But they all go together. This issue of Cross Currents might feel on first encounter like a stampede in which the cattle are running off in several directions at once. She surveys the landscape, in search of peace culture, pointing out those places in which it can be found and might be found in a politically conflicted world. Liturgy is the natural moment of stillness between stampedes, but it is by no means lacking in ambiguity. Catherine Madsen shows us the unsettling Jewish ritual of Tahara, the preparation of the dead for burial, which incongruously includes verses from the Song of Songs, as an example of the art of liturgy that sustains but does not trivialize religious feeling.
Right worship is the ground in which theological reflection grows.
It is shocking as well as restorative. Ignacio G tz points out that Plato viewed inspiration is an irruption of the divine into the ordinary, a kind of necessary possession if one is to ascend to the higher reaches of knowledge. In order to make art, one has to interpret one's possession, understand one' s own madness. Because the divine embodies the erotic, and vice versa, art is a form of desire that can bind as well as free us. That is about as neat a segue into the work of Alice Walker as an editor could want.