Walking On Water: Reflections On Faith And Art (2001) - Plot & Excerpts
I reread this after reading it over 15 years ago as a first-year student in college. In fact, I reread the same copy and had a nice little dialogue with my naive-yet-earnest 17-year-old self who desperately wanted to understand faith, writing and the creative process, and who underlined far more passages about angels and Jesus than I thought possible.My main assessment? L'engle's insights on the nature of the creative process hold up well and resonate with my faith identity even now, so much so that I was astounded to see how many of her concepts I echo to my classes almost verbatim. I had no idea how much L'engle's perspective had seeped into my very bones and informed my own way of understanding how art is made.Is it a perfect book? No. L'engle's got some misguided ideas about the virtues of the generic male pronoun, which are beyond my understanding and frankly offensive to me as a woman writer trying to find my identity in a patriarchal world. She's also not a fan of abstract art, of art that maintains chaos instead of making "cosmos out of chaos," yet I think representing chaos is its own form of justice. But she makes both of these points and moves on, thank God.These relatively minor qualms aside, L'engle helped me understand why the Christian faith, in particular, is one that I find so meaningful, especially when it comes to explaining the mystery of writing. It's the idea of incarnation, of Word-made-flesh, of God-becoming-human, of creation out of the deep that makes me stick to the religion of my childhood and turn to it when I'm trying to wrestle the divine from the ether and onto the page.Some of my favorite passages:"Art is art; painting is painting; music is music; a story is a story. If it's bad art, it's bad religion, no matter how pious the subject. If it's good art -- and there the questions start coming, questions which it would be simpler to evade" (14)."I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, 'Here I am. Enflesh me" (18)."Art is communication, and if there is no communication it is as though the work had been still-born" (34)."We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually" (38)."We cannot Name or be Named without language. If our vocabulary dwindles to a few shopwork words, we are setting ourselves up for a takeover by a dictator. When language becomes exhausted, our freedom dwindles -- we cannot think; we do not recognize danger; injustice strikes us as no more than 'the way things are'" (39)."Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos we see despite all the chaos" (46)."There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation" (50)."And as Christians we are not meant to be less human than other people, but more human, just as Jesus of Nazareth was more human" (59)."The artist must be open to the wider truths, the shadow side, the strange worlds beyond time" (80).“The painters and writers who see the abuse and misuse of freedom and cry out for justice for the helpless poor, the defenseless old, give me more hope; as long as anybody cares, all is not lost. As long as anybody cares, it may be possible for something to be done about it; there are still choices open to us; all doors are not closed. As long as anybody cares it is an icon of God’s caring, and we know that light is stronger than the dark” (104).“Despite our inability to control circumstances, we are given the gift of being free to respond to them in our own way, creatively or destructively” (105).“We need the prayers of words, yes; the words are the path to contemplation; but the deepest communion with God is beyond words, on the other side of silence” (128).“The creative artist is one who carries within him[/her] the wound of transcendence” (129).“…the artist is someone who is full of questions, who cries them out in great angst, who discovers rainbow answers in the darkness, and then rushes to canvas or paper. An artist is someone who cannot rest, who can never rest as long as there is one suffering creature in this world” (143).“Ultimately, when you are writing, you stop thinking and write what you hear” (149).“In prayer, in the creative process, these two parts of ourselves, the mind and the heart, the intellect and the intuition, the conscious and the subconscious mind, stop fighting each other and collaborate” (162).
I'm not big on reading books on writing (particularly on how to write, which this isn't). Reading books about faith is always a little hard as it was something I did when I was younger and little insane. A friend recommended this to me years ago now and it (much like Mere Christianity which I still haven't finished) took me probably a year to read as I would pick it up and put it down and pick it up again. I wish that I'd read this when I was younger and belonged to a church that pretty much said any art except Christian art was wrong. That mindset certainly threw my belief system and self identity into a spin and needless to say I left that particular church and went to explore a variety of beliefs which I'm grateful for doing.It's not the religious bent that matters so much to me with Walking on Water. I'd imagine it might matter more to some people and less to others. It was the feeling that all the things I'd thought about art, about beauty, about what it means to create and where does that creation come from weren't solitary to myself alone. That L'Engle pondered things like that as well. And that it wasn't some form of insanity. (Though writing certainly feels like it sometimes.)She had so many interesting things to say. Many that struck me on a very personal level. I had more than a few moments where I paused and thought: Wow, okay, yeah, I totally get that.For me, it was a comforting book to read. I'm very thankful to have had it recommended to me.
What do You think about Walking On Water: Reflections On Faith And Art (2001)?
I've read at least one book by Madeleine L'Engle every decade of my life, starting with _A Wrinkle in Time_ when I was a child. Madeleine's theology does not always match my own, but I deeply respect her thoughtfulness and depth. This book is about the arts. I love that Madeleine does not encourage Christians to stay with "safe" art (Thomas Kinkade comes to mind). Truth can be captured by some very unlikely artists and humanity is the richer for it. Come to think of it, I believe Madeleine L'Engle has earned a place in that club! Highly recommended.
—Poiema
Trying to encompass all my thoughts and feelings about this book would take...well, a book. Or some approximation thereof. This is my second time reading it and I find that once again it reaches and touches me on so many levels. I find joy here, and inspiration; the book *makes* me want to write. It gives me fuel, or refuels me, if you will. I am reminded of the adventures that unfold in both life and art when we take the time to simply *listen* to the story, to the vision, the photograph, the art, the still small voice. I am reminded that we live mostly on the tip of the iceberg while the larger part of ourselves, of life, the part we cannot really control, lies below the surface -- and when we listen, when we let go of fear of the unknown, we find ourselves, we find true freedom. We are more than we know.And this is how I want to live, how I want to write -- in truth, and hearing that roar on the other side of silence.Read it. And follow your art.
—Anna
This is a book I come back to over and over since I first read it. I think it's a must-read for everyone, whether you consider yourself and "artist" or not. Madeliene L'Engle (who I've read and loved so much now that I feel like she's a friend, I want to meet her in heaven) has a beautifully rambly, conversational approach in this book, and because of it so much of who she is surfaces. It's like you just followed her around for a week and experienced her life and thoughts, and the truths that she has learned over a lifetime of creating and following God flow out of her naturally, like breathing. One of my favorite take-aways in this book is the concept that "Christian" art doesn't really exist. Instead, L'Engle frames the world in terms of art and non-art (or at least good art and bad art), and posits that good, true art is also, by virtue of being true art, Christian; while bad art, no matter who does it, is not. This theme come sup several times. Another theme I love is her exploration of the artist as a listener, as a co-creator. She talks about her writing--as well as the work of composers, painters, dancers, and all artists--as an act of giving birth, being willing to do the work to communicate and give flesh to something outside yourself that wants to be expressed, to be told, to be given to the world. This, she concludes, is why many artists are able to write and create what better than their own ability truly allows, in ways that communicates what is beyond them.
—Leslie
