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David Griffith is a writer to watch--politically engaged and bitingly funny, but never shrill. His passion for social justice is grounded in his engagement with art and religion--two lenses of vision that, rightly understood, sharpen our awareness of irony and ambiguity rather than stifling them. His essay collection A Good War is Hard to Find meditates on the photos of prison abuse at Abu Ghraib and the culture that made them possible. The pieces are poignant, sad, comic, witty; his prose sleek, intelligent, and deeply humane. This is no dry, theoretical tract. The pieces bounce from personal narrative to heavy intellection and back again, as Griffith considers a welter of cultural influences, from Susan Sontag to Star Trek, Aquinas to Esquire. But as the title hints, the dominant influence is Flannery O’Connor’s notion of transformative violence. Griffith’s combination of talents and interests is rare indeed: he is working the same territory as Thomas Merton in books like Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander and Seeds of Destruction. In short, this is cultural criticism with a soul.

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If you pick up the annual fiction issue of the Atlantic, you’ll find a short story by Image’s 2006-07 Milton Center Fellow, Jessica Murphy Moo. (The Atlantic now publishes one fiction issue each year instead of including fiction in its regular issues, and has a circulation of about 425,000.) It’s heartening to see a young, emerging writer get this kind of national exposure--and to know that the Milton Center played a part in Jessica’s success. The Milton Center Fellowship gives postgraduate writers nine months of peace and quiet to develop a first book manuscript, and Jessica says her time as a fellow allowed her a daily writing rhythm and momentum she couldn’t have found otherwise. Set at a marina in Hingham, Massachusetts, her Atlantic story follows a man with almost no positive qualities apart from loyalty. Jessica’s prose is spare and speedy, and the story’s antihero is so comically and tenderly drawn in all his venial selfishness that the devastating ending perfectly balances shock and inevitability. Stop by a newsstand between now and October 15 to pick up a copy. The issue also includes a Wendell Berry short story about grief, community, and place, a haunting Dick Allen poem, and a wistful piece on book touring by Ann Patchett—three writers who’ve been in Image’s pages.

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Nearly two years after word of its impending release, My Brightest Diamond recently issued their second album, A Thousand Shark’s Teeth. Envisioned as a string-quartet project influenced by Ravel and Debussy, the album’s six-year development saw the music expanded to include a variety of instruments--harps, woodwinds, mallet percussion, guitars, and strings. The result, however eclectic and pop-informed, still sounds like an almost classical album. Among other influences, singer Shara Worden notes the album draws from “the star exploration themes of Anslem Kiefer’s paintings, the imaginary landscapes of photographer Robert Parke Harrison, films by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and Alice in Wonderland.” Softly played strings combine with the voice Jeff Buckley once claimed “could make angels cry” on the track “If I Were Queen,” conjuring a fantastical romance. “Black and Costaud” borrows lyrics from a Ravel opera, while the orchestral “To Pluto’s Moon” uses the reality of space to speak about the distance experienced in a painful relationship. Never one to wallow in heaviness, Worden’s playful side inevitably shows itself on “Apples.” In the song, the narrator charms domestic chores into whimsical suggestiveness: “Sometimes on Saturdays when it's raining / we do laundry / Especially then I like to watch you / fold so carefully the clothes / Especially then I like to watch you move your fingers slow.” The comparisons to Bjork and Jeff Buckley are apt, but Worden’s unique voice and willingness to experiment continue to place her in a category with few others. While A Thousand Shark’s Teeth takes more concentration to fully appreciate than Bring Me the Workhorse, the album’s unusual complication and beauty rewards repeated listenings. The album was produced by Husky Höskulds (Tom Waits, Elvis Costello), and Worden wrote the lyrics, composed its string arrangements, and co-engineered the project. My Brightest Diamond will be touring throughout July and August.

