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.”
OUR COMMON HOME
THE SPIRITUAL CASE FOR A DAILY WALK
In “A Philosophy of Walking,” Frédéric Gros reflects upon some of the many thinkers and writers throughout history who have also considered walking essential to their work: Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thoreau.
THE FOLKS I DIG
I wasn’t hallucinating but it was kind of like when I used to drop acid back in high school–an altered state except not dark, not delusional. If only I could see through those eyes and feel that way all the time!
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.
OBSESSED BY THE SPIRITS OF THIS AGE
“Some people cling to what is past; some, the fewer and braver, face the future; but to live harmoniously in the present is an almost superhuman task.”
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.
MIDWEST AUTUMN
Chicago, Lake Forest, and Oak Park were incredible. But way more important–I made a new friend.
EVERYTHING PROFOUND, PART III
“Do you know the origin of that word ‘saunter?’” mountaineer John Muir once asked an interviewer. “It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre,’ ‘To the Holy Land.’”
THE SHADOW OF THE SUN
‘Why do you stay here, Father?’I asked. ‘Why don’t you leave?’ He gave the impression of a man in whom some small part had already died. There was already something missing. ‘I cannot,’ he answered. ‘Someone has to guard the church.’
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ST. KEVIN
“The hermitage garden is designed to provide a place where nature, scripture and Glendalough’s history are combined in harmony, delighting the eye, comforting the soul and leading pilgrims to prayer and a deeper awareness of God.”
BRIGHT FIELD
One day last week I tramped through a dark wood, up a very steep hill, and around a couple of bends and came out at the edge of meadows and meadows full of…could it be?…I was pretty sure…heather! I’ve never seen my namesake flower growing in the wild so this was a rare thrill.
MAKE CLEAR MY WAY
We long for purity, we humans: purity of heart, purity of motive, purity of way of life. But life, culture, our era and place inevitably make it so we can never be as pure as we’d like to.
STRANNIK
Pilgrimage doesn’t necessarily involve traveling, or traveling into the country. The journey is to our own hearts, and can thus take place in the poustinia (a sparse hut or room) of our apartments, or by walking through the streets of a city. Wherever we go, we go with bare feet—in spiritual poverty—and because we end up walking into the fragmented stones and sharp rocks of other people’s hearts, our feet get bloody.