When I love a book, I read it multiple times, finding it intriguing and compelling. Such is the case of the 1962 classic young adult novel by Madeleine L’Engle called A Wrinkle In Time.  It entered my life in high school and I have likely perused the pages somewhere in the mid-double digits since then. It is a parable about good vs. evil, darkness vs. light and love vs. fear. The focus of the book and subsequent movie which I watched with my son recently is the Murry family, consisting of scientist mother and father, a teenage daughter named Meg who feels like a total misfit, twin  10 year old  ‘average’ brothers Sandy and Dennys and savant 6 year old brother Charles Wallace. The oldest and youngest Murry kids and their friend Calvin O’Keefe go on a rescue mission to find their father who disappeared years earlier while on a time travel experiment. 

With the aspects of what Joseph Campbell would refer to as ‘The Hero’s Journey’; the experience is seen primarily through physically and at times, emotionally/spiritually myopic Meg’s eyes. 

From Campbell’s iconic book The Hero with a Thousand Faces:  “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Meg compares herself to her beautiful mother, her ‘normal’ twin brothers and her genius little brother of whom she feels protective when people don’t understand him and ridicule him. By the end of the book and movie, she recognizes her own worth and discovers her inner power.

Some quotes that remain with me and are applicable in my own life:

 “It’s not what things look like. It’s what they are like.” Like and equal are not the same thing.”  Our perception is open to adaptation at our will and when we change how we see things, everything we see changes.

“All that is important is unseen. All seen things are temporary. All unseen things are eternal. What you seek is like music. It sweeps you aloft so that you are moving in glory among the stars. Take time to find the unseen.” I have found that when I view the world through Divine eyes, those of love and acceptance, what I discover is infinitely more exquisite.

“You have something the darkness does not have. It is only yours and you must find it for yourself.”  Simply put, that something is love. Love trumps fear and shines the light in the darkness of fear.

One of my favorite songs about time   http://youtu.be/qHDt2t0oO7g 

Time In A Bottle by Jim Croce