When Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight said, "The most challenging art always makes demands on our cozy assumptions," he was commenting on the Robert Irwin Getty Garden. So too it is, I think, with a vibrant, living faith, which can certainly make demands on us in much the same way that challenging art engages our senses.

If we think back to the story of Abraham and Sarah, did they assume they would live out their lives childless? When the angels of the Lord come to visit Abraham with the news that his 90-year-old wife Sarah will bear a son, Abraham is sitting in the opening of his tent. Sarah also opens to this news, she too hears the word of their future son, from this same opening, this same entrance (Genesis 18:1-10).

Artists, architects, theologians and priests – all are united in that all create entrance, all build opening within opening. The digital images that accompany my thoughts over the next few pages are entirely inadequate to represent the beauty of the originals they are meant to invoke. Nevertheless, I hope they will suggest enough visual nourishment to send you away from your screen in search of the real thing.

continued at the ECVA website
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Adapted from the ACE 2005 International Conference Post Modernity: Art, Architecture and Spirituality, June 1-3, 2005, held at the Museum of Biblical Art, 1865 Broadway at 61st Street, New York City. "Opening within Opening : Building the Gates of Righteousness" by Mel Ahlborn. Contact Ms. Ahlborn at illumination@earthlink.net.