of the expectation of a future that never was.””
“the past that is now gone and the future that never was—are illusionary worlds. Forgiveness frees a person to live in the reality of the relationship’s present”
“what matters is not moralism, but understanding that God with infinite grace can work goodness through us. Goodness is of God; we cannot make ourselves good through an act of will.”
“Perhaps we have been giving too many answers instead of asking questions, of ourselves, of each other, of God.”
“Where shall I set my stone pillow to make an altar?”
“I don’t turn for strength and help to someone who has never been hurt, but to someone who has, and who can therefore understand a little of what I am going through. The people I know who are the most invulnerable also tend to show the least compassion.”
“What are we looking for? Are we looking for things we can criticize, or are we looking for Christ, for love and compassion? Are we looking for evidence that our Christian group is the group, with the truth, or are we looking for at-one-ment?”
“When I was a child nobody told me that I should read the Bible piously, so I read it just as I read Hans Christian Andersen and George Macdonald and books of fairy tales. I read it as story, great story, about fascinating and complex people called by God to do amazing things.”
“Karl Barth said, “I take the Bible far too seriously to take it literally.””
“The Bible is a book which urges us to keep our concept of God open, to let our understanding grow and develop as we are illumined by new discoveries.”
“Who are the pagans? A child, asked this question in Sunday school, replied, “The pagans are the people that don’t quarrel about God.””
“Was it because Jacob knew himself to be a cheat and a fraud that he was able to receive the vision of God without being tempted to arrogance by it? He felt holy terror, not smugness.”
“Teilhard de Chardin says that “for a soul to have a body is enkosmismene.” Enkosmismene. To have our roots in the cosmos. We are like trees, drawing spiritual water through our rootedness in Creation. This is the affirmation of incarnation.”
“fantasy is an essential part of our understanding of the universe and our place in it”
“The mythic world makes enormous demands of us”
“The greater the good we are seeking, the greater the possibilities for perversion”
“Because Jacob, later in the story, had the courage to ask for God’s blessing, we may, too.”
“Dear God. What am I looking for? Help me to look for Christ.”
“If we shed our idea of God as being someone Out There, separate from all that has been made, and begin instead to think of God as within all Creation, every galaxy, every quantum, every human being, then we cannot hold ourselves “out there” either. We cannot set ourselves apart from anything that happens. Anywhere.”
“We must not be afraid of becoming once again in tune with our whole selves, even when becoming whole disturbs the universe. We become whole never by being rigid or unloving or isolating ourselves”
“We live in an open, interacting, creative universe, and to try to close it into a safe little system is a danger to ourselves”
“Parker Palmer says, Most of us fear community because we think it will call us away from ourselves. We are afraid that in community our sense of self will be overpowered by the identity of the group. We pit individuality and community against one another, as if a choice had to be made, and increasingly we choose the former. But what a curious conception of self we have! We have forgotten that the self is a moving intersection of many other selves. We are formed by the lives which intersect with ours. The larger and richer our community, the larger and richer is the content of self. There is no individuality without community.”
“If God is in and part of all creation, then any part can be a messenger, an angel”
“We have discovered the world of subatomic physics because we have split the atom.”
“Eliot (in Selected Prose) says that it is not “preposterous that the past should be altered by the present, as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities.””
“Oh, God, bless the bastard.”
“Cursing is a boomerang. If I will evil toward someone else, that evil becomes visible in me. It is an extreme way of being forensic, toward myself, as well as toward whatever outrages me.”
“Perhaps most difficult of all is learning to bless ourselves, just as we are. Before we can ask God to bless us, we must be able to accept ourselves as blessed”
“Lancelot Andrewes wrote: Be, O Lord, within me to strengthen me Without me to guard me Over me to shelter me, Beneath me to stablish me Before me to guide me After me to forward me Round about me to secure me.”
“Religion is divisive when it becomes fanaticism—an insistence that we know all the answers, and that anybody whose answers differ from ours is damned.”
“Our God becomes too small when we make God in our own image”
“Whenever we make a choice of action, the first thing to ask ourselves is whether it is creative or destructive. Will it heal, or will it wound?”
“Blood stands for life; that is why an animal must be completely drained of blood before it can be eaten.”
“Drink my blood? Break the great taboo? What a shocker that is!”
“when we receive Communion, we are transfused.”
“It is only when we know ourselves wounded, know that we have lost blood, that we are aware that we need a transfusion”
“We are blessed indeed to be able to feel pain, our body’s warning system that something is wrong, and that we need help”
“With Jacob inexorably I cry as I wrestle for the blessing, thirsty, straining for the joining till my desert throat runs dry. I must risk the shrunken sinew and the laming of his naming till I find my final quenching in the hollow of the thigh.”
“We live most comfortably and lovingly with ourselves when we can look at our brokenness, physical or spiritual, know that God will help us, and that we are loved just as we are. God loves me with all my volatility, stubbornness, flaring temper, clumsiness, and that makes it possible for me to accept myself, loving myself in God’s love of me.”
