I’m not saying you have to get me a Lionel toy train with a gold engine and red cars and a remote control device with dual speed levers. All I’m saying is, if I had a train like that I would hug it with both
Essay / Avant-Garde
Featured Essay / Avant-Garde
Conversation on Theology & California
Here's a one-hour video about theology and California, or, more specifically, Theology and California, the book of essays that Jason Sexton and I edited (Ashgate, 2014). You can view it at Open Biola (which includes several video and audio options), or stream the embedded version here below. Jason and I were…
Art Essays
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Snow White Ornament
Phoebe Age Four produced this drawing and testified that it is a picture of Snow White. Trying to throw her arms around the world, Snow White has an expression on her face which is open to interpretation. Is she as happy as she wants us
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Bike or Scooter
Dear Applicant, We regret to inform you that your request for a patent on the Bike Scooter has been rejected. The review commission’s main objection to the application is the incoherence of the device itself. You did not include a description of how the device
Essay / Art
The Prodigal Bride
Take the book of Hosea and re-tell it as a cryin’-in-my-beer tear-jerker country song. Cowboy Hosea ambles up to the jukebox, plunks in a couple quarters for that special song from their honeymoon, then turns to his honkeytonk gal and drawls, “You done me wrong,
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Desert Scene
You may think of the desert as an empty or lonely place, but this desert is a HOT SPOT in more ways than one. It not only sustains life, but a thriving community of many species living in harmony. The dominant figure is our host,
Essay / Art
Bilateral Asymmetry in a Preiconoclastic Encaustic Pantocrator
The following remarks should be considered as an extrapolation of certain lines of thought suggested by Manolis Chatzidakis’s seminal article “An Encaustic Icon of Christ at Sinai” published in The Art Bulletin (Vol. 50, No. 1, 113. Mar. 1968), 197-208. My own modest contribution to
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Big Orange Cat Head
Phoebe Age Four goes for uncharacteristically expansive forms in this assemblage of shapes. Perfect bilateral symmetry dominates the arrangement of the two ears, two eyes, two whatever you call those things on a cat’s muzzle. (Lips? Do cats have lips?) And exactly four whiskers on
Essay / Art
T. S. Eliot: Things That Can Just Barely Be Said
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) is so hard to read that every class session on his poetry might just as well start with the question, “Why bother reading something so difficult?” I think you have to start by admitting that poetry this difficult actually might not
Essay / Art
B.C. by Johnny Hart: “This Warm, Mischievous Feeling”
Johnny Hart (1931-2007) died this past weekend (Sat. Apr. 7). His comic strips will continue to be published indefinitely, which is possible because his unsigned collaborators live on. It’s hard to believe, but B.C. ran in daily papers for over fifty years (from Feb. of
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Resurrection Bunny
Let us agree to call the rabbits in this drawing: Witnesses of the resurrection. One perches atop the cross with his back to us, the other leaps forward into our space with a smile and with unavoidable eye contact. The black outlining can scarcely contain
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Viewing the Crucifixion
A bolt of lightning splits the stormy sky and flashes toward a monumental cross. To one side stands a Roman soldier with a sword in one hand and a long spear in the other. He smiles smugly to have completed his dirty work. It’s not
Essay / Art
Three Crosses Two Ways
The fact that Christ was crucified between thieves, one on his right and one on his left, was not lost on the writers of the gospels. They recognized it as a shockingly literal fulfilment of the prophecy that God’s servant would be “numbered among transgressors”