November 19, 2024
One of my favorite books on creativity is Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. In it she explores the intersection of creativity and spirituality.
I was first introduced to L'Engle through A Wrinkle in Time when my friend Jenny recommended it in middle school. I didn't realize until many years later that L'Engle wrote nonfiction, and as I have studied more of the craft of writing, I have learned much from her works.
In Walking on Water, she delves into what it means to be a Christian artist in a world that often compartmentalizes faith and creativity. I heard many times growing up that a Christian writer should only write about overtly Christian themes. However, L'Engle argues that all artistic endeavors are reflections of the Creator and that artists, in their work, participate in the act of creation. She calls it being a co-creator with God. This perspective encourages artists to view their creativity not merely as a talent but as a calling.
One of the passages in Walking on Water that brings this home is as follows:
"If the work comes to the artist and says, "Here I am, serve me," then the job of the artist, great or small, is to serve. The amount of the artist's talent is not what it is about. Jean Rhys [author of Wide Sargasso Sea]said to an interviewer in the Paris Review, "Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake."
I love the idea that we all contribute to feeding the lake, to bringing more creativity into the world. Often artists can get very competitive, acting as though there is only so much inspiration to go around. If we instead view our creativity as something that can only grow, and that our small contributions bring more beauty into the world, that is having a mindset of abundance rather than of scarcity.
So this week I invite you to feed the lake, even if you're the only one to see or hear your creation. It all brings more joy and beauty into the world.
A Fine Picture
I have recently become a huge fan of Andrew Wyeth's painting, and this week I read that a $3 million collection of his and his family's works was being auctioned. The previous owner was Linda Bean, heiress of the LLBean fortune, who passed away in March. While Andrew Wyeth was raised in Chadds Ford, PA, his family had a summer house in Cushing, ME. Both locations feature in his works.
My favorite is Distant Thunder (reproduced here).
Credit: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Book V, Chapter 1
Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. 1972. Harold Shaw Publishers, Wheaton, IL. Pg. 23.
As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, “…one ought every day at least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
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