There are nights

There are nights when the snow is...

is light enough to lift haze from trees

and scrub shrubs with moon-curls and stars alike

yet rest beneath the clouds' high mystery

leaving silence to speak to any who'd hear

What's to be done when quiet covers the night

when sleeping snow holds warmth within

but be reverent and not disturb the un-folding awe

stealing one from the noises of night?

*...our presence together indicates that the idea of a wall separating art and faith is silly.

-Theodore L. Prescott

*...the grace that delights believers and unbeliever alike in beauty is indeed related to the beautiful Grace that is tasted in the mystery of Christ.

-Theodore L. Prescott

*If the secularized aesthete wants to confuse art with religion, the Christian temptation runs in a different direction.  Even if we are wise enough to know that the domain of art cannot be taken by force, Christians are still tempted by the idea that art should be a colony in the kingdom of God.  In one sense this is a biblical vision, where God's sovereignty is indeed kingly, and everything is subject to this rule.  The problem has been in the application of this image to social organizations, where the church and theology - that old queen of the sciences - have the first and the lastst words.  This model has produced works of great power and beauty, and some artists and thinkers have looked longingly back to the Middle Ages.  But historical distance obscures hard realities and lets us overlook the fact that we have very different ideas about art than medieval culture did.  While we may envy the integration of the arts into medieval daily life, I believe many of us would be reluctant to relinguish the freedom that is a hallmark of contemporary art.

-Theodore L. Prescott