A Spiritual View of Art
OUT OF THE WASTELAND
Several summers ago I was in the Arizona desert. It was not the time of year to be there, temperatures rising every day to over 105F, sometimes over 110.
The National Endowment for the Humanities, the chief funding agency of the U.S. government for advanced studies in the humanities, had decided to hold an institute there on the ancient Greek poet Homer. The bureaucrats decided that discussing the Iliad and the Odyssey in the desert in the summer would be what they called in their announcement an “epic experience.” It was, and in a way that was unexpected.
Surprisingly, the people who live in the desert seemed to have a heightened aesthetic sense — not just the intellectuals and artists, but ordinary people, working people. I wondered why this was.
The beauty of the desert itself was not sufficient to account for it. Where I live in California is at least as beautiful — San Francisco Bay, California coastline, redwood forests, lovely valleys. But this beauty does not seem to produce the same effect on the people who live there, at least to the same degree.
You May Also Enjoy
By giving pseudo-legitimacy to the English tyrant, false theologians made possible Henry's theft of Church lands, his dissolution of monasteries, and his wrecking of libraries.
Clear and Present Danger: Church and State in a Post-Christian America... Pope John Paul II and the Family... The Christian Trinity in History: Studies in Historical Theology, Vol. I... Blaze of Recognition: Through the Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations
Mainstream media coverage of the fortieth anniversary of included some stories that weren't typical puff pieces for the pro-abortion movement.