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Contents © 1999
by Jim Holman.
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Sister Wendy in Conversation with Bill Moyers

Matthew: I liked the pairing, because it was the world encountering the Christian. Ernie: Ambassadors for the City of God and the City of Man. Matthew: It allowed Sister Wendy to trump the world--refusing to conform to its conception of the religious soul, and further, claiming the world. She talked about what art does and what God does in similar kinds of terms: allowing you to be true to yourself and to come to be what you are. The goal of becoming holy is synonymous with the goal of becoming human.... Ernie: So, contemplation of art is, in a way, a spiritual exercise, in that the kind of surrender to art she advocates is like the surrender to Christ that is necessary for salvation -- the surrender of self to Christ, for Him to remake in His own image. To leave his mark on you, instead of yours on him. That's the wonderfully theological aspect to her approach to art. Matthew: And that surrender to Christ doesn't require that the picture be of Christ. [Rather], truth, the truth contained in the work--an encounter with being as it really is--has a spiritual value.

--Ernie Grimm and Matthew Lickona