Issue #180 | October 21, 2009

Features
Mailing Soon: Image Issue #63
The End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Pain by Scott Cairns
The Crack Between Worlds by Maggie Kast
Without Wings by Laurie Lamon

Gallery Watch
Kathy Hettinga: Grave Images
Craig Alan Huber: Elemental Cross

Message Board
Ruminate Short Story Contest
“Exposed on the Cliffs of the Heart”: A Benefit for the Ignatian Spirituality Center

ImageNews
Image Readings: B.H. Fairchild
Now Available: Bearing the Mystery: Twenty Years of IMAGE
Join Image and Kathleen Norris in Oahu, February 2010
Subscribe to Image in Print

Features

Mailing Soon: Image Issue #63

The fall issue of Image mails later this week. It features the kinetic and introspective figurative paintings of Guy Kinnear, as well as the quiet, spacious, abstract work of the late Taos-based painter Agnes Martin. Also in this issue, Scottish composer James MacMillan explores why our attraction to the sacred endures, particularly in the field of music, despite secular modernity’s attempts to declare religion dead or irrelevant. In a companion piece, his longtime collaborator, poet and librettist Michael Symmons Roberts, considers the librettist’s task of writing “a private letter to the composer.” In a probing and lyric essay on the habit of churchgoing, poet John Terpstra explores why he’s bothered to keep it up, and what it brings him. Don’t miss our special web-exclusive interview with Terpstra on church, woodworking, writing, and more. Film writer Santiago Ramos considers about the new spate of ambitious superhero movies, and investigates the religious implications of superheroes. Preview the first section of his essay here. Also: Dayne Sherman interviews Tim Gautreaux, southern fiction writer and restorer of old machines; poems by John F. Deane, Robert Cording, Daniel Tobin, and others; and Hannah Faith Notess reviews new spiritually oriented young-adult fiction by Sara Zarr, Gary Schmidt, Donna Freitas, and Nikki Grimes.

The End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Pain by Scott Cairns

Scott Cairns prefaces The End of Suffering, the nonfiction book that grew out of his 2006 keynote address at the Glen Workshop, by naming the work for what it is: an essay into the subject of suffering, of human affliction and pain. “I hope to find some sense in affliction,” Cairns writes, “hoping – just as I have come to hope about experience in general – to make something of it.” And what Cairns does, with prose that strides perfectly across the page, is precisely this; he writes to make sense of the suffering we encounter, and cause, and know in our own lives. Cairns does this to counter what he calls a mix of “good intentions and poor theology,” the unhelpful responses that most Christians give to each other when faced with sorrow and loss. If we simply blame God for the suffering that we know, or offer glib niceties about divine goodness (“We don’t know why God would send us a hurricane”),Cairns believes that we miss an opportunity to “lean into” suffering, to see what purpose it might serve. Cairns does not sugarcoat, or offer propositions, or remain aloof; he sees affliction as purposeful because it reminds us that we are severed from creation, from our own selves, and from God. And, though we may suffer from this disconnect, Cairn’s theology centers on the mystical union that draws the Body of Christ together: “Our hope lies in repairing our chronic separation from that body, and in becoming an increasingly conscious member of that body, partaking of and savoring Christ’s ever-presence.” By leaning into our afflictions, and by recognizing our ability to cause the suffering of others, Cairns believes that we can recover that mystical connection, and in so doing, truly hope for healing. Purchase your copy of this book here.

The Crack Between the Worlds by Maggie Kast

Memoirs that center on a conversion experience are common enough, but they can often become cerebral, focused on an inner, intellectual journey. The deepest and most memorable conversion stories embed the journey of the mind within the pilgrimage of the heart; in doing so they anchor theological matters in the small, dense worlds of work and family life. Maggie Kast, who has written on dance for Image (#19), has published just such a memoir, The Crack Between the Worlds. Kast has a harrowing story to tell—including the death of one child and the mystery of another child’s disability—but threads of grace and light run parallel to the pain of loss. Raised in a religion-less family, Kast is drawn to the Catholic Church, but her eventual conversion is anything but sentimental: she struggles with the church she also loves. Another layer that Kast brings to the story is her own creative life as a dancer and choreographer. In both her liturgical and mainstream work, Kast has explored the capacity of modern dance to move beyond prettiness and tackle the big questions. Here’s what Image editor Gregory Wolfe wrote in his endorsement blurb for this book: “In prose that is spare, lucid, and elegiac, Maggie Kast's memoir, The Crack Between the Worlds, tells the story of a pilgrimage and a conversion. A dancer and choreographer, Kast knows that the most expressive gestures—and words—are often the simplest, rooted in the dailiness of our lives. Her search for a faith that can embrace both the tragic sense of life and the ecstatic sacramentality of ordinary matter leads her inexorably to the church whose name means 'universal.' Readers will find in Kast's particular story something universal, moving, and true." We hope you’ll become one of those readers.

