“The artist is a beggar because she is empty, waiting to be filled. But the artist is also… someone who is driven to go out to the margins of society in order to learn what the margins can teach those at the center.” When I’d read these words in Greg Wolfe’s editorial in the current issue of Image (#84), I immediately thought of fiber artist Valarie James. Living in the desert of southern Arizona, James hasn’t had to go far... Read more
Continued from yesterday. “Judas the transgressor,” we Eastern Orthodox sing during Holy Friday Matins,“was unwilling to understand.” If the story of God’s salvation is light shining in darkness, then man’s tragic journey is a turning away from that light toward lesser lights, imagining the flickerings within himself to be something more than dim reflection, and hence capable of illuminating all creation, with rational man at its pinnacle. But whereas Descartes reasoned: “I think, therefore I am,” we sing: “Come, therefore,... Read more
I read about a shipping container holding five million Lego pieces that fell into the sea off Cornwall, England. An oceanographer requested samples of what was in the container, and tossed them into his bathtub. Based on his impromptu test and the ship’s manifest, he estimates about three million of the lost pieces can float. Only about 100,000, however, have washed ashore. Other people have taken interest; there’s even a Facebook page devoted to beachcombers’ Lego finds. Nearly every piece... Read more
My husband was deep into a bathroom remodeling project when he asked me to stop by the home improvement store to grab a faucet connector. He had purchased the wrong size on his previous trip, and I was out running errands anyway. A young female employee met me in the plumbing section. I tried to decipher the details from my husband’s text but couldn’t figure out what the succession of measurements meant. The employee didn’t know either, so I called... Read more
By Caitlin Mackenzie Daniel Taylor’s recent novel, Death Comes for the Deconstructionist, is a postmodern “whodunit” mystery that asks whether we discover truth or create it. Caitlin Mackenzie, of Wipf and Stock Publishers, talked to Daniel about the utility of detective fiction, the inspiration for his characters and landscape, and what spurred him to write his first novel after thirty years of nonfiction and short fiction. Caitlin Mackenzie: Although you have published short fiction, your previous books have been nonfiction and... Read more
Gertrude Stein once said of her hometown, Oakland, California, where she was raised after having been born in Pittsburgh, that “there is no there there.” This is often taken as a knock on Oakland—a city that is not really a city, that has no center, that lacks an identifiable sense of place. This is how I felt about Los Angeles when I was teenager growing up there. Looking out into the smog from a vantage point in the Hollywood Hills,... Read more
At the beginning of the old Norton Anthology of English Literature (4th Ed.) appeared this account from the medieval chronicler Gerald of Wales: The Lord of Chateau-Roux in France maintained in the castle a man whose eyes he had formerly put out, but who, by long habit, recollected the ways of the castle, and the steps leading to the towers. Seizing an opportunity of revenge, and meditating the destruction of the youth, he fastened the inward doors of the castle,... Read more
By Dyana Herron When well, it’s easy to forget how utterly miserable it feels to have a fever. In fact, the moment the fever breaks, already the memory recedes—we may feel exhausted, wiped out, laid low, but also relieved, no longer at war with our own body. Even if we try to remember, can intellectually recall and describe what it is like, the immediate feeling is gone, and so is our most intimate experiential knowledge. (more…) Read more
My husband and I took a spring break trip to the central coast of California, and we included a stop at the Hearst Castle—William Randolph Hearst’s 90,000 square foot, 61-bathroom home on 127 acres at the top of a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Hearst was still expanding it when he died in 1951. It was never enough. We bought a tour called “Upper Rooms and Suites” (since the size of the building makes it viewable only in chunks) and... Read more
By Brian Volck “Do not say God is just. Justice has not been evident in God’s dealings with you.” —Isaac of Syria Among the habits I’ve lately tried living without are reading online comment boxes (Good Letters being an exception) and making predictions. I bypass comments because I encounter enough wrath, ridicule, and unreason without wallowing in still more online. As for prophecy, my ability to predict the future isn’t what it used to be. Parents routinely ask me, a pediatrician,... Read more
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