"Close it! How could it be closed! The door had been opened, and the winds of time were blowing against it, keeping it from closing, almost taking it off the hinges." -An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine L'Engle was one of my favorite authors. She taught me about the vastness of God and His unfathomable Love. She taught me about fusing faith with creativity and realness, not in a preachy way, but simply because Story is Story. Her work Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art is a must-read for Christians interested in entertainment and the arts. Here is an excerpt from it that I adore:

“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.
In college I read some aesthetics; Plato, Aristotle; a great chronological jump to Lamb, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Pater, Rusking. Plato spoke of the necessity for divine madness in the poet. It is a frightening thing to open oneself to this strange and dark side of the divine; it means letting go our sane self-control, that control which gives us the illusion of safety. But safety is only an illusion, and letting it go is part of listening to the silence, and to the Spirit."

How ironic then, that her death late last week would be fused with the news that I myself am going to start writing reviews for Infuze! (Check it out at www.infuzemag.com) Along with Madeleine L'Engle, this website and the people affliated with it have taught me so much over the past few years of what it means to be a Christian who is interested in entertainment and art, and how these things are so intertwined.

Winds of time, indeed!

"why do you keep mentioning the year they died?" -david crowder