Buy your copy here.

Without Wings by Laurie Lamon

Laurie Lamon’s second collection of poetry, Without Wings, makes an excellent autumn read. Like the season, Lamon’s poems reside in the tension between two very different places, and they contain at once the alluring sensuality of summer and the contemplative shroud of winter. The former invites the reader inside by presenting lyrical descriptions that appeal to the senses, such as that of pigeons in the poem “Heaven,” “their pearl gray breasts pulsing with ordinary blood.” However, from this beginning the reader is taken to a much more inward place, subtly drawn towards meditation and the discipline of concentration. A good example of this is Lamon’s poem “Prime Number,” in which each sentence (or more accurately phrase, as the poem is itself one long sentence) begins “It looks like...,” an invitation to sight, to visualization. What follows, though, eludes visualization in any easy sense: “It looks like a man wearing a shawl whose body is / another shawl wrapped around a man who has already / gone to his death in a subway, an office building, / a chair beside a hospital bed....” The questions that lines such as these create in the mind force an attentiveness that yields discoveries much more satisfying than if the answers lay on surface level, easily within reach. Dogs, birds, plants, and various natural elements people these poems more often than actual people do—the most interesting individual is Pain personified, who stars in no fewer than twelve included titles, always “thinking of” something. Pain thinks of wind, death, eschatology, “something biographical,” Alicibiades, and more, but what the reader invariably ends up thinking of is what it means to be human, and to experience life through the disparate lenses of sense, consciousness, and conscience. These are poems that begin in the body, are processed in the mind, and end in the heart.

To own your copy, click here.

Gallery Watch

Kathy Hettinga: Grave Images

Award winning photographer Kathy T. Hettinga will be touring the San Luis Valley and New Mexico to introduce her new book, Grave Images: San Luis Valley, published by Museum of New Mexico Press. It is a deeply personal work for Hettinga, who was widowed at a young age and found comfort in the cemeteries of the San Luis Valley. “I found that the historic Christian images, from simple crosses to figures in niches, were able to contain the profound content of life and death and faith in a tangible physical form,” she writes.“These grave images present the abstract, the intangible, the invisible in a physical form that comforts and speaks to us even now.” Now her photographs have been brought together in a meditative and beautiful collection. Don’t miss the artist at Bookworks in Albuquerque, for a presentation and book signing on Thursday, October 22, from 7:00—8:00 p.m. The following evening she will appear in Santa Fe at the Stewart L. Udall Center for Museum Resources from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. For a preview of her work, click here.

Craig Alan Huber: Elemental Cross

Inscape Gallery, a project of Washington Seminary in Redmond, Washington, is currently hosting an exhibition of photography by Craig Alan Huber that will continue through November 13. This stunning collection depicts silver and platinum images of the cross. Huber has been inexplicably drawn to crosses for the past eleven years, and his fascination has taken him throughout America and Europe in search of them. Each photograph in this collection attempts to capture the universal inspiration of this ancient symbol, while moving the viewer away from worn clichés and into a world of beauty and mystery. View more of Huber’s work here.

Message Board
Post here to reach thousands of readers interested in the intersection of art and faith. We welcome messages about job listings, local events, conferences, prizes, calls for papers, and more. Submit your messages by sending an e-mail here.

Ruminate Short Story Contest

Ruminate Magazine invites you to enter their annual Short Story Prize. The finalist judge for the prize is David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and The River Why. The submission deadline is midnight on Monday, October 26th, 2009, and the entry fee is $15 (includes a free copy of the Spring 2010 issue). The winner will be awarded $500, and both the winning story and runner-up will see their stories published in the Spring 2010 issue. For detailed submission guidelines and to enter your work, visit our website.

