Hope Amidst the Ruins in Charlottesville

At the end of the month I’ll be speaking at the Mockingbird Ministries fall conference at Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, Virginia, September 28-29. The theme is High, Low & In Between: Hope Amidst the Ruins, and if you happen to be in the area, consider spending the weekend with us. Through on-line articles, publications, conferences, and other resources Mockingbird connects the gospel to the felt realities of everyday cultural life. Their team of writers produce insightful, theologically informed, and sensitive exegesis that is ever on the lookout for grace in the operation of contemporary culture, be it television, film, literature, sports, politics, and art.

I’ll be speaking on the Norwegian avant-garde artist Edvard Munch, which should not be unfamiliar to readers of this blog. Read my preview post, Hearing The Scream: Edvard Munch, Modern Art, and Grace.

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I’m also serving as an occasional contributor over at “Good Letters: Words Made Flesh,” a blog hosted here at Patheos by IMAGE, founded by editor, writer, and cultural curator Greg Wolfe. IMAGE includes an award-winning journal, workshops on the East and West coasts, and master classes. I’ll write on the specific issues related to the practice of painting, a particular interest of mine, but which falls outside the broader cultural concerns of this blog. In these posts, I will reflect on the nitty-gritty of painting, which offers tremendous opportunities to reflect on the unusual penetrations of grace in the world. For the Eastern Christian tradition, it is painting that embodies and preserves the incarnation of Christ. Perhaps there is something about the very nature of painting that elicits and bears such heavy theological weight. You can read my first post, entitled Poetics of Painting: Part One.