“A teacher of small children told us of a child who said to her, “Jesus is God’s show and tell.””
“Hildegarde’s love of the Creator and of creation reminded me of Ikhnaton, the only pharaoh we know about who worshipped one God with adoring love, Aton, the sun, the giver of life. Ikhnaton’s hymns to Aton would have been understood by Hildegarde. Perhaps they sometimes sing together now.”
“When Moses asked God, “What is your name?” God replied, “I will be what I will be.””
“The extraordinary world of particle physics is providing new symbols for me, and new understanding of old symbols”
“properties usually attributed to matter have no real existence until measured”
“Destructive criticism is devastating because it does not make real; instead, it negates and destroys. Constructive criticism builds, bringing out the hidden reality.”
“Alter, in The Art of Biblical Narrative, refers to the “double dialectic between design and disorder, providence and freedom. The various biblical narratives…[form] a spectrum between the opposing extremes of disorder and design.””
“It is by accepting all the “contra-dictions,” these indeterminate non-answers, that we are given an intuition of heaven”
“Saint Bonaventura: “God is a circle whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference nowhere.””
“the postulation of the neutrino is as wildly imaginative as those angels ascending and descending the ladder joining heaven and earth”
“We need ordinary, chronological time so that we can, for instance, get to the airport or to the office on time, but here time is only an agreed upon fiction so that we will be enabled to get through the day’s work with as little confusion as possible.”
“when I think of the pion and the muon, of the great spiral galaxies, and of our own little lives in terms of kairos—of rootedness in cosmos, in God’s time itself—it opens vast vistas which can be awesome, even terrifying (“What a dreadful place is this!” Jacob cries), but less terrifying than it is wondrous, because God’s time is far more real than ordinary chronos, and we are part of both.”
“But these are the outward signs of chronology, and there is another Madeleine who is untouched by them, the part of me that lives forever in kairos and bears God’s image.”
“I may be an old woman in my eighties, but inside me I am still a dancing girl”
“A true symbol is an open window, never leading to a closed, deterministic world, but to an open, indeterministic one. Symbols are mind, heart, and soul stretchers.”
“Jacob and Esau were not either/or people. They had the full complexity of the both/and human being. Open at one moment, closed at another. Brave, cowardly. Loving, lying. Jacob never hesitated to cheat, and yet God called him Israel.”
“Often he replied with a story, and a story is usually mu. This is not an either/or, a yes/no. It is both/and/maybe.”
“He was also at-one with all the pain and suffering that ever was, is, or will be.”
“We are not given protection. We are given vulnerability. We are promised not the absence of pain, but the blessed warning of pain. We are promised not that we won’t be wounded, that we won’t bleed, but that we will be transfused. We are promised not that we won’t die, but that we shall live.”
“God is still the author of the story, and even if the echthroi tear and crumple the pages, or smudge the ink, it is still God’s story, and the Author will correct, revise, retype, redeem, as necessary. Meanwhile, we are part of the story, and we may not know what the lines we are given mean, why we suffer, bleed, die. Perhaps what we see as death is really necessary for rebirth.”
“we will be given our own parts to play in healing the fragments which separate us dis-astrously”
“people who have been so damaged by lack of having been given love, or having been so manipulated or corrupted by the self-serving sham that masquerades as love, that they are beyond the possibility of blessing, or knowing themselves blessed”
“Those echthroi within us: Can I always tell what they are? Sometimes it’s easy. Self-pity, jealousy, resentment”
“There is an enormous difference between wallowing in our own brokenness and sense of sin, and in accepting it, and then turning to the Lamb for a transfusion.”
“God didn’t break your shoulder. He’s just using it”
“God did not stop the disciples from betraying him, or the Romans from crucifying him. But God offered Jesus, and offers us, the one protection that Satan does not give: God is in it with us”
“The only cells [in the human body] which insist on being independent and autonomous are cancer cells”
“Thomas Traherne wrote: Should God give Himself and all worlds to you, and you refuse them, it would be to no purpose. Should He love you and magnify you, should He give His son to die for you, and command all angels and men to love you, should He exalt you in His throne and give you dominion over all His works and you neglect them, it would be to no purpose. Should He make you in His image, and employ all His Wisdom and power to fill eternity with treasures, and you despise them, it would be in vain. In all these things you have to do; and therefore all your actions are great and magnificent, being of infinite importance in all eyes; while all creatures stand in expectation of what will be the result of your liberty….It is by your love that you enjoy all His delights, and are delightful to Him.”
“For Jacob the house of God was not a building, not an enclosure, but an open place with earth for the floor, heaven for the roof”
“If we look at the makeup of the word disaster, dis-aster, we see dis, which means separation, and aster, which means star. So dis-aster is separation from the stars. Such separation is disaster indeed. When we are separated from the stars, the sea, each other, we are in danger of being separated from God.”
“Jacob was a more complicated character than his father. It took him considerable time and several incredible encounters with the divine Presence before he decided to accept as his own God the God of his father”
“He tried to bargain with God, but he found that his bargaining did not work. Ultimately he dropped all his deviousness and cheating and, naked before God, accepted El Shaddai.”