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Anyone who has written a memoir, kept a diary, or shared a personal testimony could be said to have participated in an act of narrative theology. That impulse to frame our individual lives with a clear and comprehensible narrative is what Alan Jacobs explores in his new book, Looking Before and After: Testimony and the Christian Life. Jacobs examines the tradition of telling individual life stories as an inherently religious practice; it is a tradition with roots in Scripture and in Augustine (whose Confessions he discusses at length in a chapter on memory). The trick is telling the story well, without succumbing to narcissism or sentimentality, and without trying to force a happy ending or “make quick sense of our lives.” Our task is to bear witness to the truth, including the hard parts--the details that stubbornly refuse to fit into preconceived ideas of what a story’s shape should be. When, for example, Jacobs tries to tell the story of his own Christian conversion by fitting it into that genre of the evangelical “testimony”--a simple dichotomy of “I once was lost, but now am found”--he ends up with what he calls “a hump-backed, deformed sort of thing; a bifurcated story, lacking all elegance and compelling force.” Trying to force one’s life into such a neat, clean-cut form may be aesthetically tempting, but it’s almost always misguided and eventually frustrating. So what might it mean to make stories out of our individual lives? Jacobs explores this question in his discussion of narrative theology. Careful to distinguish between individual life stories and individualism, Jacobs points out that understanding one’s own life in narrative terms can be a way of serving the larger community: in having a story, individuals can offer a kind of wisdom to the community. Beginning with this philosophical-theological discussion, the book’s subsequent chapters illustrate Jacobs’ ideas with stories from his life and the lives of other people. Looking Before and After makes a compelling study for anyone interested in memoir or autobiography--why should we craft a narrative out of our lives, and how can we do so properly, with both humility and hope? For certainly narrative-making is a valuable human impulse, as Prince Hamlet says in one of the book’s epigraphs: “Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, / Looking before and after, gave us not / That capability and god-like reason / To fust in us unused.”

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Jeanine Hathaway is a poet who knows how to dance along the edge of the precipice. As a former Dominican nun, a mother, and a teacher, she understands that the stakes in life are high, that love is haunted by fear, faith dogged by doubt, and professional life complicated by ego. And yet her skeptical eye remains wedded to a lyrical sense of the ways in which the good can be experienced...and celebrated. Take a turn or two with her.

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On September 14 -21, 2008, Image will gather a small group of inquirers in Florence, Italy, to explore what has been called "the first Renaissance," a remarkable moment in the cultural history of the West. Together we will investigate the ways in which three great late-medieval figures--Dante Alighieri, Giotto, and Saint Francis of Assisi--renewed the culture of Europe and left a legacy of Christian Humanism that continues to nourish and inspire. And we will ask how their vision of art and faith can speak to the work of cultural transformation in our time. The seminar includes visits to the great churches and museums of Florence, lectures by some of the world's leading authorities on the Renaissance, a field trip to Assisi where we will encounter the living spirit of St. Francis, wonderful meals, and time to enjoy each others' company. If you're interested, visit the Florence Seminar page, download the Florence Brochure PDF for more info, or contact Julie Mullins here.

If you like reading about great new art and writing inspired by faith in ImageUpdate, and you're ready to get down to reading and seeing the stuff itself, it's time to subscribe to Image. Each quarter our editors comb the world of art and letters to bring you our favorite new work--work that respects transcendent mystery as well as the gritty truth of the material world that bears the divine imprint. A one-year subscription gets you four beautifully produced issues delivered right to your door. Ninety percent of the journal's content is not available on our website, but only through what we call "the sacrament of print." Click here to get the magazine Terry Tempest Williams calls "evocative and inspiring" and Bret Lott calls "the most meaningful literary journal being produced today."

Publisher: Gregory Wolfe
Managing Editor: Beth Bevis
Layout: David Rither
Contributors: Beth Bevis, Mary Kenagy, and Matt Malyon

ImageUpdate is the biweekly e-mail newsletter from Image, a quarterly print journal that explores the relationship between Judeo-Christian faith and art through contemporary fiction, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, film, music, and dance. Each issue also features interviews, memoirs, essays, and reviews.

ImageUpdate brings you news about books, CDs, organizations, websites, conferences, exhibitions, and tours--all of which inhabit the intersection between faith and imagination. ImageUpdate will also notify you whenever a new issue of Image is printed, an Image event is upcoming, or new content is posted to our website.

Copyright © 2008 Center for Religious Humanism. All rights reserved.