Book Review: Walking on Water

I thoroughly enjoyed Madeleine L'Engle's book, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. It was the type of book that you can read several pages at a time and then put down for a while to ruminate over what you have read. There were wonderful insights into Christianity and the inner workings of the artist.

I was privileged to hear Madeleine L'Engle speak during my four year stint at Wheaton College. I probably even took notes. However, I'd be hard pressed to find those notes now.

Still, I could not help myself from taking notes from her book. Some of the notes were the words of L'Engle and others were quotes from others that she used in the book.

I loved this quote she offered from Emmanuel, Cardinal Suhard about witnessing:

"To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist."

As she spoke about the purpose of art, I could not help think about why it is so important for a blogger to receive response to one's posts. As L'Engle says, "Art is communication, and if there is no communication it is as if the work has been still-born."

Moreover she encourages the writer to cease being concerned about qualifications. She writes, "In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory.... If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there's no danger that we will confuse God's work with our own, or God's glory with our own."

I appreciated the fact that L'Engle embraces doubt and uncertainty. She says, "The great artists keep us from frozenness, from smugness, from thinking that the truth is in us, rather than in God, in Christ our Lord. They help us to know that we are often closer to God in our doubts than in our certainties, that it is all right to be like a small child who constantly asks: Why? Why? Why?"

She also addressed the idea of story as a pain-killer (something I have thought about quite a bit lately when I have battled pain). She used as an illustration the story of her own granddaughter, Lena, who at the age of nine was hit by a truck while riding her bike. She was in desperate pain and begged often to be read to. While engaged in story, our minds shift focus off the pain.

Finally, I fully applauded her discussion on what the reader wants to gain from a book. She observes, "We don't want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don't want to close a book with a sense that life is totally unfair and that there is no light in the darkness; we want to feel that we have been given illumination."

I think those words capture the essence of my dissatisfaction with several of the books I have read recently. When I get to the end of the book and feel just as gloomy as when I picked it up (or even gloomier), then I regret spending my time reading. I want to read books that "say yes to life."

There were many other excellent observations (the importance of prayer, of remaining open to the voice of God, of being available as a vessel by showing up to write daily, or the awesome responsibility an artist has of capturing what is his or hers to capture). I will certainly have to read this book again because there are so many things that are bound to pop out in additional readings.