The Body in Art: Two Talks

“Let no one tell you that this body of ours is a stranger to God.” – Cyril of Jerusalem (313-386 AD)

“The life of faith does not go in a straight line but turns, falls, sinks, pulls, pushes, releases, clings, pauses, leaps, and dances.” – Celeste Snowber, Embodied Prayer

“To starve the eye, the ear, the skin, the nose is just as much to court death as to withhold food from the stomach.” – Lewis Mumford, The City in History

“How we meet the built environment depends on both bodies and worlds.” – Sara Hendren, What Can a Body Do?

These are the kinds of things that I have in mind as I prepare for two trips this week.

One trip will take me to Dallas on Thursday, September 19, where I’ll give a talk titled, “On Embodiment: Art, Bodies, and the Life of Faith” for Art House Dallas.

The other trip will take me to Charlotte, NC, where, on September 21, I’ll give the talk, “Strange Flesh: The Body of the Risen Jesus in the Art of Edward Knippers,” at the “Embodied Faith and the Art of Edward Knippers” conference, sponsored by Gordon Conwell Seminary’s “LEIGHTON FORD INITIATIVE in Theology, the Arts, and Gospel Witness,” and hosted by Wes Vanderlugt.

I’m really looking forward to both trips. I’ll be hanging out with good friends, from Guy and Marissa Delcambre in Dallas to Natalie Carnes, Steve Prince, and Bruce Herman in Charlotte. And I’ll get a chance to make new friends, no doubt.

Having written plenty of books on the arts and on the body, I not only care about ideas, I care about the ways in which we live out these ideas as those who confess faith in an Incarnate God whose everlasting commitment to his creation is guaranteed in his promise of a new creation.

I also believe that the arts can become not only a way to “reason” out our faith but also to embody our faith with a great deal of joy and hope.

George MacDonald once said that our job as Christians was “to have constantly before our eyes in the room we most frequent, some work of the best attainable art. This will teach us to refuse evil and choose the good.”

That’s what I’ll be exploring this week in Dallas and in Charlotte. We’d love to see you there if possible!