Thanks, Madeline!

A short post of encouragement to you writers and artists of all sorts of there. It’s from Madeline L’Engle’s book Walking on Water, which is about faith and art. Here’s the quote:

“Great art. Great artists. What about all the rest of us little people, struggling with our typewriters and tubes of paint?

The great ones are still the best mirrors for us all because the degree of the gift isn’t what it’s all about. It’s like the presents under the Christmas tree: the ones which came from Woolworth’s may be just as rejoiced over as the more expensive ones, and best of all are those which are handmade and which may have cost love rather than money. Perhaps it’s something like the parable of the workers in the vineyard; maybe those who worked through the heat of the day were the Michelangelos and Leonardos and Beethovens and Tolstoys. Those who were able to work one hour served their gift of work the best they could. And as in Alice in Wonderland, everybody gets prizes; there is the same quality of joy in turning  a perfect bowl on the potter’s wheel as in painting the Sistine Chapel.

The important thing to recognize that our gift, no matter what the size, is indeed something given us, for which we can take no credit, but which we may humbly serve, and in learning, learn more wholeness, be offered wondrous newness.

Picasso says that an artist paints not to ask a question but because he has found something and he wants to share – he cannot help it – what he has found.”

“Those who were able to work one hour served their gift of work the best they could.” 

I struggle constantly with not having enough time to give to my writing, and this line blew me away. Maybe it will do the same for you.

Thanks, Madeline.