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…
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
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…
Fences
Two summers ago, while participating in the annual bike trip Ride Across South Dakota (RASDAK), I spent long minutes looking at fences. South Dakota fences. Which are sometimes different from and sometimes similar to the lodgepole pine fences I helped build in my youth in Montana. Those fences were made of trees we found up…
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…
Cattle: Icons
Ecclesiastes 3:18 “I also thought, where human beings are concerned, God tests them to show them that they are but animals 19 because human beings and animals share the same fate. One dies just like the other—both have the same life-breath. Humans are no better off than animals because everything is pointless. 20 All go…
Veneration of Smell: St. Christina (1150-1224) The Astonishing and Byron the Doodle
I’m relieved that St. Christina the Astonishing isn’t officially venerated as a saint by the current Roman Catholic Church. While she has inspired many Christians by the austere practices of her faith, I believe her sense of smell is what left her out of the official canon of saints. At an early age her parents…