Walking on Water

by Madeleine L'engle

  It may be that we have lost our ability to hold a blazing coal, to move unfettered through time, to walk on water, because we have been taught that such things have to be earned; we should deserve them; we must be qualified. We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift.

  But a child rejoices in presents!

  —

  Finley Eversole, in The Politics of Creativity, writes,

  In our society, at the age of five, 90 percent of the population measures “high creativity.” By the age of seven, the figure has dropped to 10 percent. And the percentage of adults with high creativity is only two percent! Our creativity is destroyed not through the use of outside force, but through criticism, innuendo…

  by the dirty devices of this world. So we are diminished, and we forget that we are more than we know. The child is aware of unlimited potential, and this munificence is one of the joys of creativity.

  Those of us who struggle in our own ways, small or great, trickles or rivers, to create, are constantly having to unlearn what the world would teach us; it is not easy to keep a child’s high creativity in these late years of the twentieth century.

  —

  It would be only too easy to blame all the dirty devices on the secular world. Some of them, alas, come from the churches, in the form of well-meaning distortions which once sprang from something creative, but which have been changed until they have become destructive.

  Truth, for instance: we all want truth, that truth which Jesus promised would make us free. But where do we find it? How could it have happened that even in the church story has been lost as a vehicle of truth? Early in our corruption we are taught that fiction is not true. Too many people apologize when they are caught enjoying a book of fiction; they are afraid that it will be considered a waste of time and that they ought to be reading a biography or a book of information on how to pot plants. Is Jane Eyre not true? Did Conrad, turning to the writing of fiction in his sixties, not search there for truth? Was Melville, writing about the sea and the great conflict between a man and a whale, not delving for a deeper truth than we can find in any number of how-to books?

  And Shakespeare and all the other dramatists before and after him! Are they not revealers of truth? Why then, in some evangelical colleges where I have lectured, are there “Speech Departments,” and the students produce and act in plays, but the department cannot be called “theatre,” because theatre is wicked and not true?

  I have been married to an actor for thirty-four years, and I know him to be a man of total integrity who could not possibly live a life of untruth. I have witnessed his widening knowledge of truth as he has grappled with the characters he has depicted on the stage.

  At two colleges during the past year, colleges widely separated geographically, earnest young women have asked me, “How does your husband reconcile being on television with being a Christian?”

  My reply is an analogy, a story. I tell them of one time when our children were young and the play my husband was in was closing, and he would shortly be out of work.

  He came home from the theatre one night with the script of a new play in which he had been offered a juicy role. He gave it to me to read, and when I had finished, I simply handed it back to him. He nodded. “I wouldn’t want the kids to see me in this. I’m not going to take it.”

  We needed money for rent and food and clothes for our growing children. Hugh needed a job. But the criterion he used was: Would I want the kids to see me in this?

  If he didn’t care about truth and integrity, what the kids saw him in wouldn’t matter.

  Perhaps this is an insight into Christian art.

  If we try to follow in Jesus’ way, what the children see us in does matter. Jesus told his friends and disciples over and over again that not only were they to let the little children come to him but that they were to be like little children themselves. When we are like little children, with the openness the child has up until the age for school, then we retain our ability to be creators, our willingness to be open, to believe.

  I need not belabour the point that to retain our childlike openness does not mean to be childish. Only the most mature of us are able to be childlike. And to be able to be childlike involves memory; we must never forget any part of ourselves. As of this writing I am sixty-one years old in chronology. But I am not an isolated, chronological numerical statistic. I am sixty-one, and I am also four, and twelve, and fifteen, and twenty-three, and thirty-one, and forty-five, and…and…and…

  If we lose any part of ourselves, we are thereby diminished. If I cannot be thirteen and sixty-one simultaneously, part of me has been taken away.

  Some of my friends and I have remarked that it would be marvellous if we could go back to college now; if we could go back to college and be eighteen again but keep everything we have learned in the intervening years, how much more we would get out of it! The marvellous thing is that in the writing of fiction we can, indeed, be eighteen again, and retain all that has happened to us in our slow growing up. For growing up never ends; we never get there. I am still in the process of growing up, but I will make no progress if I lose any of myself on the way.

  We will not have the courage or the ability to unlearn the dirty devices of which Traherne warns us, or to keep our child’s creativity, unless we are willing to be truly “grown-up.” Creativity opens us to revelation, and when our high creativity is lowered to 2 percent, so is our capacity to see angels, to walk on water, to talk with unicorns. In the act of creativity, the artist lets go the self-control which he normally clings to and is open to riding the wind. Something almost always happens to startle us during the act of creating, but not unless we let go our adult intellectual control and become as open as little children. This means not to set aside or discard the intellect but to understand that it is not to become a dictator, for when it does we are closed off from revelation.

