Category: Essays

The Transforming Power of Great Sorrow

Madonna della Pietà. Michelangelo, c. 1499. St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City. Wikimedia Commons. Photo by https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jean-Christophe_BENOIST. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

A vibrant meditation on Pietà, grief, and growth

Longing for Being 

Lake George and the Village of Caldwell (detail). Thomas Chambers, mid-nineteenth century. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Wikimedia Commons. Source/Photographer: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., online collection. Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch

At home with past, present, future

The Unanswered Question 

Taconic State Parkway, Putnam County. Photograph by David W. Haas. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Wikimedia Commons. Photo by David. W. Haas. This file comes from the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) or Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS).

From absence to presence

Lament and Praise for the Earth

Elk in the Bitterroot River at Sula, Montana, during a fire, year 2000. Photograph by John McColgan, fire-behavior analyst with the BLM’s Alaska Fire Service. Wikimedia Commons. Author: John McGolgan—edited by Fir0002.

A passionate prayer for what is lost and what is found

Searching for Private Driscoll 

View of names etched into the granite face of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Licensed licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vietnam_Veterans_Memorial_reflection_in_low_light.jpg

Paying respects

Things Don’t Stay Still

Photograph by Surnaí Molloy

Along the Camino de Santiago….

The Shattering of Dependency, by Patty de Llosa

Fresco in the Saint-Ulrich chapel, Holtzbad (Westhouse), Bas-Rhin, France. Praying characters. Wikimedia Commons. Copyright via Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported

Invaluable advice on cutting the apron strings

The Forms of Magic, by Richard Smoley

V0001876 Johannes Faust. Etching after Rembrandt, 1651/52. Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images [email protected] http://wellcomeimages.org Johannes Faust. Etching after Rembrandt, 1651/52. Published: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

An introduction to Western magic

Saint Buddha, by Tracy Cochran

Shakyamuni Buddha. Tibetan, eighteenth century. Mineral paint and ink on canvas. National Museum in Warsaw. Wikimedia Commons. Source/photographer: cyfrowe.mnw.art.pl

How the Awakened One became a Christian saint

Penetrating Magic, by David Ulrich

Lower Calf Creek Falls, Escalante, UT. Photo by David Ulrich

Diving into the well of creativity