arts and culture on Visibility

God’s garden, made “in the beginning,” does not lie behind us, but ahead of us, in hope, and, in the meantime, all around us as our place of work. History without gardens would be a wasteland. What th...

A life spent entirely in public, in the presence of others, becomes, as we would say, shallow. While it retains its visibility, it loses the quality of rising into sight from some darker ground which ...

One helpful, practical tool to understand our blind spot is what’s called the Johari Window, an image developed as a counseling tool in the 1950s. Subjects were given a list of fifty-six adjectives, a...

Beneath the clearly perceived, highly explicit surface culture, there lies a whole other world.

Our natural tendency is to watch the world from behind the windows of [our] cultural home and to act as if people from other countries, ethnicities, or categories have something special about them, . ...

I know, up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here at the bottom we, too, should have rights."

When my grandparents were in their eighties, their television developed a fault that made the screen permanently bright green. It was good for viewing garden shows or nature programs, but it was prett...

It takes fresh experiences, surroundings, and inputs for us to see familiar shadows in a new light.

Though beauty gives you a weird sense of entitlement, it's rather frightening and threatening to have others ascribe such importance to something you know you're just renting for a while.

Through their wearing apparel, people can say subtle or important things that they could not or would not utter directly.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

It's in our biology to trust what we see with our eyes. This makes living in a carefully edited, overproduced and photoshopped world very dangerous.

Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold thy glory. Let me lear...

The stranger sees only what he knows.

Like a smartphone screen made blank by the rays of direct sunshine, one day we shall see Christ’s face. On that day, all the vain spectacles in this world of illusions and all the pixelated idols of o...

The rise of both video spectacles and marketed consumables is no accidental marriage. Images capture our attention and lure us because they implicitly ask us to try on various costumes of identity, to...

The very nature of light provides contrast. In juxtaposition, differing levels of light illuminate in extraordinary ways, helping us to see what we’ve been missing. In the late 1400s, the art world ma...

Since the advent of widespread public education in the West, it seems that many people express dissatisfaction with their schooling more often than they share positive experiences. This makes it all t...

If your voice is heard by more people because you've earned some kind of name and fame, your silence on an issue of urgent moral importance is even more of a betrayal. Privilege is obligation.

Holy God, we forget you are near. We forget that you are everywhere. We are so wrapped up in our own worlds that we cannot see beyond ourselves. God, you are so much greater! Lift up our heads. Lift u...

Leader: So Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you.” People: Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the gl...

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.

“Whatever his weight in pounds and ounces, he always seems bigger because of his bounces.”

The simple truth of our being gets lost in the metanarratives we spin. We become the fictions we live. Consequently, our way of being in the world is so false and unnatural that our presence is thorou...

Almighty God, we too often live in fear. Fear drives our self-preservation, our self-centered decisions, and prevents us from comprehending the wonder of your presence among us. Like Peter, we would d...

Now, in our lifetime, scientists are finding ever newer evidence for what some religious people called presence in the very organizing energy of the universe—from fractals, to holograms, to electro-ma...

You decide to buy a certain kind of car, and suddenly you see it everywhere. A friend recommends an obscure movie to you, and by the end of the week, three more people have mentioned it. You find out ...

People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.

The motivation of transparency is important. The culture teaches people to be candid and blunt, but this usually revolves around self-centeredness – you have a right to express your true feelings and ...

Thus the incomparable George Herbert writes of our glorification in his poem “The Star”:  Bright spark, shot from a brighter place,  Where beams surround my Saviour’s face,  Canst thou be any where ...