“Jacob’s God was the God who was in the story.”
“we let our concept of God become static”
“There is nothing about crime and punishment in the makeup of that word. It simply means to be at one with God. Jesus on the cross was so at-one with God that death died there on Golgotha”
“Jacob, too, learned to weep bitterly, but he was an old man before he came to an understanding of himself which included acceptance of repentance without fear.”
“He cheats, but he knows that he cheats; he never tries to fool himself into thinking that he is more honest than he is”
“he entreated God, as the Hebrew patriarchs never hesitated to do”
“Scripture makes it clear that we are never to stay in one place, one way of thinking, but to move on, out into the wilderness”
“How did we get hung up on “goodness” as a criterion? If that were so, God would not have called Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob. Especially not Jacob. It is quite clear that Jacob was not “good.” Nor was he particularly religious; he was slow to accept the God of his fathers. But even before he had decided to call their God his God, too, he made altars, upon which he poured sacred oil. How many altars Jacob made!”
““Master, in the old days there were people who could see God. Why is it that nobody sees God nowadays?” The old man answered, “My child, nowadays nobody can stoop so low.””
“Ernest L. Boyer, Jr., in A Way in the World, writes, “Forgiveness is, then, a renewal, and for love to grow it must be renewed every day. This renewal is not one that seeks somehow to return to the past, however; rather, it seeks to revitalize the present. To carry a grudge is to live in the past, to live with the bitterness of disappointment of the expectation of a future that never was.””
“the past that is now gone and the future that never was—are illusionary worlds. Forgiveness frees a person to live in the reality of the relationship’s present”
“what matters is not moralism, but understanding that God with infinite grace can work goodness through us. Goodness is of God; we cannot make ourselves good through an act of will.”
“Perhaps we have been giving too many answers instead of asking questions, of ourselves, of each other, of God.”
“Where shall I set my stone pillow to make an altar?”
“I don’t turn for strength and help to someone who has never been hurt, but to someone who has, and who can therefore understand a little of what I am going through. The people I know who are the most invulnerable also tend to show the least compassion.”
“What are we looking for? Are we looking for things we can criticize, or are we looking for Christ, for love and compassion? Are we looking for evidence that our Christian group is the group, with the truth, or are we looking for at-one-ment?”
“When I was a child nobody told me that I should read the Bible piously, so I read it just as I read Hans Christian Andersen and George Macdonald and books of fairy tales. I read it as story, great story, about fascinating and complex people called by God to do amazing things.”
“Karl Barth said, “I take the Bible far too seriously to take it literally.””
“The Bible is a book which urges us to keep our concept of God open, to let our understanding grow and develop as we are illumined by new discoveries.”
“Who are the pagans? A child, asked this question in Sunday school, replied, “The pagans are the people that don’t quarrel about God.””
“Was it because Jacob knew himself to be a cheat and a fraud that he was able to receive the vision of God without being tempted to arrogance by it? He felt holy terror, not smugness.”
“Teilhard de Chardin says that “for a soul to have a body is enkosmismene.” Enkosmismene. To have our roots in the cosmos. We are like trees, drawing spiritual water through our rootedness in Creation. This is the affirmation of incarnation.”
“fantasy is an essential part of our understanding of the universe and our place in it”
“The mythic world makes enormous demands of us”
“The greater the good we are seeking, the greater the possibilities for perversion”
“Because Jacob, later in the story, had the courage to ask for God’s blessing, we may, too.”
“Dear God. What am I looking for? Help me to look for Christ.”
“If we shed our idea of God as being someone Out There, separate from all that has been made, and begin instead to think of God as within all Creation, every galaxy, every quantum, every human being, then we cannot hold ourselves “out there” either. We cannot set ourselves apart from anything that happens. Anywhere.”
“We must not be afraid of becoming once again in tune with our whole selves, even when becoming whole disturbs the universe. We become whole never by being rigid or unloving or isolating ourselves”
“We live in an open, interacting, creative universe, and to try to close it into a safe little system is a danger to ourselves”
“Parker Palmer says, Most of us fear community because we think it will call us away from ourselves. We are afraid that in community our sense of self will be overpowered by the identity of the group. We pit individuality and community against one another, as if a choice had to be made, and increasingly we choose the former. But what a curious conception of self we have! We have forgotten that the self is a moving intersection of many other selves. We are formed by the lives which intersect with ours. The larger and richer our community, the larger and richer is the content of self. There is no individuality without community.”
“If God is in and part of all creation, then any part can be a messenger, an angel”
“We have discovered the world of subatomic physics because we have split the atom.”
“Eliot (in Selected Prose) says that it is not “preposterous that the past should be altered by the present, as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities.””
“Oh, God, bless the bastard.”
“Cursing is a boomerang. If I will evil toward someone else, that evil becomes visible in me. It is an extreme way of being forensic, toward myself, as well as toward whatever outrages me.”
