Reading about the response of people in stories, plays, poems, helps us to respond more courageously and openly at our own moments of turning.
Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious.
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.
We do learn and develop when we are exposed to those who are greater than we are. Perhaps this is the chief way we mature.
You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.
A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.
