Tao Te Ching, Verse 6, Part I

“The valley spirit never dies,
It is the mysterious female.
The gate of the mysterious female,
Is the root of Heaven and Earth.
It exists forever in continuum,
And using it, it is inexhaustible.” (Tao Te Ching, Verse 6, Cheng Translation)

I recently started reading Walking on Water, by Madeleine L’Engle. I’ve been so inspired by my recent fiction experiments that I decided to begin working my way through the writing section at our public library. this was the first book in the section, so I checked it out. the subtitle is “Reflections on Faith and Art.” I’ve only just begun to read it and it’s much, much more than I suspected. you may remember my attempt to explain the principle of wei wu wei (doing-not-doing). I think this is the principle that God is trying to hammer into my brain at present because it’s being reinforced everywhere around me all the time. I don’t have any idea if L’Engle has even ever heard of wei wu wei, but she sums it up so well that I felt that I had to make her today’s primary speaker:

“When the artist is truly the servant of the work, the work is better than the artist; Shakespeare knew how to listen to his work, an so he often wrote better than he could write; Bach composed more deeply, more truly, than he knew; Rembrandt’s brush put more of the human spirit on canvas than Rembrandt could comprehend.
When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.
But before he can listen, paradoxically, he must work. Getting out of the way and listening is not something that comes easily, either in art or in prayer.
Before I can listen to God in prayer, I must fumble through the prayers of words, of willful demands, the prayers of childish, “Gimmes,” of “Help mes,” of “I want…” Until I tell God what I want, I have no way of knowing whether or not I truly want it. Unless I ask God for something, I do not know whether or not it is something for which I ought to ask, and I cannot add, “But if this is not your will for me, then your will is what I want, not mine.” The prayers of words cannot be eliminated. And I must pray them daily, whether I feel like praying or not. Otherwise, when God has something to say to me, I will not know how to listen. Until I have worked through self, I will not be able to get out of the way.
Someone wrote, ‘The principle part of faith is patience,” and this applies, too, to art of all disciplines. We must work every day, whether we feel like it or not; otherwise when it comes time to get out of the way and listen to the work, we will not be able to heed it” (L’Engle 17 and 18).

I’ll leave you with once again with Siji Tzu’s commentary:
“As told by the ages, everything is of the Dao. Everything is not the Dao. We are all born with it. We are all born without it. If you will use it, then use it.” (Siji Tzu Commentary)