Incarnational

In her chapter, "Names and Labels", L'Engle talks about the power of naming things and how labels can create misconceptions and pigeonholes.

Here's an extended passage from that chapter, the question is simply, "What do you think?"

"Not long ago a college senior asked if she could talk to me about being a Christian writer. If she wanted to write Christian fiction, how was she to go about it?
I told her that if she is truly and deeply Christian, what she writes is going to be Christian, whether she mentions Jesus or not. And if she is not, in the most profound sense, Christian, then what she writes is not going to be Christian, no matter how many times she invokes the name of the Lord

...If I understand the gospel, it tells us that we are to spread the Good News to all four corners of the world, not limiting the giving of light to people who already have seen the light. If my stories are incomprehensible to Jews or Muslims or Taoists, then I have failed as a Christian writer. We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it...

...What we are is going to be visible in our art, no matter how secular (on the surface) the subject may be. Some of those angry etchings of Hogarth, depicting the sordidness and squalor and immorality caused by social inequities of his day are profoundly incarnational, for they are filled with anguished pity for the thief and the prostitute and the scum of the earth, and this compassion is Christ's."

---What do you think?

Christian Art?

For our first discussion question from Madeline L'Engle's Walking on Water, we look at the first few pages. How do people of faith view art? How does the Christian community view art?
It seems as though the Church tends to label things "Christian" and "Secular"? Why is that?

On p. 5 L'Engle writes, "Christian Art? Art is art; painting is painting; music is music; a story is a story. If it's bad art, it's bad religion, no matter how pious the subject. If it's good art...and there the questions start coming, questions which it would be simpler to evade." What do you think of that paragraph?

Think about it and respond and comment, or store in the back of your mind as you read along.

Happy reading!

Getting Started...

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This month's book is Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, by Madeline L'Engle.

Read more about her life here: Madeline L'Engle

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