Intruding Upon the Timeless

Over the last two decades, a quiet revolution has been taking place in our culture. In both the church and the public square, people are turning away from partisan politics and shrill ideologies and looking for social and personal renewal through the imagination—and, more specifically, the imaginative space where religious faith and artistic vision meet. In short, they are seeking ways to reconnect beauty to goodness and truth.


One of the forces helping to spearhead this cultural revolution has been Image: A Journal of the Arts & Religion, the premier publication devoted to showcasing original creative work—fiction, poetry, visual art, music and more—by Christian and Jewish artists at work today. Image, which has received accolades from both the professional art world and the religious community, has published not only Nobel and Pulitzer prize winners but also a whole generation of emerging artists.


Intruding Upon the Timeless: Meditations on Art, Faith, and Mystery is a collection of Gregory Wolfe's editorial statements that preface each issue of Image. These short, evocative essays constitute a new Christian aesthetic for our time. Each of the meditations is like a polished gem: radiant, gracefully written, beautiful in itself, but also serving as a stimulus to further reflection. They remind us of the way that both faith and imagination reach beyond the limits of reason to intuit the mystery of redemption.
Gregory Wolfe’s vision is the animating force behind Image, one of the best journals on the planet. Intruding Upon the Timeless, a collection of his pieces from Image, takes its title from a phrase of Flannery O’Connor. That’s apt, because not since O’Connor’s Mystery and Manners has there been such bracing insight on the pile-up where art and faith collide. This book will rev your engines and propel you down the same road.

—Annie Dillard, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek