With Ananda in This Fateful Hour
The year that I was nine, I found a book in my classroom that changed me forever. It wasn’t the first book to do that, but it was the first I’d read that featured cataclysmic events on a global — indeed, intergalactic — scale, intertwined with time travel (a lifelong obsession), science fiction (totally new to me at that point), history, fear, joy, warmth, and death. Reader, I felt incredibly grown-up, sobered by the reality that a kids’ book would entrust us with so much truth. That book was A Swiftly Tilting Planet by the formidable Madeleine L’Engle, and, full disclosure: I probably picked it up because of the flying unicorn on the cover (it was 1984, after all).
(WARNING! SPOILERS AHOY!)

From Wikipedia:
The book opens on Thanksgiving evening, 10 years after the events of A Wind in the Door. [Which takes place after the events of A Wrinkle in Time, neither of which I’d yet read.] Meg is now married to Calvin and is expecting their first child. Calvin has become a scientist and is in Britain at a conference; Calvin’s mother Branwen Maddox O’Keefe joins Meg’s family for Thanksgiving dinner. When they receive the news of impending nuclear war caused by the dictator “Mad Dog Branzillo”, Mrs. O’Keefe lays a charge on Charles Wallace of Patrick’s Rune, a rhyming prayer of protection inherited from her Irish grandmother.
Charles Wallace goes to the star-watching rock, a family haunt, where his recitation summons a winged unicorn named Gaudior, who explains to Charles Wallace that he must prevent nuclear war by traveling through time and telepathically merging with people who lived near the star-watching rock at points in the past.
They are threatened along the way by the Echthroi, the antagonists introduced in A Wind in the Door, who now seek to alter history in their favor. Gaudior and Charles Wallace’s travels bring them to Harcels, a Native American boy at least 1,000 years in the past; Madoc of Wales, a pre-Columbian trans-oceanic traveler; Brandon Llawcae, a Welsh settler in puritan times; Mrs. O’Keefe’s brother Chuck Maddox, during their childhood; and Matthew Maddox, a writer during the American Civil War.
Throughout their journey, Meg connects with Charles Wallace from home through “kything”, the telepathic communication she learned in A Wind in the Door. Gradually, it is revealed that Branzillo is a descendant of Madoc through all Charles’ other alter-egos, and of Madoc’s treacherous brother Gwydyr. Ultimately, Charles’ manipulation of Branzillo’s various ancestors results in the re-union of Madoc’s line and the transformation of the present Branzillo into an advocate of peace, to prevent the war.
Written intelligently, sensibly, with historical and scientific accuracy, and with a deep devotion to doing right, the book enchanted me as much as it terrified me.
“At Tara in this fateful hour,” I posted.
Reactions poured in, more than I’d expected. Stark, pleading, mostly single-word responses. Yes. And This. And Please.
Again, Wikipedia [emphasis mine]:
Throughout the story, Charles Wallace invokes this poem to ensure the victory of good. The poem features in several parts of the book, each with slightly different wording or different punctuation; the poem’s definite composition is unsure.
With Ananda in this fateful hour,
I place all Heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And the fire with all the strength it hath,
And the lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along its path,
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness,
And the Earth with its starkness
All these I place by God’s almighty help and grace
Between myself and the powers of darkness.
It is very similar to a portion of James Clarence Mangan‘s poem “St. Patrick’s Hymn before Tarah,” a poetic rendition of Saint Patrick’s Breastplate.
The rune within the L’Engle book has one significant difference from St. Patrick’s Hymn. “At Tara” is replaced with “With Ananda”; the original refers to the Hill of Tara. However, in L’Engle’s version, the words are different, and this has relevance to the overall context of the plot, as Ananda is both the name of the Murry family dog and the Sanskrit word for “bliss”, a kind of internally-generated divine condition, which is neither a deity nor a physical location.
“Put a little love in your heart,” says the pop song.
“Either joy prevails or misery infects it,” wrote C.S. Lewis.
I come from various lines of people who struggled with various types of mental disorders. Chronic depression is the main one I inherited. For most of my life I raged at it, seeing its flare-ups as a monster thwarting my ability to just live my life. Stealing my joy, cutting me off from normality. A right fucker, that one. But now I treat it like the inconvenience it is. Like bad weather or LA traffic. Something to work around and get through. Something impermanent. (There are some really great benefits to getting older.)
More and more lately, I’m thinking about how to control my internal reality. Today I’m curious about how it might be possible not to succumb to the fear and dread that, quite rationally, many of us are feeling. Is there room to allow the feeling without drowning in it? Is there a way to ward off the panic that sends me scurrying onto the ledge overlooking the personal darkness that is my own devil-you-know?
Maybe a more useful way to approach the situation is to think in terms of net values. Like attracts like, after all. Despair begets despair. Can I acknowledge the horrors in the world and still remain steadfast and committed to maintaining the electricity of pure joy alive within myself, and therefore within the lives of those around me? Can I be with Ananda in this fateful hour, no matter what?
An answer will come, soon enough.
Love,
Emma