Your Support Matters

Image would not exist were it not for volunteers willing to labor for it without pay and generous donors who keep Image alive with their financial gifts. Charitable contributions make up a third of our livelihood, allowing Image to produce the journal and other high-quality programs and extend their reach to others.

Your help will ensure that Image can respond to the increasing demand for our programs and remain at the forefront of cultural renewal in our time.

Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution today.

As a small, tightly run ship, every dollar you give makes a big difference, be it $35, $50, $100, $500, $1,000 or more.

We ask that you read our annual appeal letter below and consider whether you might join the ranks of our supporters. As the late spiritual writer Henri Nouwen once said, in a talk entitled “The Spirituality of Fundraising”: “Asking people for money is giving them the opportunity to put their resources at the disposal of the Kingdom.”

Annual Appeal Letter 2009

November 4, 2009

Dear Friends of Image:

Do you remember the opening words of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities? “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times....” It may be a cliché, but I’ve found it hard to keep that phrase out of my mind over this past year—a year that has witnessed so much uncertainty and fear.

Image has seen so much of “the best” this year—as we’ve celebrated our twentieth anniversary in a variety of exciting ways—but at the same time we’ve witnessed the economy take its toll, causing several outstanding journals and magazines to close their doors forever. No one has been unaffected.

But as I argued in a recent editorial statement, the great artists of faith have always understood this paradoxical coexistence of rise and decline—and have reminded us that, however tough things may seem, grace is “always now.”

In that editorial I quoted the wise words of that great writer of faith and Image contributor, Annie Dillard: “There is no less holiness at this time—as you are reading this—than there was the day the Red Sea parted.... In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger. In any instant the bush may flare, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in a tree. In any instant you may avail yourself of the power to love your enemies; to accept failure, slander, or the grief of loss; or to endure torture. Purity’s time is always now.”

Annie Dillard’s wisdom, and the counsel it offers, is precisely what the writing and art in Image help to communicate to a world beset by doubt and fear—a world that needs the vision of art that can help us sense the presence of grace.

So here’s what I know, right now: that through your subscriptions, attendance at our events, passionate word of mouth recommendations, and sacrificial donations you have been an essential part of Image’s twenty meaningful years of existence.

Right now I believe we’re doing work that should elicit your support.

I believe this because the testimonies we continue to receive about the influence of Image are as powerful as ever, including the visual artist who recently told me that her life was changed when she stole a copy of Image from the Denver public library in 2002. She and her family were living in Cambodia and she had come back to the U.S. to have a baby. That’s when she found Image in the library and slipped away with it in her bag.

“It contained so much of what I was missing,” she wrote to me, “that I ordered all the back copies available and took them with me to Asia in a very heavy suitcase. Quarterly they arrived in Phnom Penh; I read them slowly under the mango tree in our garden. I think it was the sense of being connected to a larger tribe that was so meaningful. Sculptors and painters challenged my idea of what ‘religious art’ could be, and my work changed over time, influenced by what I read and saw in the magazine.”

This summer Eerdmans brought out Bearing the Mystery: Twenty Years of Image, an anthology of nearly 70 writers and 20 visual artists that have appeared in our pages. The dust jacket contains endorsements from such luminaries as scholar Jeremy Begbie, legendary film director Wim Wenders, and writers like Richard Rodriguez, Andy Crouch, and Luci Shaw.

Poet and former chair of the National Endowment of the Arts Dana Gioia writes in his endorsement blurb for the book: “Inclusive but discerning, spiritually alert but never doctrinaire, Image has helped keep American literature connected to one of its deepest sources of inspiration.”

And Byron Borger, owner of Hearts & Minds Bookstore, wrote on his website about Bearing the Mystery: “Image has been around for twenty years and stands doubtlessly as the most classy and significant faith-based literary magazine in publication. This wonderfully bound, handsome and thick hardback is testimonial that through much blood, sweat, and tears, joy, goodness and grace, a small band of serious Christian writers (and subscribers and donors) have kept this journal alive.”

Notice that Byron is writing about you as well as us. We’re in this together, here and now.

What I’m hoping is that you can find a way to help match our blood, sweat, and tears with some of your own. It’s asking a lot in a recession, I know.

But here’s one thing we can do by way of thanks. We’d like to send you a copy of Bearing the Mystery to you for any gift of $125 or more. Please know that your gift—whether $30, $50, $100, $500, or $1,000—will enable us to continue to nurture and showcase literature and art that show us that grace is always now.

And if the current crunch makes it difficult for you to give much at this point in time, would you consider taking advantage of our new monthly giving option?

Thanks, as ever, for your steadfast support.

Cordially,

Gregory Wolfe

P.S. There are still a few spaces left for “The Habit of Attention,” the next Image Seminar—with Kathleen Norris in Oahu, February 18-22, 2010. If you’d like to know more, give me a call at the number below or e-mail me at gwolfe@imagejournal.org. I’m always happy to hear from you.

P.P.S. Please consider giving Bearing the Mystery as a Christmas gift! It’s a great way to introduce friends to the journal. You can order directly from our website here.