“Exposed on the Cliffs of the Heart”: A Benefit for the Ignatian Spirituality Center

On Saturday, November 7th at 6.45 p.m., join us for an exploration of our relationship and responsibility to the earth through the perspectives of these four guest speakers: Sherman Alexie, David James Duncan, Dr. Terry McGonigal, and Dr. Mary Ruckelshaus. Dr. Terry McGonigal, Dean of Spiritual Life at Whitworth University, will invite us to re-consider the biblical call to be “stewards of the earth,” as found in Genesis. Mary Ruckelshaus, ecologist and lead of the Marine Natural Capital Project, will speak about environmental issues of the Puget Sound region in the context of what is occurring globally. David James Duncan, Montana novelist and salmon activist, and Sherman Alexie, Washington writer and National Book Award winner, will respond to the first two presentations by sharing selections from their works. Please join us for what promises to be a dynamic and moving evening. The event will be held at Town Hall, 1119 8th Ave (at Seneca) in Seattle. Advance tickets for $20 are available on the ISC website and will be $25 at the door. For more information contact info@ignatiancenter.org.

ImageNews — The Scoop on Our Programs

Image Readings: B.H. Fairchild

Fairchild's poetry, like the prairie, is deceptively simple and open, but the subtleties and variations are there for the attentive reader to savor and sift through. He is equally at home writing poems about the working class world of his youth (he's been compared to the painter Edward Hopper) and timeless philosophical and theological questions. Fairchild's faith is not something proclaimed; it is something inhabited. His poems have appeared in Southern Review, Poetry, Hudson Review, Yale Review, Paris Review, The New Yorker, Sewanee Review, and many other journals and in several anthologies, including The Best American Poems of 2000.

Click here to hear poems recorded at the 2009 Glen Workshop.

Now Available: Bearing the Mystery: Twenty Years of IMAGE

In the two decades since it began publication, Image journal has not only emerged as one of North America's leading quarterlies, but has also carved out a unique identity as the source for contemporary art and literature that grapple with the perennial questions of religious faith. We are thrilled to announce that Bearing the Mystery, a hardcover anthology of the best that has appeared in the pages of Image for the past 20 years, has just been published by Eerdmans. Bearing the Mystery brings together in one handsome volume the best fiction, poetry, essays, and visual art from Image's first twenty years - the work of nearly seventy writers and twenty visual artists (represented in sixteen glorious color plates). With contributions from the likes of Annie Dillard, Kathleen Norris, Ron Hansen, Wim Wenders, and Denise Levertov, and with a special introduction by founder and editor Gregory Wolfe that meditates on the journal's mission, Bearing the Mystery is indeed a treasure-hoard. In fact, Jeremy Begbie, Thomas A. Langford Professor of Theology at Duke University, calls Image journal “one of the brightest beacons of hope among those who care about the intersection of art and faith,” and says “Bearing the Mystery offers us the cream of years of wisdom and witness: this is a volume to be treasured.” This book is a wonderful addition to the personal collection of any Image lover and is perfect as a gift. You can further support the journal by buying the book directly from our website.

To own your copy, click here.

Registration Is Open for Image Seminar in O'ahu with Kathleen Norris

You are cordially invited to spend a long weekend with poet and spiritual writer Kathleen Norris and the staff of Image in Honolulu, Hawaii, February 18-22, 2010. Registration is open now, and complete information and brochures are available at our website. Space is limited, so register early to ensure your spot. In the tradition of Image’s Florence Seminar, this event will bring a small group of inquirers together for a time of reflection, conversation, and personal enrichment. Our theme will be “The Habit of Attention: Renewing the Heart in an Age of Acedia.” Acedia is the ancient term for spiritual indifference and the subject of Kathleen’s latest book, Acedia & Me. In it, Kathleen, who grew up in Honolulu and returned with her ailing husband, David, chronicles her struggle with acedia after his death. As she began to investigate the meaning of her experience, going back to the works of the desert mothers and fathers and medieval monks, Kathleen realized how pervasive this malady is, and how deeply it permeates our culture of distraction. During our time together on O'ahu, we’ll take on the issue of acedia as both a personal and a cultural challenge. We will delve into the ways art and faith can move us beyond the distractions of media hype and pop culture and reawaken us to the world. In addition to Kathleen’s talks and readings, we’ll head out to explore the natural beauty of O'ahu and share a number of wonderful meals together.

To register, get more information, or request a brochure by mail, visit here. Find more on this special event here. Please contact Dyana Herron by email (dherron@imagejournal.org) or phone (206.281.2988).

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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."

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