The Arts

The arts have been a bit more on my mind lately. We recently attended a lecture by an artist called Makoto Fujimura (http://www.makotofujimura.com/) which was excellent. He shared about how good art often is an estuary between two worlds...the world as it is and the world as it could be.  Interesting idea.

We then went to the Chicago Art Institute and saw great art.

Then this past weekend we went to a conference at a local church about art and worship in the church. I came away from this weekend reminded again of the role of tension in our lives. One of the speakers pointed out how often the best works of art, or our best learning moments in life, come out of times of tension. He expanded on that by suggesting that as Christians we will always live in tension. We live in the reality of how the earth is while at the same time knowing the reality of what is yet to come which equals tension (this reminded me of the estuary idea again).

Anyways, don't think I'll become a master artist any time soon.  But it's been fun focusing a bit more on the idea of art.  If anything it is inspiring me to try and finish a quilt that has been on the shelf for 1/2 a year now.

Book of the Month

So my new read has been "Between Allah and Jesus: What Christians can Learn from Muslims" by Peter Kreeft. This has been one of the more challenging things I've read recently not only because the content is convicting, but because I got lost in the fictitious debates between a Muslim, a conservative Christian, a liberal Christian and a Catholic. I found the book was actually easier to follow if I read the book out loud and spoke in different voices for each character. (https://www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=3746)


Regardless, the fictitious debates are clever and well thought out...and there's enough material in the book for everyone's feathers to get ruffled regardless of what camp you are in. But I love how Jesus is painted throughout the book and am appreciate how it challenges some of the fallacies in my own "religion" while still encouraging my faith and love of Jesus.

I'd recommend it....but maybe not as nighttime reading.

Chicago

Hoping to break the monotony of winter, we trekked down to Chicago this past weekend and meandered around the Chicago Institute of Art. 

I didn't know much about the museum but was surprised at how many famous pieces of work were on exhibit (such as Van Gogh, Monet, Seurat, Manet and Renoir).  I was most surprised at how large or small some of the pieces were.  I remembered some of the paintings from my art history class but had no idea of the scale of these works.  For example, the Seurat picture above is huge!  The people are almost life size.

After looking at so many pieces of art, I can't help but wonder how many painting these artists had to do before they got this good.  Probably way to many.

Anyways, we enjoyed our time there and in Chicago.  Next time we'll have to make it to the Modern part of the museum...we spent just about all our time in the impressionistic wing.