“Perhaps most difficult of all is learning to bless ourselves, just as we are. Before we can ask God to bless us, we must be able to accept ourselves as blessed”
“Lancelot Andrewes wrote: Be, O Lord, within me to strengthen me Without me to guard me Over me to shelter me, Beneath me to stablish me Before me to guide me After me to forward me Round about me to secure me.”
“Religion is divisive when it becomes fanaticism—an insistence that we know all the answers, and that anybody whose answers differ from ours is damned.”
“Our God becomes too small when we make God in our own image”
“Whenever we make a choice of action, the first thing to ask ourselves is whether it is creative or destructive. Will it heal, or will it wound?”
“Blood stands for life; that is why an animal must be completely drained of blood before it can be eaten.”
“Drink my blood? Break the great taboo? What a shocker that is!”
“when we receive Communion, we are transfused.”
“It is only when we know ourselves wounded, know that we have lost blood, that we are aware that we need a transfusion”
“We are blessed indeed to be able to feel pain, our body’s warning system that something is wrong, and that we need help”
“With Jacob inexorably I cry as I wrestle for the blessing, thirsty, straining for the joining till my desert throat runs dry. I must risk the shrunken sinew and the laming of his naming till I find my final quenching in the hollow of the thigh.”
“We live most comfortably and lovingly with ourselves when we can look at our brokenness, physical or spiritual, know that God will help us, and that we are loved just as we are. God loves me with all my volatility, stubbornness, flaring temper, clumsiness, and that makes it possible for me to accept myself, loving myself in God’s love of me.”
“A teacher of small children told us of a child who said to her, “Jesus is God’s show and tell.””
“Hildegarde’s love of the Creator and of creation reminded me of Ikhnaton, the only pharaoh we know about who worshipped one God with adoring love, Aton, the sun, the giver of life. Ikhnaton’s hymns to Aton would have been understood by Hildegarde. Perhaps they sometimes sing together now.”
“When Moses asked God, “What is your name?” God replied, “I will be what I will be.””
“The extraordinary world of particle physics is providing new symbols for me, and new understanding of old symbols”
“properties usually attributed to matter have no real existence until measured”
“Destructive criticism is devastating because it does not make real; instead, it negates and destroys. Constructive criticism builds, bringing out the hidden reality.”
“Alter, in The Art of Biblical Narrative, refers to the “double dialectic between design and disorder, providence and freedom. The various biblical narratives…[form] a spectrum between the opposing extremes of disorder and design.””
“It is by accepting all the “contra-dictions,” these indeterminate non-answers, that we are given an intuition of heaven”
“Saint Bonaventura: “God is a circle whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference nowhere.””
“the postulation of the neutrino is as wildly imaginative as those angels ascending and descending the ladder joining heaven and earth”
“We need ordinary, chronological time so that we can, for instance, get to the airport or to the office on time, but here time is only an agreed upon fiction so that we will be enabled to get through the day’s work with as little confusion as possible.”
“when I think of the pion and the muon, of the great spiral galaxies, and of our own little lives in terms of kairos—of rootedness in cosmos, in God’s time itself—it opens vast vistas which can be awesome, even terrifying (“What a dreadful place is this!” Jacob cries), but less terrifying than it is wondrous, because God’s time is far more real than ordinary chronos, and we are part of both.”
“But these are the outward signs of chronology, and there is another Madeleine who is untouched by them, the part of me that lives forever in kairos and bears God’s image.”
“I may be an old woman in my eighties, but inside me I am still a dancing girl”
“A true symbol is an open window, never leading to a closed, deterministic world, but to an open, indeterministic one. Symbols are mind, heart, and soul stretchers.”
“Jacob and Esau were not either/or people. They had the full complexity of the both/and human being. Open at one moment, closed at another. Brave, cowardly. Loving, lying. Jacob never hesitated to cheat, and yet God called him Israel.”
“Often he replied with a story, and a story is usually mu. This is not an either/or, a yes/no. It is both/and/maybe.”
“He was also at-one with all the pain and suffering that ever was, is, or will be.”
“We are not given protection. We are given vulnerability. We are promised not the absence of pain, but the blessed warning of pain. We are promised not that we won’t be wounded, that we won’t bleed, but that we will be transfused. We are promised not that we won’t die, but that we shall live.”
“God is still the author of the story, and even if the echthroi tear and crumple the pages, or smudge the ink, it is still God’s story, and the Author will correct, revise, retype, redeem, as necessary. Meanwhile, we are part of the story, and we may not know what the lines we are given mean, why we suffer, bleed, die. Perhaps what we see as death is really necessary for rebirth.”
“we will be given our own parts to play in healing the fragments which separate us dis-astrously”
“people who have been so damaged by lack of having been given love, or having been so manipulated or corrupted by the self-serving sham that masquerades as love, that they are beyond the possibility of blessing, or knowing themselves blessed”
“Those echthroi within us: Can I always tell what they are? Sometimes it’s easy. Self-pity, jealousy, resentment”
“There is an enormous difference between wallowing in our own brokenness and sense of sin, and in accepting it, and then turning to the Lamb for a transfusion.”
