Madeleine L'Engle, Walking On Water: Reflections On Faith And Art Quotes
If we are to be aware of life while we are living it, we must have the courage to relinquish our hard-earned control of ourselves.
When I am constantly running there is no time for being. When there is no time for being there is no time for listening.
The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.
When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.
We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift.
But I am a storyteller, and that involves language, for me the English language, that wonderfully rich, complex, and ofttimes confusing tongue. When language is limited, I am thereby diminished, too.
but BEing time is never wasted time. When we are BEing, not only are we collaborating with chronological time, but we are touching on kairos, and are freed from the normal restrictions of time.
But when the world is, indeed, in chaos, then an affirmation of cosmos becomes essential.
We all tend to make zealous judgement, and thereby close ourselves off from revelation.
As long as we know what it's about, then we can have the courage to go wherever we are asked to go, even if we fear that the road may take us through danger and pain.
Jesus was not a theologian. He was God who told stories.
Jesus was not a theologian. He was a God who told stories.
In art, either as creators or participators, we are helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we were asked to endure...
Ridicule is a terrible witherer of the flower of imagination. It binds us where we should be free.
Aeschylus writes, "In our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grade of God.
In the act of creativity, the artist lets go the self-control which he normally clings to and is open to riding the wind.
Creativity is a way of living life, no matter what our vocation, or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts...
If the artist reflects only his own culture, then his works will die with that culture. But if his works reflect the eternal and universal, they will revive.
What we are is going to be visible in our art, no matter how secular (on the surface) the subject may be.
To try to talk about art and about Christianity is for me one and the same thing, and it means attempting to share the meaning of my life, what gives it, for me, its tragedy and its glory.
Freedom is a terrible gift, and the theory behind all dictatorships is that "the people" do no want freedom.
Reading about the response of people in stories, plays, poems, helps us to respond more courageously and openly at our own moments of turning.
Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.
