• How long have you been an Image reader? How were you introduced to the journal?
• What’s an especially memorable Image piece or event for you? Why?
• How do you typically read your new issue of Image: from start to finish? By genre?
• Where do you typically begin? Do you save anything until the end?

• What’s a piece from the latest issue of Image that you wished you could share with someone? What was it about it that piece that compelled you to share it?
• Was there anything from the latest issue that left you with questions? What was the piece? What questions do you have?
• Was there anything in the latest issue that had you thinking about or looking at your own life differently? If so, would you be willing to share more?

Molly McCully Brown, “Augaries and Offerings” | Editorial Statement (Page 3)

• “Art is a record of what we’ve valued, preserved, engaged with, and illuminated,” Brown writes. “It’s also an omen of where we’re headed, the shapes our survival will take.” What “omens of survival” do you notice in this issue of Image? How has art aided your survival?
• In “Auguries and Alters” Molly describes assembling alters out of quotidian things out of an impulse to “make what is intangible somehow tangible, what is unknowable somehow known, to… render what is cloaked in darkness subject to light” How does this description of alter-building invite us to think about the relationship between the ordinary and the divine? Where, in Molly’s essay, or the broader issue of Issue, do you see the quotidian intertwined with the miraculous?
  Just after a heavy moment, Brown turns to a humorous description of her students’ comments on her teaching. In this moment, and this issue’s conversation with comedian Charlie Demers, how does humor contribute to our relationship with faith and mystery?
• Brown engages with Jane Zwart and Ross Gay to describe the value of living with an undefended heart, open to all the feelings life occasions. How do you practice tenderness when life feels most difficult? How has art helped?

Lauren Aliza Green, “Self-Portrait” | Fiction (Page 69) 

• Green’s story about an American student abroad explores loneliness, aspiration, love, and more. Did you see yourself anywhere in this “self-portrait”? If so, where? How did Green’s writing help create this experience?
• “You Americans are so much healthier than we are,” Giovanni tells the narrator. “But you lack passion.” “It felt like a damning charge,” Green writes. “How does one remedy a lack like that?” If you could speak to this character, how might you respond to her question?
• In “Self-Portrait,” spatulas and more are taken and hidden in Marco’s closet. A dreamcatcher is removed from its home and hidden between clothing, transported back to the United States. What role does the presence of taking, hiding, and stealing play in this story? What does this inclusion add to the story? What would be missing without its presence?
• At the conclusion of this story, Green writes: “I now have two girls of my own. One is twelve, the other sixteen. They have hobbies and friends, ideas about themselves and the world. I have hopes for them. These hopes are not the same ones they have for themselves.” How have your hopes for your own life changed from your early twenties to now? What has influenced that change? What feelings arise when you think of how your hopes for yourself have changed?

Josh Tiessen, “Greening Wisdom” | Visual Art (Page 34)

• Tiessen borrows the term viriditas from the mystic Hildegard of Bingen, which he translates as “holy greening power.” How does this illuminate your understanding of wisdom? Of the paintings in the series?
• How does the story of Jonah illuminate the painting, Swallowed by Knowledge? What new dimensions of or limits to knowledge does this biblical tale offer, brought to life by this misty seashore painting?
• In All Creatures Lament, Hildegard’s call to a deeper love for creation is offered as an antidote to apathy. Lack of passion can plague many of us (cf. “Self Portrait”). What practices have encouraged your relationship with creation? Are there any habits you’ve fallen out of that you’d like to return to?
• What emotions do you notice when taking in Tiessen’s painting, All Creatures Lament? Where do your eyes go? Where does your mind go? What active response do you have—or want to have—to this piece?

Katharine Coles, “Advent“ | Poetry (Page 124)

• This poem navigates between creative practices and nature. How are the two interwoven in this poem?
• “In / The already not yet … Maybe / Comfort has arrived. Maybe not.” How do these words fit your experience of Advent this year?