Madeleine L'Engle(0/0)
The Risk of Birth
This is no time for a child to be born, With the earth betrayed by war & hate And a comet slashing the sky to warn That time runs out & the sun burns late. That was no time for a child to be born, In a land in the crushing grip of Rome; Honour & truth were trampled by scorn- Yet here did the Saviour make his home. When is the time for love to be born?…
All art is cosmos
All art is cosmos, cosmos found within chaos.
Being time is never wasted time
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. In moments of mystical illumination we may experience, in a few chronological seconds, years of transfigured love.
Caiaphas asked no whys
Caiaphas asked no Whys. He was frozen into the rigidity of the religious establishment of Jesus' day, and because of this frozenness, he feared Jesus as a blasphemer.
Few serious artists are able to live lives which are without interruption
Many people in walks of life which do not involve creation, are completely unaware of the necessity for discipline. It is not only that few serious artists who live lives of debauchery produce a large body of work, but that few serious artists are able to live lives which are without interruption. We do not shed all obligations when the children leave home. I am working on this section of this manuscript while teaching an intensive four and a half hour credit course, and neither may be skimped.…
In art we are helped to remember
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 are asked to endure, we who are children of God by adoption and grace.
Lack of trust is a wound as grievous as whatever caused it
Creative scientists and saints expect revelation and do not fear it. Neither do children. But as we grow up and we are hurt, we learn not to trust, and that lack of trust is a wound as grievous as whatever caused it.
The greatest moments of prayer come in the midst of fumbling
To work on a book is for me very much the same thing as to pray. Both involve discipline. If the artist works only when he feels like it, he’s not apt to build up much of a body of work. Inspiration far more often comes during the work than before it, because the largest part of the job of the artist is to listen to the work, and to go where it tells him to go.…
The opposite of sin can only be faith and never virtue
The opposite of sin can only be faith, and never virtue. (Quoting H.A. Williams)
Unless we are creators we are not fully alive
Unless we are creators, we are not fully alive.
We are afraid of this kind of prayer
To serve a work of art is almost identical with adoring the Master of the Universe in contemplative prayer. In contemplative prayer the saint (who knows himself to be a sinner, for none of us is whole, healed and holy twenty-four hours a day) turns inwards in what is called “the prayer of the heart,” not to find self, but to lose self in order to be found. We are afraid of this kind of prayer, we of the twentieth century Judeo-Christian tradition.…
We have to be braver than we think we can be
We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are, to see through plastic sham to living, breathing reality, and to break down our defenses of self-protection in order to be free to receive and give love.
When the artist is truly the servant of the work the work is better than the artist
When the artist is truly the servant of the work, the work is better than the artist. Shakespeare knew how to listen to his work, and so he often wrote better than he could write; Bach composed more deeply, more truly than he knew; Rembrant’s brush put more of the human spirit on canvas than Rembrandt could comprehend. When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere.…
Anything Jesus did in his lifetime is available to us too
We were not meant to be any more restricted than Jesus was during his sojourn with us here on this earth. If we take seriously that during the time of his Incarnation he was truly man, truly human as we are, than anything he did in his lifetime is available for us, too.
Before I can listen to God in prayer I must fumble through the prayers of words
Before I can listen to God in prayer, I must fumble through the prayers of words, of willful demands, the prayers of childish “Gimmes”, of “Help mes,” of “I want…” Until I tell God what I want, I have no way of knowing whether or not I truly want it. Unless I ask God for something, I do not know whether or not it is something for which I ought to ask, and I cannot add, “But if this is not your will for me, then your will is what I want, not mine.…
I didn't understand it but I knew what it was about
A yound woman said to me, during the question-and-answer period after a lecture, “I read A Wrinkle in Time when I was eight or nine. I didn’t understand it, but I knew what it was about.”