Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art
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3. Do you agree that prayer and the creative process are similar in that “the mind and the heart, the intellect and the intuition, the conscious and the subconscious mind, stop fighting each other and collaborate”? How has this been true for you, if at all? Have you ever considered your prayer life and your creative life to be so linked? Do you feel that these things—mind, heart, intellect, intuition, conscious, subconscious—really do collaborate when you are in prayer? How? Do they collaborate when you are creating?
4. Do you think that “a certain amount of stubbornness—pigheadedness—is essential” to your art? Talk about a time you have had to demonstrate these qualities in order to be true to your calling as an artist.
5. The author says that “our work should be our play,” and uses the example of a child at play to illustrate this. Have you ever seen a child “seriously at play” as L’Engle describes? Talk about what you’ve witnessed, and consider how you can learn from this child’s example. What did the child at play have in that moment that perhaps you lack in your own work? Do you think it is possible to “be at play” in your work?
Chapter 11: The Other Side of Silence
1. Do you find it “a joy to be allowed to be the servant” of your work? What do you think the author means by this? How are you a servant to your work? When are you most joyful in work?
2. Part of L’Engle’s creative process includes collecting ideas for stories much like one might collect and sort ingredients for a meal. She says she drops ideas, characters, settings into different “pots” on the stove of her imagination, and when it comes time to write, she brings the pot that is the most full to the front. Do you relate to this method? How do you cultivate your ideas for your art? Does inspiration tend to come slowly or all at once for you?
3. L’Engle talks about the difference between knowing deeply and knowing consciously. She argues that we tend to think of the word know in a purely intellectual sense but that there are many things we know that cannot be intellectually defined. For example, “in the realm of faith I know far more than I can believe with my finite mind.” Discuss some of the things you know deeply in this way. How do you know that your spouse or child or sibling or friend is being truthful about something? Has anyone ever said to you, “You know me better than I know myself!”? What do you think they mean by this? Do you think it is true, that we can know someone more deeply than they know themselves?
4. In allowing herself to be surprised, and in letting go of her conscious control over her art and allowing the work itself to lead her, L’Engle is able to work “on the other side of silence.” What do you think she means by this phrase? Have you ever experienced this? She goes on to say that “the disciplines of the creative process and Christian contemplation are almost identical.” Do you agree with her? How are these disciplines similar? How are they different?
5. Is community important to your creative life? Do you tend to create in isolation? How does community change your work? In what ways do you try to engage or disengage from your community in order to produce your best work?
Chapter 12: Feeding the Lake
1. Do you agree that “it is not possible to be a Christian while refusing to be vulnerable”? Why is vulnerability important? How was Jesus vulnerable? How are you vulnerable?
2. Here, in the final chapter, L’Engle says, “I am beginning to see that almost every definition I find of being a Christian is also a definition of being an artist.” Have you found this to be true in the course of your reading? Why do you think being a Christian and being an artist are so similar? Or, if you don’t agree, why do you think she is wrong?
3. Do you agree that we are all called to enter into death in order to be reborn? What does this mean to you spiritually? What does it mean to you artistically? The author says that “the great artists [die] to self in their work.” What do you think this means?
4. What is the “lake” the author refers to in this chapter? How are you “feeding the lake”? Do you believe all of humanity feeds this lake, or is it possible for people to opt out, if you will, of this communal act?
5. L’Engle states that Peter “remembered how” to walk on water for “one brief, glorious moment” when Jesus called out to him on the lake. Do you believe that some part of your soul “remembers” how to walk on water? Have you ever felt as if you were walking on water? Do you want to?