Overview

Are songwriters, painters, filmmakers, and other artists modern-day prophets in society and church? Can art be a vehicle of hope, stirring that wondrous if elusive capacity in human beings to imagine a more just, humane, and joyful future? Through critical and contemplative engagement with classics in music, film, literature, and visual arts, Christopher Pramuk s The Artist Alive: Explorations in Music, Art & Theology invites us to explore these and other questions. Attentive to the deep longings of the human and spiritual journey, Pramuk posits the arts as a doorway into the life of spirit and sacred presence. Rather than proposing answers, he outlines a way of seeing, hearing, and praying through some of life s most enduring spiritual and theological questions. With more than a dozen case studies featuring various artists, prompts for contemplative practices, and a focus on today s most urgent social and spiritual issues, The Artist Alive weaves a spirituality of wonder, resistance, and hope: a prophetic response to the utilitarian, militarized, marketplace vision of reality that bears down upon and dehumanizes so many in our time. Through loving examination of artists and their art, Pramuk convincingly conveys the possibility of a more humane and joyful way of being in the world.

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9781599828381

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Reviews

Christopher Pramuk s The Artist Alive is a multivalent exploration of how the popular arts hold the potential to transform consciousness. It is also a profound investigation for people of all ages into the transformative power of art in its myriad forms. I envy the young people who have the privilege of sitting in Chris s classes, where theology is taught not as a series of propositions or doctrines, but as the existential basis of all genuine religion that ties us to planet Earth by opening us to mystery, radical amazement, and compassion. Pramuk s book establishes that everyone has access to a common core of creative power from which abundant life, aliveness, pours continuously in a living stream despite the sorrows, injustices, suffering and brokenness we all experience. This is a book that takes a hard look at the world of our times yet offers hope. Enter its pages and find yourself recovering beginner s mind, checking out YouTube recordings of your favorite artists, discovering new ones, moving and grooving to a deeper music that enables the mind to slowly descend into the heart and make the world a better place. As Pramuk puts it, [T]his is one of our most urgent and beautiful tasks today: to teach to the imaginations of young people, to feed their wonder, to dare them to imagine, in spite of it all, a future of peace. Susan McCaslin Poet, Author of Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton s Dance with the Feminine The Artist Alive: Explorations in Music, Art & Theology A profound and beautiful book, The Artist Alive: Explorations in Music, Art & Theology allows us entry into the contemplative classroom of a gifted teacher. Drawing skillfully on religious and philosophical insights from a range of diverse traditions and perspectives, Christopher Pramuk allows us to experience musical and visual works of both popular and classic art the Song of Songs to Pink Floyd as texts or doorways through which the creative and spiritual dynamism inherent in each of us might be awakened. For those who seek such an awakening, The Artist Alive will be a treasured companion. Wendy M. Wright Professor Emeritus of Theology, Creighton University With his signature spiritual depth and cultural humility, Christopher Pramuk invites readers of his latest book to participate in meaning-making through engagement with the arts, and with music in particular. Pramuk lives in the imagination that one is transformed, for good or ill, by the company one keeps. Readers are introduced to some of the guests with whom Pramuk has shared hospitality in his own interior spaces--the musicians who have formed him, as well as the thinkers who have informed him. Pramuk's book is filled with practical insights and ample resources for teaching and discussing such things as paying attention, struggling for holiness, and uniting the secular with the sacred. Pramuk's latest offering is itself a work of wonder, resistance, and hope. Kim Vrudny St. Thomas University

Author Information

Christopher Pramuk is an associate professor of theology and the University Chair of Ignatian Thought and Imagination at Regis University in Denver. He received his PhD in systematic theology from the University of Notre Dame and is the recipient of several teaching awards, including the Monika K. Hellwig Award for Teaching Excellence, granted by the College Theology Society.

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