More on: Essays

Nomadic art in Mongolia naturally tends toward the spiritual, toward nature and one’s connection with it. Where some painters might want to incorporate shamanistic elements, these evangelical artists say the country’s Christian roots provide more than enough connection to God.

Sometimes, to comfort myself, I think of myself as a city, not a woman, but a city that can be rebuilt again.

Of course complicating considerations can occur with the immaterial, too, as you might be into time and gravity but not augury or angels—or you might be into some angels, like the six-winged amber ones, but not the messenger of death.

What I lost in my exit from a fundamentalist faith movement, I found inside the closed chamber of my camera.

What is more frightening: that God does not exist, or that God offers us no comfort?

The dead who walk the streets might be a relic of the past, something your Sicilian grandma might tell you about, but the Sanctuary of the Souls of the Beheaded is very much alive.

Chaplaincy was magnificent, and then suddenly it wasn’t.

The loneliness of the dead. How they are isolated by what they know about themselves and about us.

It’s sugar that makes fruit gel. Sugar preserves. Sugar is an everyday miracle. It causes fruit to retain its bright color, until it is brighter than it ever was on the tree. Heat and sugar alchemize to turn a jar of jam into a glowing jewel.

Why would you attack a beautiful work of art or building? In most cases, the clue is an urge to purify—a physical and spiritual decluttering beyond Marie Kondo’s wildest dreams.