More on: James K.A. Smith

Good criticism also helps us see why some art doesn’t work, or works poorly, activating the worst in us. When criticism is judgmental in the sense of being censorious, that too is in the service of art and our experience. The critic is showing us why we need and deserve better.

When the dots connect, you feel a pulse of intentionality in a universe that seems to be putting on this show just for you. I wonder if those of us who dwell in books are especially susceptible to such delights.

I’m waiting for that strange experience when a picture speaks, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes with a shout, sometimes with a reverberating silence that pulls me to the edge of a precipice where I’m not sure whether I’ll fall or fly.

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.

One of the extraordinary accomplishments of the Confessions is to find a syntax that doesn’t deny impasse or dilemma, but that also doesn’t allow impasse or dilemma to become stagnant.

Like the strange paradox of social distancing, where we step away from our neighbors in order to protect them, so the artist loves the world by retreating from it. The art of solitude is ultimately social.

While we creatives apprentice ourselves to various crafts, aspiring to art that is “fine,” we might also look for subtle ways to decorate our daily lives with new intentionality. There is a training of the soul in the arts we live with.

Unknowing might be a way to relate to God anew. You might call this mystery.

In our information age, we need spiritual exercises of ex-formation.

I’m tired of beauty. Or rather, I’m tired of hearing the word “beauty” overused and misapplied.

The God who risked appearing in the flesh is the same God who leaves it to artists to bear witness.