  Scientists sometimes understand this better than theologians. Dr. Friedrich Dessauer, an atomic physicist, writes,

  Man is a creature who depends entirely on revelation. In all his intellectual endeavor, he should always listen, always be intent to hear and see. He should not strive to superimpose the structures of his own mind, his systems of thought upon reality….At the beginning of all spiritual endeavor stands humility, and he who loses it can achieve no other heights than the heights of disillusionment.

  Creative scientists and saints expect revelation and do not fear it. Neither do children. But as we grow up and we are hurt, we learn not to trust, and that lack of trust is a wound as grievous as whatever caused it.

  It strikes me that perhaps I am elevating scientists and downgrading theologians, and that is not true, nor fair. For the few scientists who live by revelation there are many more who are no more than technicians, who are terrified of the wide world outside the laboratory, and who trust nothing they cannot prove. Amazing things may happen in their test tubes and retorts, but only the rare few see the implications beyond the immediate experiment. They cannot trust further than their own senses, and this lack of trust is often caught by the rest of us.

  I was told of a man who had a small son he loved dearly, and so he wanted to protect him against all the things in life which frighten and hurt. He was emphatic in telling the little boy that nobody can be trusted. One evening when the father came home, his son came running down the stairs to greet him, and the father stopped him at the landing. “Son,” he said, “Daddy has taught you that people are not to be trusted, hasn’t he?” “Yes, Daddy.” “You can’t trust anybody, can you?” “No, Daddy.” “But you can trust Daddy, can’t you?” “Oh, yes, Daddy.” The father then held out his arms and said, “Jump,” and the little boy jumped with absolute trust that his father’s arms were waiting for him. But the father stepped aside and let the little boy fall crashing to the floor. “You see,” he said to his son, “you must trust nobody.”

  I trusted my parents, thank God, and I think that my children
trust me. We all fail each other; none of us is totally trustworthy; but the more we are trusted, the more we become worthy of trust.

  There is much that the artist must trust. He must trust himself. He must trust his work. He must open himself to revelation, and that is an act of trust. The artist must never lose the trust of the child for the parent, not that of the father who knew only the “heights of disillusionment,” but the trustworthiness of most of us flawed and fallen parents who nevertheless try to do the best we can for our children.

  Jesus told us to call the Lord and Creator of us all Abba. Not only Father or Sir or Lord, but Abba—Daddy—the small child’s name for Father. Not Dad, the way Daddy becomes Dad when the children reach adolescence, but Daddy, the name of trust.

  But how can we trust an Abba who has let the world come to all the grief of the past centuries? Who has given us the terrible gift of free will with which we seem to be determined to destroy ourselves?

  We trust the one we call Abba as a child does, knowing that what seems unreasonable now will be seen to have reason later. We trust as Lady Julian of Norwich trusted, knowing that despite all the pain and horror of the world, ultimately God’s loving purpose will be fulfilled and “all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”

  And this all-wellness underlies true art (Christian art) in all disciplines, an all-wellness that does not come to us because we are clever or virtuous but which is a gift of grace.

  From Aristotle I learned that a story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. That, as the Red King advised Alice, it should begin at the beginning, go on to the end, and then stop. That when we are at a play or looking at a painting or a statue or reading a story, the imaginary work must have such an effect on us that it enlarges our own sense of reality.

  Let me return to Aristotle’s “that which is probable and impossible is better than that which is possible and improbable.” I’ve been chewing on that one since college, and it’s all tied in with Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief.” If the artist can make it probable, we can accept the impossible—impossible in man’s terms, that is. Aristotle, not knowing the New Testament, could not add, “With man it is impossible; but with God all things are possible.”

  —

  The artist at work is less bound by time and space than in ordinary life. But we should be less restricted in ordinary life than we are. We are not supposed to be limited and trapped. As a child it did not seem strange to me that Jesus was able to talk face to face with Moses and Elijah, the centuries between them making no difference.

  We are not meant to be as separated as we have become from those who have gone before us and those who will come after. I learned to know and understand my father far more after his death than during his life. Here we are on the border of the tremendous Christian mystery: time is no longer a barrier.

  As I read and reread the Gospels, the startling event of the Transfiguration is one of the highlights. You’d think that in the church year we would celebrate it with as much excitement and joy as we do Christmas and Easter. We give it lip service when we talk about “mountaintop experiences,” but mostly we ignore it, and my guess is that this is because we are afraid.

  A summer or so ago, some Congregational ministers decided that they would like to go to a church service on this feast day, and checked out the three nearest Episcopal churches. Not one of them was having a celebration. So my son-in-law, Alan, who was on vacation, held a Communion service in the tiny chapel of their home, for the Congregational ministers and some family and friends.

