MS. L'ENGLE: Religion is less accepting than science. Science knows things move and change, and religion doesn't want that. So, I am more comfortable with science. At the same time, I am not throwing God out the window.

ABERNETHY: L'Engle has experienced a lot of loss in her life -- the death of her husband, Hugh Franklin, an actor well-known for his role as a doctor in the TV series ALL MY CHILDREN. She wrote about their marriage and his death in her book TWO PART INVENTION. She wrote about her mother's death in THE SUMMER OF THE GREAT GRANDMOTHER. Many of Madeleine's close friends have died, and last Christmastime so did her son, Bion.

MS. L'ENGLE: It's late at night on Christmas Eve. We went to the Cathedral for the midnight mass. Bion died a week ago today. I still don't believe it. Bion's death has ripped the fabric of the universe.

ABERNETHY: Madeleine has kept journals almost all her life, and she says writing in them about grief makes it easier to bear.

MS. L'ENGLE: I am very grateful that I have a journal, and that I can write because that helps me to objectify things that might just mess me around emotionally, otherwise. And I can no longer look at this and weep and feel sorry for myself. I see it more clearly. And it sends me back to work.

ABERNETHY: Eventually, she says, she will write about her son. Madeleine sees suffering as a normal part of life, and she also says she feels closest to God when she suffers.

MS. L'ENGLE: Yes, I would agree with that. In times when we are not particularly suffering, we do not have enough time for God. We are too busy with other things. And then the intense suffering comes, and we can not be busy with other things. And then God comes into the equation. Help. And we should never be afraid of crying out, "Help!" I need all the help I can get.

ABERNETHY: Madeleine also sees suffering as necessary for a full life.

MS. L'ENGLE: Where there is no suffering nothing happens. One time, my godmother went to visit my mother, who was her best friend, and something awful had happened. I don't know what. And she burst into tears, instead of offering comfort, and said, "I envy you. I envy you. You have had a terrible life, but you have lived."

ABERNETHY: In spite of her losses, and in spite of the world's wars and atrocities, L'Engle insists that, in the end, life and the universe are good. She remembers singing a sad ballad to one of her two granddaughters, when she was a child.

MS. L'ENGLE: And she said, "Gran, you know that is a bad one." And I said, "What?" "Gran, you know that's a bad one." And I said, "Why, Charlotte? Because everybody dies?" And she said, "No, Gran. Nobody loved anybody." And then it was the next night, putting them to bed, that Lena just looked at me cosmically and said, "Gran, is it all right?" She didn't mean anything ... she meant the whole thing. Is it all right? And I swallowed my heart and my everything and said, "Yes, Lena. It's all right."

ABERNETHY: Madeleine grew up an only and, she says, a lonely child. So, she loves family gatherings such as this one, with four generations. She says, she expects to keep enjoying good company, good food, good talk, and work for another twenty years.

MS. L'ENGLE: I was writing in my journal yesterday and ended a paragraph with "I think it smells like hope." And we have to hang on to that.