“God didn’t break your shoulder. He’s just using it”
“God did not stop the disciples from betraying him, or the Romans from crucifying him. But God offered Jesus, and offers us, the one protection that Satan does not give: God is in it with us”
“The only cells [in the human body] which insist on being independent and autonomous are cancer cells”
May 13, 2017
First sentence: In the late afternoon, when the long December night had already darkened the skies, we opened Christmas cards, taking turns, reading the messages, enjoying this once-a-year being in touch with far-flung friends. There, incongruously lying among the Christmas greetings, was an official-looking envelope addressed to me, with Clerk of Court, New York County, in the upper left-hand corner. A call to jury duty. Manhattan does not give its prospective jurors much notice. My call was for the first week in January. To the notice inside had been added the words, Must Serve.
Premise/plot: Stone for a Pillow is the second in the Genesis trilogy. The best way to describe the book is that it's reflective "theology" written in a stream of consciousness style. It is loosely-inspired by the middle of the book of Genesis--the chapters focusing on Jacob and Esau.
My thoughts: In my review of And It Was Good, I wrote that L'Engle's theology was dangerous. I would definitely say that is still the case. If anything, the years between 1983 and 1986 led L'Engle even further from the Christian path. The more I read, I more I realize that it's just not a misconception or misunderstanding on my part, but, that she did indeed believe some mighty strange, actually heretical things.
For example, this is L'Engle's writing on the topic of the atonement. She rejects the doctrine out and out.
She continues,
She is more influenced by the theory of the butterfly effect than the words of Christ--or the Word of God. Here are a few of her statements about the Bible.
Though she ridicules people who make God into their own image instead of looking for the image of God within them. She seems to have no problem defining God herself throughout the book. She doesn't use the revealed Word of God as a primary source--but herself, her instincts, her insights, her biases.
That being said, there were still some good statements--sentences. (Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. But a ticking-working clock set to the wrong time, is never going to be right.)
Premise/plot: Stone for a Pillow is the second in the Genesis trilogy. The best way to describe the book is that it's reflective "theology" written in a stream of consciousness style. It is loosely-inspired by the middle of the book of Genesis--the chapters focusing on Jacob and Esau.
My thoughts: In my review of And It Was Good, I wrote that L'Engle's theology was dangerous. I would definitely say that is still the case. If anything, the years between 1983 and 1986 led L'Engle even further from the Christian path. The more I read, I more I realize that it's just not a misconception or misunderstanding on my part, but, that she did indeed believe some mighty strange, actually heretical things.
For example, this is L'Engle's writing on the topic of the atonement. She rejects the doctrine out and out.
In a vain attempt to make people see God as an avenging judge, theologians have even altered the meaning of words. Atonement, for instance. A bad word, if taken forensically. In forensic terms, the atonement means that Jesus had to die for us in order to atone for all our awful sins, so that God could forgive us. In forensic terms, it means that God cannot forgive us unless Jesus is crucified and by this sacrifice atones for all our wrongdoing. But that is not what the word means! I went to an etymological dictionary and looked it up. It means exactly what it says, at-one-ment. I double-checked it in a second dictionary. There is nothing about crime and punishment in the makeup of that word. It simply means to be at one with God. Jesus on the cross was so at-one with God that death died there on Golgotha, and was followed by the glorious celebration of the Resurrection… Sin, then, is discourtesy pushed to an extreme, and discourtesy is lack of at-one-ment.
She continues,
We are all going to face God’s judgment, but we will not receive forensic judgment from the throne of heaven. God is not going to abandon Creation, nor the people up for trial in criminal court, nor the Shiites nor the communists nor the warmongers, nor the greedy and corrupt people in high places, nor the dope pushers, nor you, nor me. Bitter tears of repentance may be shed before we can join the celebration, but it won’t be complete until we are all there. This is the God of Scripture, the God of forbearance, forgiveness, and unqualified love. We have been living in a world where we have viewed God and each other in a forensic way for too long, and it should be apparent that it is not working, and that it is not going to work. This forensic world is not a scriptural world, but a clever projection of the Tempter. Our only hope for peace, within our own hearts, and all over our small green earth, is for us to open ourselves to the judgment of God, that judgment that makes the waters and the hills to sing. For God’s judgment is atonement, at-one-ment, making us one with the Lord of love.
She is more influenced by the theory of the butterfly effect than the words of Christ--or the Word of God. Here are a few of her statements about the Bible.
It is a living book, not a dead one. It urges us to go beyond its pages, not to stop with what we have read. It is a book not only of history, and of the prohibitions of the commandments and laws, but of poetry and song, of fantasy and paradox and mystery and contradiction. It is not the only book in which I will look for and find truth.
The Bible is a book which urges us to keep our concept of God open, to let our understanding grow and develop as we are illumined by new discoveries. If we stopped where Scripture leaves us, in the New Testament as well as the Old, we could still, with clear consciences, keep slaves.
