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 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 some into both areas of her being, so she was free to create her art. 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. 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!

Just being with, in silence…
The gift of just sharing silence with someone at the same table, cannot be underrated! Did it today with a friend, and that silence was a mutual honoring. What a gift. When you are comfortable in yourselves together, sometimes there is no need for talk. There is just a knowing respect of being.

When you are a person who is constantly aware of others and their needs, and having to adjust accordingly, it is a special gift when you can just be silent together in the same space with another; it’s a holiday or sabbath of/for being. It’s the little love exchanges which restore us daily! Thankful for silent exchanges today!

By the end (from a dream)
The dawn saluted me with night’s echo.
And the evening contained the whole day.
I am old now and freer.
More myself and can listen
with no threat of loss.
I care more for small things
and birds than before
i also fell in love with the image of cities
and tried to construct them back together with paint
and love. I listened to the young man’s dreams more deeply
and went myself finally into a dream…
it was our most common form of talking over the years
as He lit a fire towards the end of night
on the balcony of my being,
he held me like a brother
or best friend, and we walked on together
where we all do-into the dawn which we always saw.
i no longer fear you
i’m coming closer to loving you for who you really were
all along. that is love’s progress, isn’t it-
the flowers which finally come to be seen.
the flowers also finally came to me
and opened their secret lives.
life was closer to what it was meant to be
by the end. i couldn’t stop talking about it though
words never ceased. But more of his silent thoughts
eventually engulfed me like an angelic bath, or unseen fragrance
i was much more myself by the end
and we were living next to a huge fountain.
And, mainly by the end we were all friends. I greeted
everyone the same, by bowing and sending out
my inner dawn salutes!

On not throwing the Baby out with the bathwater…
“I can lean back and critique christian culture with artist or christians of any stripe, i still end up respecting Christ, and wanting to go farther into His actual Life and way (and I often, then find some who are living that out)…it’s just hard to beat the way of kindness, gentleness, self sacrificial laying down your lives for others, and the royal law of love. And the true empowerment offered in Him to live that out.
It’s still my favorite way down here, despite us all, and our poor attainment of it. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, as they say. Although the bathwater is very dirty at times. We really are praying to clean the water also. So that His Face comes clear through our grime!” anonymous monk.

I can lean back and critique christian culture with artist or christians of any stripe, i still end up respecting Christ, and wanting to go farther into His actual Life and way…it’s just hard to beat the way of kindness, gentleness, self sacrificial laying down your lives for others, and the royal law of love. And the true empowerment offered in Him to live that out. It’s still my favorite way down here, despite us all.

I can lean back and critique christian culture with artist or christians, i still end up respecting Christ, and wanting to go farther into His actual Life and way…

From an article I’m working on about what is art to me:
The paint on my spiritual home, or a highway leading towards…
Art is not my ultimate, but I meet my Ultimate often there! We often commune in the tabernacle of creativity. Some people worship art, i don’t. But it is a tabernacle of worship and transformation with the One I love most. He makes art sacred, as He does with everything He touches, even me. Art has become for me, a tabernacle of meeting Thee, a cross road of being. In this sense, it is the paint on my home.
Art is not my destination, it’s the road of encountering it. It’s the place I find my truer image, where my name skids out, or sometimes just walks towards, or hitches a ride into Another better Name.

Art is not my ultimate, but I meet my ultimate often there! We often commune in the tabernacle of creativity. Some people worship art, i don’t. But it is a tabernacle of worship with the One I love most. He makes art sacred, as He does with everything He touches, even me. Art has become for me, a tabernacle of meeting Thee.

Incarnated ethics…some days, the kindness of the Lord is so salient and palatable or even tastable. Just processing here, a trauma I came upon yesterday afternoon…

Came home with blood on my elbows today from helping up an older gentleman who had had too much heat for today….
Jesus is a Man of kindness. I watched him today, being kind to us all.
A man i know was stumbling towards his motorcycle drunk from the heat, and a few too many beers for this level of heat. I followed him and said, maybe some more water will help, and just chill today. I had the awareness that he would crash or pass out if he went back into the heat, as soon as I walked into the cafe.
Jesus gave me that sense. We each play our part.
So I said, hey maybe you can show me some camera stuff, as i know he is into cameras. But he had had one of those days. He shook my hand, and said, no i’m fine. I asked him if he had family troubles. He just wouldn’t open up, so i just went to another table and started praying for him. He is a older man, who is normally a very gregarious and giving person, and kind himself to strangers—has that gift of making others feel welcomed. Anyways…after some time he slipped outside and tried to get his motorbike running. I tried to stop him, and said it’s too hot, maybe more water and we can hang for a while inside. But he insisted, he only had two blocks to go…
He got on the bike fell, spun into the street, nearly being hit by a truck, and then fell and hurt his head, and face badly. I picked him up, held him for a while until a nearby nurse came and said, what can i do to help.
Let’s get him inside and give him some water and dignity. I kept trying to make eye contact, but his eyes were swirling. Im not sure what happened to him earlier, but he wasn’t present.
He could still shake your hand, but wouldn’t receive help. We got the blood off, and the nurse looked at him, and said he didn’t have a concussion. So we called a ride and some more help to get him home, and talked with his family on his phone.
Still he got to that point where he had to have help. He was on the pavement, with on coming traffic. We pulled him out, and eventually, after much work got a ride home for him. It’s also always amazing to me, how quickly God knows what to do. I remembered exactly how to pick up a recently wounded person, in a way which is safe. I trained years back in that sort of thing, but you never know what you remember how to do in actual traumas. We got him safely out of the road, and his bike turned off, and set up straight, so no gas would leak and start a fire etc….always amazing how fast accidentally happen, and how quickly God intervenes. And so many angels are always around as well, which I always sense.
Jesus is always working on everyone in each situation, so i always try to consider what he has me doing, but more importantly what others actually need. But, mainly, in trauma, I’m always blown away by His Kindness to everyone involved, including me. I somehow, miraculously remembered how to lift and man and a motorcycle off pavement without hurting his neck or getting us all killed. And then the nurse came, and others…God continues to be good. But I always notice His Kindness in all directions in this types of traumas.
I’ve been in lots of traumas, and it’s always the same—God is kind to the weak, as Psalm 41 teaches, and even blesses those who help the weakest on very bad days. God is also always present on all sides of the event. I saw this at 911—catching bodies, helping people grieve, considering the nearby areas etc. And that was an epically bad day for so many.
All of us have bad days, and there but for the Grace, go all of us—onto the pavement having bit off more than we can chew that day.
We tried to treat this man with dignity and respect when he was weakest. I hope and trust he felt God with us, because He certainly was, and is always-kind in all directions.
The whole thing made me think of Dallas Willard’s embodied ethics, where he wrote that Jesus gets inside of you to the point it’s no longer the question of what would Jesus do, but you find yourself doing what He IS doing now!

More from my journal today:
And in the quiet part of the day, we finally share our true words and mean them from the bottom of us.
And they touch something, stir something, mean something to someone somewhere, in hope. Our words finally settle into themselves and can really bless, despite us.
And in the meantime, we rush and blaze and trail to know the competition of being alive; we interrupt ourselves; we try to react, work, guard too hard or defend….but then again, the evening comes for our words, and we know—
what St John told us: “blessed are you who know and rest in The Word….” We finally place our silly unusual and gorgeously expressive words in His Living Word-founding them in His foundry, and finding our names hidden somehow in His.
And we are again astounded that He held our names as and in love’s whisper for so long. He held His breath for us to form!
And then our tone comes clear, we are obviously near, then, to our real words. What we were meant to speak each day, at least by evening.