I have always enjoyed Madeleine L’Engle’s work from the time that my mom read it to me as a child. Although now that I’m older I’m realizing how controversial some of her ideas our to the rest of the world. I have really enjoyed the first six chapters of the book “Walking on Water” that I have read so far. My favorite chapter out of 4–6 has to be the 4th chapter “A Coal in the Hand”. This chapter is about God’s love for us and how that love lets us produce true art without the fear of expectations.
“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 own defenses of self-protection in order to be free to receive and give love” (L’Engle, 2001, p. 71).
Before we can receive love from others we have to tear down our own walls that we have put up in order to protect ourselves from the world around us. In order to block the painfulness of the world the easiest way is to detach ourselves from the world, but in order to do this we also take away the feeling of pure joy and settle for something less. The only way to feel pure joy is to take a leap of faith. To have that childlike faith that God is your Abba and that he will take care of you. That does not mean that life will always be full of butterflies and rainbows, but that you embrace life and see it for what it is instead of what it seems. The world tells us that we our loved because we contribute something productive and positive to it. Although God tells us “[w]e are loved because we are His children, because we are” (L’Engle, p.72). There is nothing that we have to do to earn God’s love. In I John 4:19 it says that, “we love God because He first loved us.” Since God has given us love which conquers all fear we are able to break our walls down and let God’s love shine though us. We build up walls because we fear the pain that the world will inflict on us. One of my favorite quotes that talks about leaving your fear behind and embracing love by Marianne Williamson.
More specifically looking the the second half of the poem about being liberated by our own fears.
“You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
By doing this we are able to share God’s love for us to the rest of the world. Another quote that I liked from Madeleine L’Engle was about when we do get hurt and how we can find comfort in God’s love for us.
“No matter how much we are hurt, God knows about it, cares about it, and so, through His love, we are sometimes enabled to let go our hurts” (p. 76). Many times when we are hurt humans crawl into a ball and close ourselves off from the world because numbing ourselves is a lot easier then embracing and dealing with the pain itself, but on the flip side we are never able to completely heal from the experience. We are embittered about the world and see the world through our broken lens instead of seeing the world through God’s lens. What we cannot see is that “when wounds are healed by love the scares are beautiful” (David Bowles).
For me this is such a radical concept because typically human see scars as being hurt so bad that your body could not heal properly. Although God sees it as a way to break us so that He can make us whole again. When we share our art with the world we are disregarding the fear of will this be excepted by the world and leaning on God’s love and glory and sharing it with the world. This is why all art is Christian art because whether the artist is Christian or not it is still reflecting God’s glory within us all.
