(Source image: The Empyrean (highest heaven), by Gustave Doré from the illustrations for Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy)
My essay “Death’s Vision,” published in 2022 in The Christian Century, has won the Award of Excellence for Long Format Theological Reflection from the Associated Church Press.
“How is visual beauty related to the presence of God? What was that attending light, glossing the dahlias and opening my eyes to their happy faces? Did I glimpse the countenance of God? And if death is the opening through which divine beauty comes into focus, could proximity to death while we live be the beginning of the beatific vision?”
Read in full here.