For Leslie,

The Protagonist & the Angel

In September of 2022, I was standing on the second floor of Gordon Conwell’s Seminary campus in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was on my way to their art gallery space featuring the work of Georges Rouault. The gallery traces the rotunda that rises around it, an octagonal shape. As I entered, I see a beautiful, blonde haired woman admiring the artwork. She was wearing a black beret and underneath her short, luscious curls emerging. Her cozy sweater, the color of falling leaves, was pulled over her a black dress that fell to her knees. There was a warmth emanating from her smile that I initially attributed to a myth— the one in which I believe (like a fool) that some people really do have it all together. I planned to walk around her and keep my insecurities tucked inside, but she stopped me and introduced herself.

I was there in that gallery for a weekend called Humanity Redeemed: The Theological Vision of Georges Rouault, hosted by Gordon Conwell. I knew nothing of Rouault before attending. I was sent as an ambassador of sorts by my church. Poets, pastors, visual artists, theologians, therapists and scholars gathered to discuss the work of Rouault, a French modernist painter (1871-1958). The exhibition of Rouault’s work was titled “Seeing Christ in the Darkness”, aptly named for its moody and quite frankly, gloomy, depictions of Christ and humanity.

She introduced herself as Leslie. We spoke of what brought us to this conference, what we did for work. I learned she was a writer. She was kind and eager to my timid confessions that I wanted to do more creative writing. She told me the publications she wrote for and said she would gladly love to connect after the conference.

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A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hearing author Katherine Paterson speak. At 91, she walked on stage with a cane, moving slow with deliberation and—I might add—a spunk in her step. She opened the evening with a joke about her age and the ever changing technological evolution we are living in. I trusted her immediately.

I read two of her novels in my young girlhood. My friend Alisa taught me that children’s literature is still a beautiful and worthy genre to read as an adult, so whenever I find a book at McKay’s that I loved as a child or one that I want to read now, I buy it. I must have done this with Bridge to Terabithia because it occurs to me, after returning home from listening to her speak, that I own a copy.

The next Saturday, I step over books I should be reading for school and pull Bridge to Terabithia from the shelf. I poured a cup of tea, gathered up my coziest blanket to drape over my unshowered, freshly-rolled-from-bed self, and I started reading.

Leslie. She’s the 5th grader who moves to a new town and steals the title of the fastest runner in the whole school from the narrator, Jesse, who had been training all summer. They become friends, of course, and create a world called Terabithia that is their secret place of play and refuge.

There is a scene towards the end of book when Leslie visits church with Jesse on Easter. Jesse and his little sister, May Belle, get into a chat about the Bible with Leslie. She’s marveling at the beauty of a God named Jesus. Jesse’s family make him go to church, but Leslie’s do not. “You have to believe it, but you hate it. I don’t have to believe it, and I think it’s beautiful.” May Belle was eavesdropping on their conversation, watching Leslie and Jesse go back and forth, when as a gift to her young audience, Paterson decides to end the chapter titled “Easter” with a foreshadowing question by May Belle to Leslie, “What if you die? What’s going to happen to you if you die?”

Photo by Gio on Unsplash

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When I returned home from the conference that fall of 2022, I had a Facebook message from Leslie waiting for me:

Hey there! I wrote down your name so I didn't forget that we met this weekend. You left early - hoping you had a good experience! Going to listen to some of your music now!

She writes on about mutual friends we have in common and the potential for meeting again. In the coming days, I would see information from her CaringBridge populate my newsfeed. I couldn’t see the two forms of cancer she was actively battling when we met—breast cancer and melanoma—all I could see was beauty.

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In Bridge to Terabithia, Jesse is a burgeoning artist. As most 5th graders are (if I remember correctly) he is suspicious of his love and fears that he is not good enough. Leslie encourages him to draw their beloved Terabithia, but he is afraid that he won’t get it right, he won’t depict it as beautiful as it truly is.

At the end of the novel, Leslie treks out to Terabithia alone one rainy afternoon and takes the rope swing across the creek, only she tragically falls and dies. Jesse struggles to accept the death of his beloved friend. In a fit of anger, he throws all his paints and watercolor papers into the creek. Later, he regrets this, but they are gone, just like his friend. Leslie’s parents give Jesse Leslie’s own watercolor pad and paints and tell him they know she would want him to have them.

I’ve heard once that if you want to learn how to write, then you have to learn how to draw.

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I leave Katherine Paterson’s talk and walk around the small bookstore at the conference I’m attending. I see Leslie’s book on the shelf— the woman I met that day in 2022— Tiny Thoughts That I’ve Been Thinking— that was published posthumously. I bought a copy and have been treasuring her words.

In this collection of essays, poems and “field notes from cancer-land,” Leslie writes openly and bravely, with grit and wisdom and humor. I’ve been reading in awe of the beauty that is emanating from her words. I am humbled at the myth that I was believing when we met—now peeking into her beautiful story and soul, seeing a real woman, beautiful not because she has it all together, but beautiful because she is held her whole life open to the one who holds all things together.

I realized as I reread Bridge to Terabithia that Leslie taught Jesse how to draw by teaching him how to see—seeing the beauty and adventure in things that Jesse had missed. Leslie Bustard is teaching me how to see, too, through her words.

Thank you, Leslie, for showing me what true beauty really is.

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To Make Visible

To make visible,
glory; 
for a moment 
see the mystery of eternity 
in our ordinary. 
To long for the light 
and to let it sweep 
through shadowed windows, 
waiting hearts. 
To listen. 
To say yes, 
let it be as you say it will be.
To wait till the word breaks in,
revealing grace 
upon grace upon grace. 

Leslie Bustard