After we buried the ashes of St. Benedict’s Wilfrid, our 10-year-old Airedale Terrier, I was horrified to see our new puppy, a 10-week-old Goldendoodle, digging up the ashes and rolling in them. What at one moment I found disturbing, the next moment I found rather amusing if not fitting. In the strangest of ways, I…
what is seeing dakota?
In this installation, we bring together the artistic process and works of a visual artist with the reflections of a theologian to cultivate imaginative and possibly transformative ways of seeing and interpreting the world around us. We intertwine not only two differ-ent professional practices of art and theology but also our two different ways of seeing Dakota. Our hope is that you who are seeing this installation will see Dakota in a new manner. We invite people to look with intention, to ponder the images and words, and to gather insight from the art and words.
selected works
Advent
What I long for most these busy December days is the horizon of Dakota skies at sunset when the sun’s dying blaze meets the dark edge of the earth. As the sun travels through veils of thin clouds, a cool dim palette of blue peaks through. These days from Advent to Epiphany are my spiritual…
School of the Spirit (Ask the Animals)
I had thought that when I turned 60 I would have fewer questions about life and more answers. But the exact opposite has happened. As my own mortality looms closer on the horizon of life, my field of vision has expanded the boundaries of life’s meaning and stretched me further than I could imagine. At…
WATCH YOUR STEP
When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was without shape or form, it was dark over the deep sea, and God’s wind swept over the waters. “Watch your step!” Sheila’s warning coincides with my fall off the ladder, landing on my knees. She had told me not to come down the…
Vespers: Sails and the River
The sails frame the clouds, like a door frame across the threshold of my home. I’m transported to the Missouri River, can feel the humidity in the thickness of the clouds, and smell the pungent odor of the water. The Missouri’s beauty is wide and deep, framed by cliffs and hills that buttress the prairie…
School of the Spirit: Practicing the Art of Seeing, Fly Fishing, and Faith
“My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him all good things–trout as well as eternal salvation–come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.” Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It “Get brave,” Sheila said. “It’s only paint.” I’m sure that my grandfather practiced…