Last Chance to Register for the Glen!
The Glen Workshop is less than two weeks away, but there’s still time to sign up and join us for a week in beautiful New Mexico. The theme for the week, "God of the Desert: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam through the Prism of Art" will provide a focal point for discussion. Workshops during the day will focus on honing your craft—as of today, there are still openings in Songwriting with Over the Rhine, Playwriting with Mark St. Germain, and Fiction with Moira Crone. If you prefer a non-workshop class devoted to study and discussion, we offer a seminar, Peoples of the Book, taught by Rodger Kamenetz, which is also still open. Afternoons and evenings will feature readings and presentations by top notch artists and writers, along with performances by Pierce Pettis and Over the Rhine. There will also be some free time on the schedule, including a free day on Thursday, when you can rest or take advantage of the many offerings in the area. The Glen Workshop takes place at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico July 29 – August 5, 2007. We hope to see you there.

Click here to register or call us at (206) 281-2988.

Eve and the Fire Horse
An audience favorite at the Sundance Festival, Eve and the Fire Horse is a lovely debut film by Canadian Julia Kwan. The protagonist is a child caught between cultures and faiths in the Chinese immigrant community in Vancouver during the 1970s. Her parents and grandmother are still immersed in the old Chinese culture where remnants of Buddhism consort with a general emphasis on “luck” (something one can find with difficulty and easily lose). After her grandmother dies, Eve and her older sister Karena encounter Christianity in the form of the Catholic Church. Karena assumes the role of stern moralist, bent on a mission of evangelism and self-mortification. Eve, who is gifted with a hyper-active imagination and much less certainty than her sister, feels caught between the two cultures. That imagination of hers allows for some “magical realism” in the film, which comes off well, with the sort of seamlessness that good magical realism should possess. Karena is a divider of sheep and goats, but Eve is driven to be a reconciler. In one delightful scene Eve imagines Jesus dancing with Buddha in her living room at night. This sounds cuter and more precious than it actually is in the film. One of the refreshing things about Eve and the Fire Horse is that it refuses to engage in caricature, even in its portrayal of religion. The Christianity in the film can be moralistic and abstract, but it also impels its adherents to acts of love and generosity. The ensemble cast, including actors brought in from Hong Kong and Los Angeles, is terrific. And the soundtrack is pitch perfect. Eve and the Fire Horse is currently playing in a few art houses, but it will be available on DVD starting July 24.

Click here to visit the film's website and buy the DVD.

The Innocence Mission: We Walked in Song
Having reached the end of their second decade together, The Innocence Mission recently released their seventh full length album, We Walked in Song. Masters of understatement, the band extends its oeuvre in this album by inhabiting the beauty of common things. “Oh, undeserved sweetness and light,” Karen Peris sings near the beginning of the album, “stay by my side. / We will go out in the morning now.” This statement, then, becomes the album’s trajectory. Throughout eleven songs—all written by Karen—the lyrics gaze at the dazzling grace of particular people and locales. On the album’s wistful opening track, “Brotherhood of Man,” the song’s narrator recalls airports, subways, and a certain girl from Spain. New York plays a central role on “Into Brooklyn, Early in the Morning,” a song dealing with the emotions of departures and arrivals: “Beautiful life, full of grieving, / so will sing the Russian choir, / they will sing in the square / as you come down through the Brooklyn air.” For all its geographical specificity, however, We Walked in Song remains an album focused on the human—and the human pondering the transcendent—in everyday life. With “My Sisters Return from Ireland,” the album concludes on a tenuous note of hope: “What did you see? / …If somebody calls to me / I’m hoping to not fear, not fear to answer. / How will it be?” Following in the footsteps of Befriended and Now the Day is Over, the new album has been well received by critics and fans alike. Pitchfork Media calls We Walked in Song “…a testament to the durable, slow-burn beauty of their work, and their softness of touch—a light that rarely feels lite.” Recorded in 2006 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, We Walked in Song was engineered and mixed by Don Peris, and features Karen and Don Peris and Mike Bitts. The band has recently concluded a brief tour of the East Coast.

Visit The Innocence Mission online.

EnVision Church
In a day when many feel compelled to go outside the church to find beauty, EnVision Church actively works to bring art into sacred spaces. An online resource provided by The Georgetown Center for Liturgy, EnVision Church offers a broad and thoughtful spectrum of art specifically created for sacred spaces. Resources for integrating art and liturgy can be few and far between, especially those with an eye toward excellence and beauty, so it’s refreshing to find a website as thoughtfully constructed and comprehensive as EnVision. Drawing largely on Catholic tradition, its mission is to strike up a forum for anyone interested in learning how to create a worship space that enriches the life of a specific community according to its needs. The site covers everything from the practical issues (effective acoustics, art commissions gone wrong) to seasonal challenges, such as preparing a space for the season of Advent. It also looks at creative examples of installations, architecture, even needlework, for inspiration. With articles reflecting on the interplay between the arts and liturgical tradition, images of worship spaces from six continents, a list of upcoming religious art events and announcements, and a library of glossaries, bibliographies, and church documents, EnVision demonstrates a deep appreciation for worship—seasonal, environmental, and sacramental. As a new site, EnVision is open to suggestions, discussion, and contributions, but even in its infancy already offers a wide array of insight into Catholic aesthetics and worship as it seeks to “generate a community of people whose interests, talents, creativity, and collaborative spirit will bring about a deeper and richer worship life for the Church.”

To go to the EnVision Church website, click here.

The Dauber Wings by Theodore Worozbyt
Theodore Worozbyt’s first poetry collection, The Dauber Wings, gathers up impressions like leaves along a path. The earth, the labor applied to it, and our sense of ourselves in it yield a quiet backdrop for the movement of human delight and desire in these poems. Simple domestic routines, like cooking, are traced back to the “mulched soft red clay / with newspapers and the neighbor’s leaves,” giving the reader a persistent feeling that there is nothing in the world that stands on its own, disconnected from its origins or the material work of coaxing it to completion. Worozbyt revels in that sense of process, the “elements of the human / we push into the real / world of things by an action / of the hand, the lips, the tongue.” With something of the romantic about him, he places human life within a greater being, a shared mystery that responds and moves with our movement. Because we are part of the same stuff, nothing is beyond reach, from the lost neighborhood dog woeful on the porch, howling like the memory of a loved one recently dead, to the “golden arms / of each galaxy” reaching down to our own bodies, bound to each other in the light cast across them from the bedroom window. Most lovely in these poems are the Keatsian moments where fullness and decay, rest and work, meet, when “All of the delicious insistence of the skin / soughing against the skin / has fallen away too slowly to have witnessed” that the time for rumination has come to an end, and the time to pick up one's tools is again at hand.

Theodore Worozbyt’s poems have been published in Image #50. To see his Artist of the Month page, click here. To buy a copy of The Dauber Wings, click here.

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Lauren Winner Lecture at Regent College
On August 1, 2007 Regent College will present a free public lecture by Lauren Winner entitled Autobiography of a Bookworm: Notes from My Reading Life. This event is part of a series of free public lectures given by Regent professors, visiting teachers, authors, and others from around the world. The lecture is free and will be held from 8:00-9:30 p.m. in the Regent College Chapel. These lectures tend to draw large crowds, so plan to arrive early for a good seat. Private taping is not permitted. An audio recording may be ordered following the lecture.

For more information, click here.

This section lists ongoing exhibits and events that have been featured in previous issues of ImageUpdate. Click on the links for more information.