Walking on Water

I recently began re-reading Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water and have found myself challenged and inspired by her words.

Sometimes in the process of writing about art, of trying to analyze and pick it apart, I find myself losing sight of what I even do it in the first place. I forget why I even care about “good” art versus “bad” art, and why I want to encourage the former and redeem the latter. L’Engle’s book reminds me, and I highly recommend it to anyone who believes that art should be more than it is. As such, I thought I’d just share a few quotes that have been particularly meaningful, not just as a critic, but as a human and a Christian.

“…to serve music, or painting, or words is a religious activity, whether or not the conscious mind is willing to accept that fact. Basically, there can be no categories such as ‘religious’ art and ‘secular’ art because all true art is incarnational, and therefore ‘religious.’ ”

“I might even go to the extreme of declaring that the deliberate dimunition of vocabulary by a dictator, or an advertising copywriter, is anti-Christian.”

“Jesus was not a theologian. He was a God who told stories.”

“In art we are once again able to do all the things we have forgotten; we are able to walk on water; we speak to angels who call us; we move, unfettered, among the stars.”

“There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation.”