Visio Divina

The current online art exhibit at the Episcopal Church and the Visual Arts website is called Visio Divina and is about how some churches around the country use art as a part of their ministries.

The exhibit is beautiful and inspiring, but it also uses flash with voiceovers and doesn't allow one to go through at their own pace. One subset at http://visiodivinaphiladelphia.org
offers information and art from that area in a more traditional website which states,

visio divina explores and identifies the possibilities of spiritual formation as it is revealed and developed through visual art practices both in, and inspired by, liturgical settings. the program is aimed to accumulate records of experiences through observation, and these observations will ultimately inform the development of models for spiritual formation which may be further adapted to use in individual parishes. interviews with visual artists and photodocumentation of these interviews are included under sketches visio divina is derived from lectio divina: a classical method of contemplative reading.

The five churches in the program are linked from http://visiodivinaphiladelphia.org/sketches/inphil.html

For example, there was The Year of the Artist at St. Martin's in Chestnut Fields that based its theme on Philosopher and author Arthur C. Danto quote,

The demand of great art is to embody the transformative metaphors for the meaning of human reality.

Artists within the congregation then began to see their own creative efforts as "an act of homage to God the creator," and took up the task as an artist "to grow his gift of creativity."

Both the Philadelphia site and the main ECVA exhibit are worth a look. And if that makes you hungry for more art, as well as art programs, the Advent and Christmas Exhibit Venite Adoremus, which my daughter Griffin and I curated last year, remains online.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor + King of Peace Episcopal Church