What a passage says to us today may not be what the same passage will say when we next encounter it. We must strive to be open to the deeply mythic quality, expressing the longings and aspirations and searchings of the human race.
If we are willing to live by Scripture, we must be willing to live by paradox and contradiction and surprise.
Once I remarked that I read the Bible in much the same way that I read fairy tales, and received a shocked response. But fairy tales are not superficial stories. They spring from the depths of the human being. The world of the fairy tale is to some degree the world of the psyche. Like the heroes and heroines of fairy tales, we all start on our journey, our quest, sent out on it at our baptisms. We are, all of us, male and female, the younger brother, who succeeds in the quest because, unlike the elder brother, he knows he needs help; he cannot do it because he is strong and powerful. We are all, like it or not, the elder brother, arrogant and proud. We are all, male and female, the true princess who feels the pea of injustice under all those mattresses of indifference. And we all have to come to terms with the happy ending, and this may be the most difficult part of all. Never confuse fairy tale with untruth. Alas, Lucifer, how plausible you can be, confusing us into thinking that to speak of the Bible as myth is blasphemy.
Though she ridicules people who make God into their own image instead of looking for the image of God within them. She seems to have no problem defining God herself throughout the book. She doesn't use the revealed Word of God as a primary source--but herself, her instincts, her insights, her biases.
That being said, there were still some good statements--sentences. (Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. But a ticking-working clock set to the wrong time, is never going to be right.)
It is not a simple thing to accept God’s love, because if we do, we must return love.
Fiction draws us into participating in other lives, other countries, other ways of life or thinking.
It was a sad moment when I had to admit to myself that I was not going to be able to read, in this lifetime, all the books I need to read!
January 20, 2011
This book delves into Madeleine L' Engle's faith in the grace of God and her views on the extent of God's grace. The book also touches a little bit on what used to make her such a polarizing figure in both Christian and Secular subcultures. Some reviewers in the secular community found her works to be too overtly "Christian" for their tastes, while many in evangelical and fundamentalist circles rejected her for her belief in Christian Universalism/universal atonement. Over-all, she is a fascinating author, and I always like reading what she has to say.
March 25, 2025
This book series continues to inspire me and stir me to Jesus. The way Madeleine writes is comforting; the ideas she wrestles with are profound and precious. This series thus far has given me feelings of freedom and openness and restfulness and joy. I look forward to the next one!
March 23, 2018
L'Engle once again took me out of my "comfort rut" with this book. I wanted the jerks on trial to be found guilty for what they had done. I too have a lot more questions than certainties and the questions multiply with the years. But answers can be frightening if they become set in stone. They can preclude further insights and make me feel like I have God figured out. As a historian, I know the last word has never been said about any era/person/incident/etc. so I can continue to look for new meanings and insights beyond what has been said or written before. And so with God and his creation. The last word has not been said.
L'Engle's book puts forward the paradox of free will in creation up against the hope that all will be brought into atonement in the end. I'm not sure she meant to set it up that way but she talks about free will in man and angels but holds out the hope that Satan/Lucifer will one day bow his knee to God. Is it wishful thinking because she cannot envision a scenario in which any of God's creation chooses to finally be cut off from Him forever? God makes it possible that all may come to him but we still have to choose to do so or we are finally no more than automatons. If my final choice is not free, are any of my preceding choices free? It's a tough question and I may have arguments but I have no definitive answer.
I did enjoy the book and the walk with Jacob who was sometimes a manipulating jerk and at other times a patient, loving husband and father. Good and no-so-good, just like all of us.
L'Engle's book puts forward the paradox of free will in creation up against the hope that all will be brought into atonement in the end. I'm not sure she meant to set it up that way but she talks about free will in man and angels but holds out the hope that Satan/Lucifer will one day bow his knee to God. Is it wishful thinking because she cannot envision a scenario in which any of God's creation chooses to finally be cut off from Him forever? God makes it possible that all may come to him but we still have to choose to do so or we are finally no more than automatons. If my final choice is not free, are any of my preceding choices free? It's a tough question and I may have arguments but I have no definitive answer.
I did enjoy the book and the walk with Jacob who was sometimes a manipulating jerk and at other times a patient, loving husband and father. Good and no-so-good, just like all of us.
June 27, 2022
Very interesting treatment of Jacob through his story and L'Engle's interpretation. Some repetition if you've read a lot of her work. The foreword by Rachel Held Evans is a gem and closes with the Nicene Creed in a beautiful form [contrast with BCP p.358].
p.44: Why is it so hard to understand that in this world everything is not going to turn out all right, all strings neatly tied, and justice triumphant?
p.88: Here I am, caught up in this fragment of chronology, in this bit of bone and flesh and water which makes my mortal body, and yet I am also part of that which is not imprisoned in time or mortality.
p.95: We are not all called to go to El Salvador, or Moscow, or Calcutta, or even the slums of New York, but none of us will escape the moment when we have to decide whether to withdraw, to play it safe, or to act upon what we prayerfully believe to be right, knowing that with all our prayers we may be wrong, and knowing that we will probably be punished by those who do not want universe-disturbers to stand up and be counted.
