May the work of this day bear the print of your heart. Ah, Marc Chagall, thank you for this and for so many wonderful paintings! Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised to find Gibran’s The Prophet illustrated by Chagall, as it was Khalil Gibran who said, “Work is love made visible. And if you cannot …
What is it about an other that can be so… well, whatever you wouldn’t come up with yourself? When it comes to creativity — making something new whether on canvas, with sound, in writing, or out of clay – most people work alone. It’s a solitary life, the way of an artist, isn’t it? Then …
Just thinking: Obamacare may well raise America’s creative capital — from the arts to invention, entrepreneurs to public intellectuals. I’m hearing a lot these days in reaction to a CBO study showing that one effect of national health care is that fewer people will work full-time. I cannot tell you how many times I have …
And so we’re off! — 2014, a new year, ready or not. Resolutions or not, there’s something about recognizing the end of a year and the beginning of a new one that’s downright refreshing. The earliest public celebrations that we know about are Babylonian, dating back thousands of years. I’ve been spending a lot of …
It was a great honor to be invited to give the Dillard series of lectures at Trinity United Methodist Church this year. Wow, what a turn-out! and what wonderfully warm, hospitable, and thoughtful folks I met there, people deeply invested in the pursuit of understanding, committed as much to the humbling business of query and …
It’s not worth listing why I can’t complain. I can’t (complain; or make lists, for that matter). Yet, while everyone else seems to be embracing the new year with the energy of clear purpose and PowerPoint-able goals, I’m having drinks with Lord Languor and Princess Peevish. I know it’s time to sober up and show …
If most people don’t get the biblical references, why do the creators of popular tv, movies, music and lit still use them so much? Pondering this question over iced tea with a novelist, Ph.D.-candidate friend, we decided: it’s tough to say. Here are a couple of ideas that we bounced around: 1) Audiences do recognize the biblical …
