Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L’Engle is a beautiful book to
read during Advent when you are quietly waiting and assessing your writing
life. L’Engle makes me question my motives. Am I being honest? I don’t just
write for love. I also write for money. Am I listening and getting out of my
own way? Yes and no, but I need to do this better. Spend more time in quiet and
prayer. I love how Madeleine equates the sense of writing in flow to the same
as when in contemplative prayer. I never made the connection before but it can be a
similar state. Do I want the children to see this? What a wonderful question.
Sometimes when I look at movie previews and I see something isn’t appropriate
for our children, I realize it isn’t appropriate for me either. I love that
about her books. They are for everybody. And this book in particular is a book
for all Christian writers as she explores the relationship between faith and
art. It is a book I’ve savored and marked up and I suspect I will come to it
again and again.
Without
further ado, let me share a few quotes to whet your appetite:
“I have to
try, but I do not have to succeed. Following Christ has nothing to do with
success as the world sees success. It has to do with love.”
“We are
all asked to do more than we can do.”
“The child
is aware of unlimited potential, and this munificence is one the joys of
creativity.”
“Creativity
opens us to revelation.”
“So we
must daily keep things wound: that is, we must pray when prayer seems dry as
dust; we must write when we are physically tired, when our hearts are heavy,
when our bodies are in pain. We may not always be able to make our “clock” run
correctly, but at least we can keep it wound so that it will not forget.”
“Time is
to be treasured, worked with, never ignored.”
“Choice is
an essential ingredient of fiction and drama.”
“What if –
the basis of all story.”
“My
stories affect my Christianity, restore me, shake me by the scruff of the neck,
and pull this straying sinner into an awed faith.”
“Remember
– the root word of humble and human is the same: humus: earth. We are dust. We
are created; it is God who made us and not we ourselves. But we were made to be
co-creators with our Maker.”
This book
reminds me why I write. Writing and family life brought me to Jesus, and when
you possess this great Treasure, you cannot keep it to yourself. My thoughts
echo L’Engle’s: “If I understand the Gospel, it tells us that we are to spread
the Good News to all four corners of the world, not limiting the giving of
light to people who already have seen the light. If my stories are
incomprehensible to Jews or Muslims or Taoists, then I have failed as a
Christian writer. We draw people to Christ … by showing them the light that is
so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”
Beauty,
then, will save the world.
Thanks to Blogging
for Books for the review copy. Cross-posting this review to Amazon.
My family will get a big laugh out of this. When I was little, everybody called me a chatterbox. And that nickname has persisted even though I am a quiet person. But there is also a desire to talk, to be heard, and in writing, I have discovered an outlet. But the writing itself can be very distracting from what I need to hear. I've had a couple of days alone to ponder and pray what it is I need to work on this year and it happens to be silence. Maybe I will fail spectacularly, but I have to try to cultivate more silence so that I can listen better. Listen to the still, small voice of God within my heart. Listen to the stories. Listen to my husband, children and friends. Listen.
