Walking on Water by Madeleine L'Engle Page B

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
no
body.”
    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