THE PLANET TILTING SWIFTLY

Madeleine L'engle, 88, author of the Newberry Award winning book "A Wrinkle In Time", died Thursday in Connecticut.

L'Engle whose work is an inspiration because it bends the imagination as much as it bends time and space, wrote more than 60 books.

"A Wrinkle in Time" is the first of a series of four books in which Meg Murray and her telepathic little brother, Charles Wallace, must learn to tesseract - warp the fabric of space and time - to rescue their missing father.

I'm older now. It's been several years since I've read "A Wrinkle in Time". My imagination is more fleeting than fleet anymore; more mired than nimble; more interested in stretching a paycheck than stretching time and space.

Summer has gone as well. Gone also are the old fashioned summer days when you could lay in the cool grass, stare up at the clouds in the sky and make an ant crawl the distance of a blade of grass stretched between your hands.

If the grass is stretched out straight, the ant has a longer way to go. If you bring your hands together, making a wrinkle, a ripple in the grass blade, the ant has not so far to go.

This is how L'Engle described a "tesseract" - bending space and time to make a long journey short.

The passage of time is a long journey made short, and we never notice - Not until something is taken from us.

Then all we can do is wonder.
L'Shenah Tova Tikatevu - Be inscribed in the Book of Life for a good year.