There Is Only the Sacred and the Desecrated

Steeped in Rilke, attuned to Whitman, Mary Buchinger has written a Book of Hours chronicling moments that mesh the physical with the spiritual. Her openness to the world causes worlds to open within her. She penetrates the growth of a tree in good years and hard years by reading the formation of its rings as readily as she reaches into the life of Francis of Assisi, illuminating his understanding of the sacred, his ailments, and his love for and ministering to animals as well as people. We, her readers, partake of the joy that arises from her encounters with what she sees and feels. And when she pulls aside a curtain to show us a scene remembered from many years earlier, lodged next to the "left ventricle" of her heart, we learn the heart of the matter: art thrives on conjuring the real. -Jennifer Barber, author of The Sliding Boat Our Bodies Made