The place where John’s body is buried is bathed in light. Literally. His grave is fully exposed to the rays of the sun from dawn to dusk. And when night falls, it basks in the lunar glow. For a couple hundred years John’s grave was sheltered by the dome of a magnificent basilica, but that…
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What relevance could a 6th-century cathedral possibly have for the life of a 21st-century girl? That’s a fair question. But a visit to the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey taught me that Christians from the past can speak into our present.
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The way we pray shapes who we become. Our prayers reflect our understanding of God’s work in the past and our hopes about the way God will interact with us in the future. This Egyptian Coptic prayer testifies to the expectation that God walks with believers through the storm, that His presence is a sustaining force and source of joy. And it reflects their desire to become a flame of love.
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Looking at art with kids is a way of exposing them to the marvelous diversity of artistic expression and to a range of cultures. A visit to an art gallery or museum can be an opportunity not just to cultivate self-control and attention, but also to nurture creativity and curiosity.
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Reading well makes travel meaningful. On a recent trip to Cappadocia, I traveled with Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus.
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Mary Magdalene has a reputation for being emotional, if not unstable. Meanwhile Mary the mother of Jesus is usually depicted as supernaturally composed, her emotion perfectly contained beneath a serene expression. She’s not human; she’s all saint. Reflecting on a set of terracotta sculptures in Bologna and a Dorothy Sayer’s play, I consider how we can move from caricature to complexity in our understanding of these two women.
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Tina Boesch 