p.108: Our lacks in language are a reflection of our brokenness.
p.136: In that desert land wells were so important that they were given names. There was an honouring of the reality of water and stone, of tree and sand. Everything in the created order belonged to God, and what is God's is named.
p.247: God does not promise protection any more than he promised it to Jesus. Or Jacob. We are not given protection. We are given vulnerability.
p.44: Why is it so hard to understand that in this world everything is not going to turn out all right, all strings neatly tied, and justice triumphant?
p.88: Here I am, caught up in this fragment of chronology, in this bit of bone and flesh and water which makes my mortal body, and yet I am also part of that which is not imprisoned in time or mortality.
p.95: We are not all called to go to El Salvador, or Moscow, or Calcutta, or even the slums of New York, but none of us will escape the moment when we have to decide whether to withdraw, to play it safe, or to act upon what we prayerfully believe to be right, knowing that with all our prayers we may be wrong, and knowing that we will probably be punished by those who do not want universe-disturbers to stand up and be counted.
p.108: Our lacks in language are a reflection of our brokenness.
p.136: In that desert land wells were so important that they were given names. There was an honouring of the reality of water and stone, of tree and sand. Everything in the created order belonged to God, and what is God's is named.
p.247: God does not promise protection any more than he promised it to Jesus. Or Jacob. We are not given protection. We are given vulnerability.
July 21, 2022
Just adored this<3 Madeleine L’Engle’s words are a gift and a light.
A couple things rubbed me a bit the wrong way, but I imagine that it is a product of the socio-historical constraints of this text.
“Look! Here I am, caught up in this fragment of chronology, in this bit of bone and flesh and water which makes up my mortal body, and yet I am also part of that which is not imprisoned in time or mortality. Partaker simultaneously of the finite and the infinite, I do not find the infinite by repudiating my finiteness, but by being fully in it, in this me who is more than I know. This me, like all of creation, lives in a glorious dance of communion with all the universe. In isolation we die; in interdependence we live.”
“I cannot explain angels, nor do I need to. But I want to hear the lovely swish of their wings, to know that they are they are there, God‘s messengers of love and hope.”
“To hold someone lovingly in my hands, my hands held out to God, is to share, even in an infinitesimally tiny way, some of the agony of the cross.”
A couple things rubbed me a bit the wrong way, but I imagine that it is a product of the socio-historical constraints of this text.
“Look! Here I am, caught up in this fragment of chronology, in this bit of bone and flesh and water which makes up my mortal body, and yet I am also part of that which is not imprisoned in time or mortality. Partaker simultaneously of the finite and the infinite, I do not find the infinite by repudiating my finiteness, but by being fully in it, in this me who is more than I know. This me, like all of creation, lives in a glorious dance of communion with all the universe. In isolation we die; in interdependence we live.”
“I cannot explain angels, nor do I need to. But I want to hear the lovely swish of their wings, to know that they are they are there, God‘s messengers of love and hope.”
“To hold someone lovingly in my hands, my hands held out to God, is to share, even in an infinitesimally tiny way, some of the agony of the cross.”
May 10, 2017
A Stone for a Pillow
Journeys with Jacob
by Madeleine L'Engle
Crown Publishing
Convergent Books
Christian
Pub Date 23 May 2017
I am voluntarily reviewing A Stone For A Pillow by Crown Publishing/Convergent books and Netgalley:
In the second book of the Genesis trilogy Madeline L Engle draws life lessons, relevant today, from the life of Jacob. She talks about serving time on a New York Jesus in which she read a book called Revelation and Truth by by Nicholas Berdyaev.
She goes on to show us that too Jacob the house of God was not an enclosure or a building but an open place. She reminds us that despite his shortcomings Jacob was a lovable man.
She goes on to remind us that if we are good, it is not because of us, but God in us.
I give A Stone for A Pillow five out of five stars.
Happy Reading.
November 10, 2022
I have not come to decide if I agree fully with the theology of L’Engle, and nor will I (decide), for I do not feel need to agree or defend. What I do love is the way L’Engle makes stories of the Bible, familiar as the length of my childhood, anew. She causes me to look at life and Scripture from different angles and through different lenses. And this I am sure, she and I love the same God. She also gives me permission to relinquish the need to understand God and the ways of God. She, like no other, frees up my mind to wander in ways I won’t normally allow in my very rigid and linear way of trying to process life.
December 12, 2023
Inspiring and Challenging
I read A Stone for a Pillow as a one-chapter-per-day devotional. That way my mind and heart had time to absorb the thoughts and lessons writer Madeleine L'Engle sets out. In this second book of the series she writes mostly about how to bless, to be blessed, and what it really means. When do we give a blessing? How do we receive one? What does it really mean? L'Engle is not shy about saying what she believes and doesn't believe. Her writing style, however, opens the door to thought, rather than forcing beliefs in the reader's brain. I'm eager to move on to book three.
