The Act of Creating

We will not have the courage . . . to keep our child’s creativity, unless we are willing to be truly “grownup.” Creativity opens us to revelation, and when our high creativity is lowered to two percent, so is our capacity to see angels, to walk on water, to talk with unicorns. In the act of creativity, the artist lets go the self-control which he normally clings to and is open to riding the wind. Something almost always happens to startle us during the act of creating, but not unless we let go our adult intellectual control and become as open as little children. This means not to set aside or discard the intellect but to understand that it is not to become a dictator, for when it does we are closed off from revelation.

— Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water, p. 75, quoted in Madeleine L’Engle, Herself, compiled by Carole F. Chase, p. 54.

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