JMRZ

“The moment of inspiration does not come to someone who lolls around expecting the gift to be free. It is no giveaway. It is the pearl for which we have to pay a great price ... the price of that vulnerability which often allows us to be hurt ... If we're given a gift ... then most of us must serve it.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

“What feels like suffering, depression, uselessness—moments when God has withdrawn—are often deep acts of trust and invitations to intimacy on God’s part.”
― Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe

“Kairos. Real time. God's time. That time that breaks through chronos with a shock of joy, that time we do not recognize while we are experiencing it, but only afterwards, because kairos has nothing to do with chronological time.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

“To write a book is for me very much the same thing as to pray. Both involve discipline. If the artist works only when he feels like he, he's not apt to build up much of a body of work. Inspiration more often comes during the work than before it, because the largest part of the job of the artist is to listen to work, and go where it tells him to go. Ultimately, when you are writing, you stop thinking and write what you hear.

To pray is to listen also, to move through my own chattering to God, to that place where I can be silent and listen to what God may have to say ... The greatest moment of prayer come in the midst of fumbling and faltering prayer, rather than the odd moment when one decides to try to turn to God.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art