I am reading Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water for the second time. It is a delightful book that quickly pulls me up out of the daily humdrum and into the delightful, truthful world of creativity and art. She defines art as creating cosmos out of chaos and challenges me to see homemaking as more than a task, but an art; Creating imaginative cosmos, rather than dull order, out of the chaos that inevitably befalls each day. Perhaps when I finish a book review will come, but for now I wanted to copy a few quotes.

I have always had a strong passion for language. Sloppy grammar and ill-used vocabulary always irritates me. It was a tough move from Oregon to Texas. I suppose southern dialect along with dishes, laundry and fatigue have caused my passion to wane. I had nearly forgotten my love of words until L’Engle made my heart sing with her stout reminder. Isn’t it heart-warming to find a kindred-spirit and fellow soldier for a cause close to your heart? But without further ado, here is what she has to say on reading and language . . .

“Creative involvement: that’s the basic difference between reading a book and watching TV. In watching TV, we do nothing. In reading we must become creators. Once the child has learned to read alone and can pick up a book without illustrations, he must become a creator, imagining the setting of the story, visualizing the characters, seeing facial expressions, hearing the inflection of voices. The author and the reader “know” each other; they meet on the bridge of words.”

“We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually.”

“If our vocabulary dwindles to a few shopworn words, we are setting ourselves up for takeover by a dictator. When language becomes exhausted, our freedom dwindles - we cannot think; we do not recognize danger; injustice strikes us as no more than ‘the way things are.’”

Anyone else see that happening both in current politics and in our churches? Hmmm….

“Where language is weak, theology is weakened.”

Perhaps I will write more on L’Engle as I finish the book, but for today, let us be inspired to read to our children. May they not be doomed to the shrunken vocabulary of modern pop culture! If our children are only learning vocabulary form TV, advertisers, marketers, political rhetoric and dumbed down church services, they are likely to fall prey to them.