More on: Essays

Migrant Farm Workers, a Medieval Mystery Play, and the Future of Religious Art in America   ON A CLEAR, COLD DECEMBER evening a few weeks before last Christmas I sat in a 215-year-old adobe church and listened to the devil preach the gospel. The devil, or Luzbel as he was named in the play I…

I suppose if the main challenge I set myself is to make increasingly beautiful work, the simpler the image the better, the more ideas the better, so the other variable is to make those images out of more and more insignificant material: a splash of dried seawater, a rusting can bottom, a handful of sand,…

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. —————————————John 3:8 THE SUMMER OF 1968, though it mourned the recent assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and shuddered at the murder…

IN  1994, THREE SPELUNKERS were looking for undiscovered caves in the Ardèche region of southeastern France. The region is named after the Ardèche River, which has cut through limestone for millennia and created hundreds of caves. On a summer weekend expedition they came across a place in a cliff wall where they sensed a draft…

WHEN MY FATHER’S PEOPLE came down from the Appalachians to work in the mills and mines of north Alabama, they brought with them a desire for strong drink, loose women, and visitations by the Holy Ghost. A census taker who interviewed some of these Covingtons noted that they were illiterate, and then also checked the…

The Need EVERY COUPLE OF MONTHS,  you go to the doctor looking for a new word—a name that is different from the one you have now: hypo, hyper, metastasized, malignant, benign. The hope is always for an upgrade, though it’s hard to say which names are better than others in this game. Take benign, for…

The Word-Soaked World Troubling the Lexicon of Art and Faith Since 1989, Image has hosted a conversation at the nexus of art and faith among writers and artists in all forms. As the conversation has evolved, certain words have cropped up again and again: Beauty. Mystery. Presence. For this issue, we invited a handful of…

The Word-Soaked World Troubling the Lexicon of Art and Faith Since 1989, Image has hosted a conversation at the nexus of art and faith among writers and artists in all forms. As the conversation has evolved, certain words have cropped up again and again: Beauty. Mystery. Presence. For this issue, we invited a handful of…

The Word-Soaked World Troubling the Lexicon of Art and Faith Since 1989, Image has hosted a conversation at the nexus of art and faith among writers and artists in all forms. As the conversation has evolved, certain words have cropped up again and again: Beauty. Mystery. Presence. For this issue, we invited a handful of…

The Word-Soaked World Troubling the Lexicon of Art and Faith Since 1989, Image has hosted a conversation at the nexus of art and faith among writers and artists in all forms. As the conversation has evolved, certain words have cropped up again and again: Beauty. Mystery. Presence. For this issue, we invited a handful of…