I read A Stone for a Pillow as a one-chapter-per-day devotional. That way my mind and heart had time to absorb the thoughts and lessons writer Madeleine L'Engle sets out. In this second book of the series she writes mostly about how to bless, to be blessed, and what it really means. When do we give a blessing? How do we receive one? What does it really mean? L'Engle is not shy about saying what she believes and doesn't believe. Her writing style, however, opens the door to thought, rather than forcing beliefs in the reader's brain. I'm eager to move on to book three.
October 26, 2017
"I don't have any answers here, just a lot of questions and hopes, about a God of love who prefers parties to punishments."
Looking forward to finishing this series along with about everything else L'Engle has written. I've barely scratched the surface...
"What is our part in keeping this planet alive? Working towards stopping the folly and horror of atomic devastation? To say that nuclear warfare is inevitable is defeatism, not realism. As long as there is anybody to care, to pray, to turn to God, to be willing to be el's messenger even in unexpected ways, there is still hope."
Looking forward to finishing this series along with about everything else L'Engle has written. I've barely scratched the surface...
"What is our part in keeping this planet alive? Working towards stopping the folly and horror of atomic devastation? To say that nuclear warfare is inevitable is defeatism, not realism. As long as there is anybody to care, to pray, to turn to God, to be willing to be el's messenger even in unexpected ways, there is still hope."
January 24, 2022
God can take anything and redeem it. This book is a perfect reflection on the life of Jacob, especially because I’m currently in the part of Genesis in my Bible reading.
I love Madeleine and this book is just like sitting with her while we talk about all the ins and outs of life. She makes me curious. She makes me think about the tiny things. I love her love for science and how it comes out in her amazement of Christ.
I love Madeleine and this book is just like sitting with her while we talk about all the ins and outs of life. She makes me curious. She makes me think about the tiny things. I love her love for science and how it comes out in her amazement of Christ.
November 15, 2024
I was on a seesaw throughout this book. One moment, I would be thinking, "Oh, that is good, so rich." And the next I would be thinking, "Hmm, that just doesn't seem quite right." Sometimes I felt she strayed quite a distance from the "Journeys With Jacob" theme, and I had to remind myself how it related. I didn't like it as well as the first in the series, and probably will not read the third. But an interesting read, all told.
February 25, 2025
I read this book a few years after it came out. Reading it again all these years later, was a different experience. What I like most about Madeleine L’Engle is her high view of God. Shoulder replacement stopped me from reading because the three books of the Genesis Trilogy in one volume were too cumbersome to hold during recovery from shoulder replacement. But I am glad I persevered to the end.
May 30, 2018
Thought provoking spiritual read
This book offers another interesting exploration of Genesis while including bits of memoir, science, and philosophy. If you like C.S. Lewis you should try Madeline L’Engle. Her conclusions may be unsatisfactory to some evangelicals, but are challenging and thought-provoking and worth reading deeply.
This book offers another interesting exploration of Genesis while including bits of memoir, science, and philosophy. If you like C.S. Lewis you should try Madeline L’Engle. Her conclusions may be unsatisfactory to some evangelicals, but are challenging and thought-provoking and worth reading deeply.
November 10, 2019
Yes, much that she wrote is right, but there are statements that fly in the face of the scriptures...just not right; whether she was deliberately tossing scripture aside or just mistaken in understanding, I don’t know. L’Engle was a human, not perfect. I admire her creativity and wish she were still around to talk to, because I’d like to ask her.
November 20, 2024
Madeleine L'Engle shares some thoughtful insights into the story of Jacob in this book. Sometimes she meanders a bit, and because it was written in the 80's some of her observations (about computers and science) are dated, but her essays brought our church study group some very interesting discussion. Worth a try, especially if you're looking for a not-so-typical essays on religion.
March 28, 2019
I really enjoyed this second book in Madeleine L'Engle's Genesis series. I plan to read the third book at some point. I read this very slowly and used it as part of my morning devotionals. She discusses certain Biblical stories relating to Jacob on a very deep level.
June 6, 2020
It took me forever to finish. I enjoyed the beginning and then it got preachy preachy. I made myself finish it because I kept hoping for some insight other than what was preached at me. So disappointed because Wrinkle in Time is one of my favorite books to teachin the classroom.
May 3, 2021
Lovely L’Engle, inviting readers deeper into the folds of Genesis. She brings to life the ancient characters in God’s
old story. I appreciate how she ties the ancient into her contemporary life in thoughtful and wise ways.
old story. I appreciate how she ties the ancient into her contemporary life in thoughtful and wise ways.
May 5, 2021
I have a lot of questions in this book
January 16, 2024
Madeleine L’Engle is one of my very favorite authors and yet, while I enjoyed this book, it did not move me or expand my thinking as some of her other nonfiction books have. Still a worthy read.
March 2, 2024
Timeless classic
March 10, 2024
This genre defying work is a bit all over the place, but included some very inspiring and challenging passages, as well as some I found confusing or non-sequitur.
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