  We are afraid of the Transfiguration for much the same reason that people are afraid that theatre is a “lie,” that a story isn’t “true,” that art is somehow immoral, carnal, and not spiritual.

  The artist must be open to the wider truths, the shadow side, the strange worlds beyond time. And because God has given his creatures the difficult gift of free will, the artist has more temptations to abuse the gift than—say—the banker or the accountant. Some artists abuse the gift in their private lives while remaining true to it in their work. Some abuse it in their work, and the proliferation of pornographic books and movies is a sad example. The more freedom we are given, the more possibilities we have of abusing this freedom.

  We are afraid, and we back off, and some ministers looking for a church service on the Feast of the Transfiguration can’t find one.

  The Christian holiday which is easiest for us is Christmas because it touches on what is familiar; and the story of the young man and woman who were turned away from the inn and had a baby in a stable, surrounded by gentle animals, is one we have always known. I doubt if many two- or three-year-olds are told at their mother’s knee about the Transfiguration or the Annunciation. And so, because the story of Christmas is part of our folklore (we might almost say), we pay more attention to its recognizableness than to the fact that the tiny baby in the manger contained the power which created the galaxies and set the stars in their courses.

  We are not taught much about the wilder aspects of Christianity. But these are what artists have wrestled with throughout the years. The Annunciation has been a favourite subject of painters and poets because gestation and birth-giving are basic to any form of creation. All of us who have given birth to a baby, to a story, know that it is ultimately mystery, closely knit to God’s own creative activities, which did not stop at the beginning of the universe. God is constantly creating, in us, through us, with us, and to co-create with God is our human calling. It is the calling for all of us, his creatures, but it is perhaps more conscious with the artist—or should I say the Christian artist?

  In literal terms the Annunciation can only confound us. But the whole story of Jesus is confounding to the literal-minded. It might be a good idea if, like the White Queen, we practiced believing six impossible things every morning before breakfast, for we are called on to believe what to many people is impossible. Instead of rejoicing in this glorious “impossible” which gives meaning and dignity to our lives, we try to domesticate God, to make his mighty actions comprehensible to our finite minds. It is not that the power to understand is not available to us; it is; he has promised it. But it is a power far greater than the power stations for our greatest cities, and we find it easier not to get too close to it because we know that this power can kill as well as illuminate. Those who try to use it for their own advantage come to disaster, like Simon Magus in the Acts of the Apostles. But then, Simon Magus thought that he was qualified, that power was his due. And this has been the downfall of dictators throughout history, and this century seems to have had an inordinate number of them.

  —

  In so-called primitive societies there are two words for power, mana and taboo: the power which creates and the power which destroys; the power which is benign and the power which is malign. Odd that we have retained in our vocabulary the word for dangerous power, taboo, and have lost mana. Power always has both of these aspects, as the storyteller knows. The sex drive can make love and babies, and it can lead to divorce and murder. The power lines which give us our electricity are mana when we touch a switch in the dark and the room is lit. They are taboo when a fireman on an aluminum ladder slips and his ladder touches a power line and he is electrocuted. It is this double aspect of power which the artist must be brave enough to explore. Sound can ennoble and inspire, as in the case of a Beethoven symphony. A director friend of mine used subliminal sound during the production of a murder play, and on the opening night so many people fainted that he had to cut off the sound which had such a terrifying effect even though it was not consciously heard. A painting of a nude body can glorify the wonder of incarnation or it can titillate and degrade.

  This extraordinary power, when it is in the hands of a great genius, is linked with the power which brought the galaxies into being and orchestrated the music of the spheres.

  This power, which is impossible for the finite being to grasp in any conclusive fashion
, touches on the probable impossible essence of that which is really real. Perhaps for the Christian the Incarnation is the best example of that magnificent “probable impossible.” It has been called the “scandal of the particular,” for to many people it is scandalous that the Lord of the universe should condescend to come to his people as an ordinary man, with every human restriction. Why would ultimate power choose to limit itself in such a humiliating fashion? Is this really what love is about? The answer to this question has challenged artists throughout the centuries. How can this probable impossible be real?

  —

  And what is real? Does the work of art have a reality beyond that of the artist’s vision, beyond whatever has been set down on canvas, paper, musical notations? If the artist is the servant of the work, if each work of art, great or small, is the result of an annunciation, then it does.

  Hamlet is. When the play has been read, when the curtain goes down on the performance, Hamlet still is. He is, in all his ambivalence, as real as Byron or as the man who cried out, “Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief,” or as Ivan Karamazov. The flight of stairs up which George MacDonald’s princess had to climb would be there whether or not MacDonald had ever written The Princess and the Goblin. The storm still rages around King Lear. The joy of Bach’s gigue at the end of the Fifth French Suite does not depend on a piano for its being.