More on: incarnation

My first sense of the sea was that briny scent, the waves teal and tinged with white froth, and they hurled themselves into this pristine white sand. As far as a child can have a transcendent experience, this was it.

Our society is grappling with a soul-sickness that is ultimately an infection of our imagination. An election may address symptoms, but how do we treat the underlying disease? How to heal the imagination? Perhaps this is what the arts are for.

I’ve always loved that scene in The Seventh Seal where Jof, poor broke Jof the juggler, rushes back to tell his wife Mia that he’s just seen the virgin & child, so close to me that I could have touched her, but Mia is skeptical, wants to know what they’ll eat this winter, wants to…

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau, 2015) The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (Graywolf Press, 2015) A Body, Undone: Living on after Great Pain by Christina Crosby (New York University Press, 2016)   SON,” HE BEGINS. “LAST SUNDAY the host of a popular news show asked me what it meant to…

On Christmas Eve while the bells were ringing, I saw Christ walking on a street in São Paulo. He was already a man when he was born, swaddled in his manger with solitude and death. The white cold wind whispered a secret: —Life was brief for men and gods, a sigh of Christ breathed in…

Art and the Religious Sense To say that someone is “only human” is to say two things at once. We mean that person is flawed—and that this condition is no more than we should expect. Yet for all our awareness of human frailty and venality, we are haunted by visions of human flourishing, fullness rather…

The following four short sermons were delivered at the Glen Workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico, between July 28 and August 2, 2008.   All Manner of Travesties: Genesis 4:1-17 The hazards of the creative act are the loam out of which true form emerges. There is no way of achieving true form without opening…

DUTCH-CANADIAN, of Midwestern Winnipeg, an ordinary follower of Jesus Christ. This is perhaps the most succinct way to situate the artist Gerald Folkerts. Readers may ask, “Can any artistic good come out of Winnipeg?” Come closer. Take a look. Winnipeg, Manitoba, is not like Bible-belt Alberta, but is hard-working Mennonite farming country. Under God-blue skies,…

I HAVE A BLACK AND WHITE photograph taken in 1967 that I found among my grandmother’s things after she died. In the foreground, my grandmother sits on a blanket, smiling self-consciously for the camera. To her left my brother stands in a seven-year-old boy’s macho pose with hands on hips, his smooth, hairless chest thrust…

The following is an expanded version of the introductory remarks delivered at Image’s Glen Workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on July 27, 2009. The theme for both the workshop and Image’s twentieth anniversary year, now concluding, was “Fully Human: Art and the Religious Sense.” BY ALL ACCOUNTS, Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, a bishop of…