Art, Faith, Mystery: Beauty for Believers and Non-Believers Alike
I confess that this review is a little dated. I’ve held onto Image for more than a month, trying to work my way through the pieces within. I had put up a guard, almost instantly, when I read the tagline: Art. Faith. Mystery.
Faith. It stuck out to me because it felt like territory I shouldn’t be intruding on. I’m an atheist. I feel let down when He shows up in literature, a deux ex machina in himself. For me, literature is a place of human terms, and the only presence of God should be in supernatural terms alongside ghosts or Salman Rushdie-like chaos, or indeed, in the deep divides uncertainty can cause in a human spirit.
But I wanted to know how Faith was presented. Was it one Faith? One God? Gods? Is it an exploration of Faith as an abstract concept?
For Image, He is a God without his believer’s adornments, simply there, without their rulebook. This God – their construction of Faith -- exists through the lens of the characters and writers. There is no arguing about His existence. There is no politics of God, or name-calling or War on Christmas-style rants. If anything, there seems to be a persistent ebbing theme: He is Everywhere. But He also doesn’t show up and offer easy solutions. He does not intervene. But He is there.
For example, God is a source of tension in "La Pulchra Nota" by Molly McNett when John Fuller’s wife desires to become celibate. What is fascinating about this story is that the beginning of Fuller’s problems occur when his wife becomes pregnant with twins, and in 1370 it was believed that twins were the product of a woman who had sex with two men. This superstition complicates their life and throws it into turmoil. God then becomes another pivot point. Fuller’s wife is saying that God is asking her to dedicate her life to Him and become celibate, and she demands that Fuller allow her while he questions whether this God is actually the onset of madness, not faith. Meanwhile he struggles with lust toward his singing student whose pure voice he is convinced has been given to her by God. This seems one of the more secular pieces in the magazine, as it calls into question how much of God is real and how much of it is a way for humans to excuse their own desires.
“Irenology” is a beautiful poem by Karen An-Hwei Lee contemplating the rituals of faith and whether or not God is still present. She goes through the ritual: “Rejoice in God’s favor and presence. Carry fragrant/beams of cedar./Cherish silver and gold restored to our possession.” She concludes that “Yes, the light is still there. Holy Spirit.” The poetry shines with tender moments of personal faith and its challenges.
Another strength is the artwork in the magazine. Fritz Liedtke’s photographs are striking, particularly the images of children with their thoughts written on the print. There is a boy facing the camera, his shoulders hunched, his picture reading “I keep losing my friends.” Or the girl wearing a large furry hat, a flower pinned to it, whose picture reads, “For most a costume like this would be considered out of place but for my family it is quite normal.”
I was also struck by Steve Prince’s drawings of the Four Horsemen dancing. More impressive is that these were created in front of live audiences in four different cities. The accompanying essay was illuminating about the process of these pieces and added a depth that I would have missed otherwise. “Individually,” Beth McCoy’s essay about the piece reads, “each horse/man is visually stunning: masculine and feminine, delicate and strong, body and spirit. Each stands on its own while remaining part of the ensemble.”
Indeed, the essays were some of the more approachable pieces. The language in much of the poetry and fiction seemed to mimic speech from earlier centuries than this one. The language perhaps aided the seriousness of the issue and kept it from more of the modern, heated debates about Faith, but it also put me a little at arms’ length, as if this version of God could only exist in those pockets of time.
Most of the writers are well-established, and they stick to a conventional storyline. The poetry was free-verse and didn’t do much in the way of playing with form or structure.
If you find that God is showing up in your work, that your characters are speaking about him as part of their lives, or that your artwork centers around Faith-centered images, this magazine could easily be home to them. And if you’re someone with Faith, looking for a comfortable place to be among your own, this is a beautiful space to examine how contemporary writers are incorporating Faith into their work.
