More on: spiritual growth

Really, though, I’m struggling. Is it absurd to adhere to a religion whose most central rituals my body won’t even let me perform? What am I to make of all the parables in the New Testament where Jesus heals the crippled and the lame? And, most importantly, if I believe we’ll all eventually be resurrected back into the world, then is this body—this bruised, broken, wreck of a form—the one I’m stuck with for all time?

was what our nuns called it, the bread of angels, the Lord’s supper on the eve of his pure and holy sacrifice, their black habits hovering over us like threats, always the rosary dangling from a curveless hip, always chalk dust swirled on the cracked blackboard, above which the patron saints sat awaiting our prayers…

However innocent your life may have been, no Christian ought to venture to die in any other state than that of the penitent. —————————————————–—Saint Augustine I have been sodden with wine. I have been confused by wine. I have been lied to by men, And yet, I lie down upon such men, Still and willing…

I love the fierce wind outside my window but know I would freeze in it. I love the fierce wind from where I view it. I love to wake and feel the presence of the Lord within. I feel his presence only to lose it, lose his presence only to feel it return. I am…

pace Thomas Merton When you pray, let your tongue taste the words it forms, and let your mind watch the meanings forming. This will paralyze your prayers, but it will stop your meaningless recitations. Next, as you pray to God, think about his omniscience, his power, his goodness and the problem of theodicy. This too…

WHEN MEASURING an artist’s greatness within a particular tradition, the essential criterion is not what that artist takes from the tradition but what he or she adds to it. For almost half a century, Gerhard Richter has applied his creative aptitude and technical facility to a critical investigation of the viability of a genuinely contemporary…

All he ever wanted was to disappear. But he kept coming upon himself as if he were a character in a story who, despite his best efforts to understand, remained inscrutable. How he tried to keep straight the difference between who the author said he was and who he thought he was. He told himself…

I have often been afraid to think of Augustine thinking, his mind a field, he confesses, that must be worked with much cost and sweat, and he the farmer laboring. Just knowing how little one can know is enough for most, but not Augustine— whatever crept around in his mind had no right to privacy.…

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…

Ya-Quddus One of the ninety-nine names of God Yours is the name of God that comes most easily to me— God holy, pure, perfect as geometry, that which is set apart. God to whom I pray, though I deserve no favors. And would you, Ya-Quddus, whom I simply call God, Lord, bargain with my heart…