walking on water -madeleine l'engle

wow. the joy of finishing a good book after a year and 2 months. started another one that i've always wanted to read. every page leaves me breathless. i can't explain it. there's too much to share. i don't even know where to start. i know that not everyone will feel the same way, but the words just...wow. i'm just speechless and in awe. i don't even know how. i just connect...

>>i. cosmos from chaos

Listen to the silence. Stay open to the voice of the Spirit. Slow me down, Lord.
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Plato spoke of the neccessity for divine madness in the poet. It is a frightening thing to open oneself to this strange and dark side of the divine; it means letting go of our sane self-control, that control which gives us the illusion of safety. But safety is only an illusion, and letting it go is part of listening to the silence, and to the Spirit.
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All learning which is acquired under compulsion has no hold upon the mind. -Plato
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That which is impossible and probable is better than that which is possible and improbable. -Aristotle.
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And as I listen to the silence, I learn that my feelings about art and my feelings about the Creator of the Universe are inseparable. 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.
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Skill may be learned, and if art is merely a skill, then it can be acquired by anybody, and being a painter would merely be the equivalent of being a good dentist's technician or a practiced butcher. It is an honourable thing to be a dentist's technician or a butcher, but neither would claim to be a creator.
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The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birth-giver.
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I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genuis or something very small, comes to the artist and says, "Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me." And the artist either says, "My soul doth magnify the Lord", and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses.
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It helps me to remember that anything Jesus did during his life here on earth is something we should be able to do, too. [...] Sometimes I will sit on a sun-warmed rock to dry, and think of Peter walking across the water to meet Jesus. As long as he didn't remember that we human beings have forgotten how to walk on water, he was able to do it. If Jesus of Nazareth was God become truly man for us, as I believe he was, then we should be able to walk on water, to heal the sick, even to accept the Father's answer to out prayers when it is not the answer that we hope for, when it is no.
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The chief job of the teacher is to help us remember all that we have forgotten. [...] One of the great sorrows which came to human beings when Adam and Eve left the Garden was the loss of memory, memory of all that God's children are meant to be.
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The artist, if he is not to forget how to listen, must retain the vision which includes angels and dragons and unicorns and all the lovely creatures which our world would put in a box marked Children Only.
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Faith is for that which lies on the other side of reaon. Faith is what makes life bearable, which all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.
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"The principle part of faith is patience."