Viewing all items in Resource Category: God in the Arts

This month’s drawing is ‘The Virgin and Child’ by Raphael (1483-1520). Raphael was a talented artist from a very early age, but this drawing belongs to a time when he was in Rome from 1510-12. The finished painting is known as the Mackintosh Madonna, after its last owner. This drawing, or cartoon, was the first...

There is a character in a Russian novel who says, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, let us assume that man is not stupid…but if he isn’t stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful all the same – a creature that has two legs and no sense of gratitude.’ That is certainly true in a world where carping and criticising...

“The artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him.” These are the words of a German romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich, who lived from 1774-1840. The inspiration for most of his paintings was the countryside and the world of nature around. As he looked at its...

Have you ever read a book by Robin Meyers, ‘Morning Sun on a White Piano’?  It is subtitled ‘simple pleasures and the sacramental life.’ Its theme is that we can easily pass life by, as we search for it. We shun the ‘ordinary’ and the simple in pursuit of more worthwhile endeavours because we equate...

TQ – Tingle Quotient – is the name given to those things that can produce a tingle down the spine or a frisson of excitement. It could be a piece of music or the sight of an evening sunset at sea or a newborn babe. We look, we hear, and what we look at or...

At this time of the year we are planning and looking forward to holidays: to that welcome break away from the pressures and responsibilities of daily life and work. The book of Genesis opens with a glorious account of God’s work of creation and tells us that even God rested on the 7th day. We...

In 563 an Irish monk was forced to leave his homeland because of a conflict that had led to a misuse of power and even bloodshed. On Pentecost Sunday he arrived on the island of Iona off the north-west coast of Scotland with twelve companions. There he began a new way of life, founded on...

When we gather with other Christians to celebrate the Eucharist and to make our communion, we are remembering that special meal Jesus shared with His disciples on the eve of His arrest and death. But do we always appreciate what we are doing? Sometimes the monotony of repetition and distractions will get in the way....

Holy Week, as its name tells us, is the most important, holiest week in the Church’s year, when we follow Jesus from His triumphant entry into Jerusalem, to the Upper Room, to Calvary and to the garden of the tomb. As we make that journey each year, we are not just remembering past events. We...

At this time of the year, we are planning our gardens for the Spring and Summer ahead. The book of Genesis opens with a glorious account of God’s work of creation, and it also tells us that God rested on the seventh day. We all need to find that balance of work and rest, of...

Waiting is a common human experience. Our lives are made up of waiting that leads to encounter, and the waiting requires patience and humility. Milton wrote in his blindness, ‘They also serve who only stand and wait’ as he wondered what he could do for God’s kingdom now that his sight had gone. Simeon in...

A few years ago, one of the Sunday magazines printed a Doom Directory. It surveyed the possible ways in which the world might come to an end – nuclear disaster, famine, global warming and so on. The cover showed a man bearing a placard, ‘The end of the world is at hand’: he was at...