Intruding Upon the Timeless: Meditations on Art, Faith, and Mystery

Intruding Upon the Timeless: Meditations on Art, Faith, and Mystery. By Gregory Wolfe. Baltimore, Md.: Square Halo Books, 2003. 172pp. $9.99 (paper).

The "meditations" in this provocative book are, in feet, a carefully chosen selection of editorial prefaces, spanning more than ten years, to the publication Image: AJournal of the Arts and Religion. They deal, naturally, with the founding and mission of the journal-to reflect on and to show case "the intersection between faith and imagination" (p. 13), "to reconnect beauty to truth" (back cover), and to affirm "religious humanism" (p. 71)-but they also range widely over the broad lands of "art" and "faith" in daily life. From the moving autobiographical reflections in "Please Touch" and "My Grandfather's easel" to the scholarly historical perspective in "Emerson vs. Hawthorne" (including the quotation from Flannery O'Connor-of whose thought Wolfe is clearly enamored-stating that "the day Emerson decided he could no longer celebrate Holy Communion was the critical watershed in American history" (p. 56)), from the discussion of children's prayer and children's literature in "Playing with God," to the skewering of unleavened sentiment in "Painter of Lite," there is a small feast of ideas here.

Or perhaps one should say an appealing tray of hors d'oeuvres of ideas. In some ways the meditations show to greater advantage in the journal; there, they leave one tremendously impressed with the insight compressed into a necessarily small space. Presented as a book of essays, however, they seem somehow attenuated, mere sketches or outlines of what should be a longer work. At worst, their brevity (there are thirty-four meditations in this short book) feels like a concession to our sound-bite culture; but at best (and their best is veiy good indeed), these writings function as jumping-off points for conversations, or (preachers take notice!) as seeds for sermons-each is a "brief impression that opens up a space for further thought" (p. 13).

For the reader seeking an overview of the relationships of art and religion, I highly commend "In Defense of Irony" (which speaks of Jesus' own "playful use of indirection" (p. 108)) and "Artist as Prophet," and, above all, "The Weaker Brethren." This last succinctly describes the tension between the commendable desire to protect the community of faith from inappropriately shocking art and the equally commendable desire to enlighten them through provocatively shocking art, and does so with explicit compassion for "the middlemen-the pastors, editors, music producers, and curators" (p. 40) who comprise much of the natural audience for this book.

But an even better use of this book, for those who are so inclined, may be as a somewhat unconventional locus of lectio divina. I found myself stopping periodically as I read, staying with particular phrases (and contemplating the striking woodcuts that illustrate the book), sometimes hauling the words out of context for my own meditations, and finally (and veiy appropriately) being moved to incorporate the fruits of my meditations into my own poetiy. I can only imagine that Gregory Wolfe would be deeply pleased to know that as an author, as well as a publisher and patron of the arts, he is contributing to our ongoing works of creation.

KRISTIN GILBERT

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Summer 2004
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved