Quotes about Spirituality
If she wanted to write Christian fiction, how was she to go about it? I told her that if she is truly and deeply a 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.
— Madeleine L'Engle
Gregory of Nyssa points out that Moses's vision of God began with the light, with the visible burning bush, the bush which was bright with fire and was not consumed; but afterwards, God spoke to him in a cloud. After the glory which could be seen with human eyes, he began to see the glory which is beyond and after light. The shadows are deepening all around us.
— Madeleine L'Engle
And another lovely paradox: we can be humble only when we know that we are God's children, of infinite value, and eternally loved.
— Madeleine L'Engle
Our children... have a passionate need for the dimension of transcendence, mysticism, way-outness. We're not offering it to them legitimately. The tendency of the churches to be relevant and more-secular-than-thou does not answer our need for the transcendent. As George Tyrrell wrote about a hundred years ago, If a [man's] craving for the mysterious, the wonderful, the supernatural, be not fed on true religion, it will feed itself on the garbage of any superstition that is offered to it.
— Madeleine L'Engle
Jesus was not a theologian. He was a God who told stories.
— Madeleine L'Engle
We live by revelation, as Christians, as artists, which means that we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions, and we become smug like the Pharisee who listed all his considerable virtues and thanked God that he was not like other men.
— Madeleine L'Engle
And joy, Grandfather would remind me, joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.
— Madeleine L'Engle
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
— Madeleine L'Engle
It's better to take it out on God. He can cope with all our angers. That's one thing my long span of chronology has taught me. If I take all my anger, if I take all my bitterness over the unfairness of this mortal life, and throw it all to God, he can take it all and transform it into love before he gives it back to me.
— Madeleine L'Engle
there are powers of love in the universe, and as long as you respond with love, they'll help you.
— Madeleine L'Engle
I've gone out alone and bellowed in rage at God at the top of my lungs. But the fact that I bellow at him I suppose proves that I think he's there, doesn't it? Go ahead and be mad at God if you feel like it, Vicky. [...] But remember when you're yelling at God, what you're doing is saying, Do it MY way, God, not YOUR way, but MY way
— Madeleine L'Engle
dis-aster is separation from the stars. Such separation is disaster indeed. When we are separated from the stars, the sea, each other, we are in danger of being separated fromĀ God.
— Madeleine L'Engle