I love this command, and it's certainly something I try to live up to - though in all honesty, I'm pretty lucky and haven't really had to deal with people antagonizing me in quite a long time. The scene in which Meg saves Charles Wallace with her love is very powerful; her Naming Mr. Jenkins is just as moving. Meg is such a spirited, opinionated girl, and the bland, authoritarian Mr. Jenkins has been a source of great distress and disappointment to her, not least because he could be a strong advocate if he had the inclination. In her everyday life, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to call him her greatest nemesis, and it's not wonder she struggles with her assignment to Name him. But love triumphs over hatred, and he turns out to be incredibly important in the quest to cure Charles Wallace and demonstrates that underneath all that bureaucracy, he really does care about his students.
He reminds me a lot of Katherine Brooke, the stodgy administrator Anne Shirley wins over in Anne of Windy Poplars, showing her how to really live again. I don't suppose Meg expected too much of Mr. Jenkins when she Named him at the school, but because she opened herself to the seed of goodness within this incredibly frustrating character, she was able to watch him blossom into a truly beautiful person. What a wonderful illustration of the healing power of compassion...
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I've always loved how Wrinkle and Wind flow together...they really work to show a progression or growth in Meg, especially her ability to love. When you compare the endings, you realize how much easier (in retrospect) her first need to love someone (in order to set them free or help them find healing) really was. Charles Wallace was her beloved baby brother; changed for a time when he was swallowed up into an evil entity, but nevertheless, still someone she cherished. Loving Mr. Jenkins was a much harder thing to do! I still recall reading this book as a young teenager and really being struck by the power of the truth that love is an action and not a feeling. It sounds trite to say that now (kind of a no-brainer) but at that particular season in my life, it was a very important thing for me to learn/re-learn. And I learned it much more deeply through this story than I think I would have just hearing someone said it as a kind of platitude.
I think that's so often the case, that ideas like that sink in more deeply and naturally when they're part of a story rather than just said flat out. Showing rather than telling, like they always tell you in wrting classes... And love as an action is something worth thinking about often - an action to consciously perform day after day...
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