art
What doing improv taught me about scarcity and choice
We went on with four performers instead of 10. It was invigorating.
Da Vinci was many things, but not a productivity guru
Walter Isaacson offers a clear and enjoyable biography. He also offers life hacks from Leonardo.
Engaging the mystics
While women have historically been bound by family obligations, household chores, or desperate poverty, there have been monasteries throughout history that allowed some to focus on their vocation without those typical pressures.
The new illuminated manuscript?
When I learned that white evangelical women are drawing and painting all over their Bibles, I was caught between judging and celebrating the phenomenon.
Not your kindergartener’s coloring book
Should I let my child color pictures of Jesus on the cross?
The mystery of the beautiful
How can God speak through what is soft and breakable? How can we?
How black-and-white becomes color in Georges Rouault's art
Some painters mesmerize me. Albert Pinkham Ryder, Mark Rothko, and Georges Rouault, for example. Their work glows, albeit in different ways. Yet it’s Rouault I continue to follow.
Why Rouault?
Creating versus consuming
It is extraordinary to hear a song reverberating off stonewalls and then dissipate into thin air. The soaring beauty of ephemeral art! Sometimes I find myself holding my breath as the soloist hits a high note or that incredibly awkward person tells his testimony. Do we appreciate that moment? Because many of us are conductors of that symphony, curators of beauty and we don’t realize the importance of our position.
Revived by the arts
"Revival" usually implies a preacher with great oratory skills. Nashville's Downtown Presbyterian stokes something different.
Art and prayer
At a historical art exhibit, I read that the images on display were intended for private devotion. Would it have been subversive of me to pray?
Out of darkness: Images that reach us
My husband and I found the WorldWide Telescope a few months ago, and we’ve been staring into the heavens ever since. “Which planet would you like to see first?” he asked me once he'd loaded the program onto his computer. No question: Saturn. I’ve always been fascinated by those rings. A few clicks of the mouse and there they were, circling and circling, a sash of light, a halo, a crown. We looked at Jupiter next, with its great red spot. We looked at Mercury, Venus, Mars and Pluto. Each planet was unique, different from every other. But what they had in common was this: they shone out of utter darkness.