The gimcrack sounvenirs are adding to the landfill, the churches will one day crumble to dust, I am forver part of the darkness of the world–but also, I hope, of its light.
CULTURE
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THE FEAST OF ST. JOSEPH
Notes Lev, “Despite his ubiquity … he has returned to the sidelines of artistic innovation. The statues go unnoticed; his placement at the Nativity, pro forma; his might and authority, almost forgotten. St. Joseph has become so visible as to have become invisible.”
MONSIGNOR LORENZO ALBACETE’S CRY OF THE HEART
When we cease to be shocked by the suffering of either ourselves or our neighbors, we become protagonists in an ongoing drama. We’re no longer bots in a humorless, culturally programmed wasteland. We become free.
FIBER SCULPTOR JUDITH SCOTT
Did those straitjacketed, swaddled structures represent the trauma of 35 years of institutionalization? Were they meant to telegraph that no matter how deeply the world tries to bury the human spirit, it will rise triumphant and exuberant?
AUTHORITY AND FREEDOM
A work of art, Perl insists, is “an imaginative achievement to which the audience freely responds.”
FLANNERY O’CONNOR’S WISE BLOOD
Incensed at the impersonator—“You ain’t true,” Haze said. “You believe in Jesus”—he runs Solace down with his car and drives back and forth over the body.
MONICA AISSA MARTINEZ: NOTHING IN STATIS
Her women are sturdy, strong, questing, joyful. Of “Portrait of Sara, Head in Profile, Arms Akimbo” (2017), she observes: “Leonardo da Vinci says: The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.”
RIP MSGR. TERRY RICHEY, APOSTLE TO THE ADDICTED
Many of us are looking to be transformed in a certain way. It helped to hear that resurrection never looks anything like we think it’s going to.
“AND THE BABY?”
From War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, by journalist Chris Hedges : a story about new life and a lowly cow and an old man who sacrificed so that the light shine for someone else. A story, in other words, about Christmas: “I sat one afternoon with a Bosnain Serb couple, Rosa and […]
“DRESS CODES” AT THE AUTRY
As Yves St. Laurent said, “I wish I had invented blue jeans. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity—all I hope for in my clothes.”
RICHARD DIEBENKORN’S OCEAN PARK SERIES
Take, for example, Ocean Park No. 140 (1985). It may not be a landscape, but its two triangular swaths of gorgeous saturated color—dark green and deep blue—to my eye irresistibly evoke land, sea and sky.
THE UNION OF THE HOLY SACRIFICE
That we should be counted worthy to receive the Eucharist — in any setting, under any circumstances — even once in our lives would be the summit of our existence.
FINDING FREEDOM AT THE LOST KITCHEN
“Finding Freedom” is the story of how Erin French picked herself up by the bootstraps, begged, borrowed, scavenged, refurbished an old Airstream trailer and opened a popup, made a handshake deal for an abandoned gristmill in rural Maine and bit by bit, breathed a world-famous restaurant into life.
VIVA MAESTRO!: COMPOSER GUSTAVO DUDAMEL
Dudamel’s philosophy, work and life constitute a resounding rebuke to those who maintain that art is a frivolous whim in these dark times.