Re-reading this great collection of thoughts on art and spirituality by Madeleine L’Engle called “Walking on Water”.

One of my favorite of her many great, wise and well named truths she carried: “Artist are the ones who still see the angels around us! They see angels in the background, which allows them to interpret the foreground better.”

We certainly are in times where you need to see the angels behind things! En-couraging and enlightening reading her thoughts on art and spirituality today!
“If you can’t see the angels in the background, it’s hard to interpret the foreground.” In this sense, artist are interpreters.

Artist are people who still see angels!

In times likes ours, when the foreground is so noisy and boisterous, contentious and fermenting, we need the holy silence of the background in order to walk on. To walk on water that is. Elijah prayed that the eyes of his student would be opened to see the angelic host which were present on the scene!

May we continue to see angels friends! The setting is actually bigger than the stage! Nothing has changed about that. We still live in an enormous room. It is the job of artist to make us aware of its dimensions. Doesn’t the great sonic architecture of music do that directly for us; or a magnificent building which points beyond itself do!

She says about Peter: “As long as he didn’t remember that we human beings have forgotten how to walk on water, he was able to do it. Artist help us remember that we too can walk on water! They heal our loss of memory. Artist are those who are willing to incarnate, more of what actually is here! The chief job of a teacher is to help us remember al that we have forgotten.”

In this sense, artist are teachers and interpreters, who allow others to see that they too can walk on water, or as with Chagall, float above city rooftops!
So many great quotes in this collection of her thoughts on art and faith. Another which felt apropos for our times: “But when the world is, indeed, in chaos, then an affirmation of cosmos (ordered design) becomes essential.” Fun resonating with this wise woman artist today!

She writes about spirituality and art because, as she says: “My feelings about art and my feelings about the Creator of the Universe are inseparable!” Here was a woman with an integrated imagination who could read the skies or interpret the times. Isn’t that more of what we need these days!

This writer’s art and spirituality were integrated. There was no division in her between sacred and secular. The kingdom had come into both areas of her being, so she was free to think about and create her art as overflow of her spirituality!

Nice to be reminded of those who had baptized imaginations! And the result of course, was good art and living. Also, just nice hearing an artist talk about art in humble urgency. Art not just as luxury, but as essential to knowing, interpreting, understanding. Don’t we need such interpreters now, more than ever?! Those who model living between worlds, or seeing more of what is, and walking on water! What a great and needed wrinkle in time she was!