Take a Sistine Chapel tour without ever leaving home

"Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel,"

by Andrew Graham-Dixon


If you've ever taken a tour with a guide who wasn't connecting with his or her group, you come to appreciate really good tour guides, people who not only know their subject but engage you in the topic, bringing information, insight and even entertainment.


My wife and I had that excellent kind of guide -- Liz Lev -- with a group touring the Vatican Museums. Everything we saw became so much more meaningful thanks to a great guide who was able to help us see not just artistic value but intention and the works' place in history.

With "Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel," Andrew Graham-Dixon offers much of the same insight to his readers.


It's not quite halfway into his book that the London-based art critic begins an absolutely thorough interpretation of Michelangelo's famous paintings on the ceiling and wall of the Sistine Chapel.


But that's because he sets up his art instructing by first giving readers a rather complete picture of the artist and his world at the beginning of the 16th century.



Inside Michelangelo's world
No piece of the life of Michelangelo Buonarroti is left untouched, and I came to feel that the biographical section of this book was as helpful and important for understanding the Sistine Chapel as the interpretation of the world-renown paintings itself.


We learn of the artist's family background, his training, his benefactors -- and most importantly his faith.


Graham-Dixon's analysis is that Michelangelo felt the hand of God in his life:

"Before he was ever chosen by the Medici, or the pope, he had been chosen by God. . . . He felt that he had been given his gifts by God, and charged with serving the purposes of the divine will."

Using those God-given skills then, "Michelangelo did not just invent a new kind of art, but a new idea of what art could be," Graham-Dixon claims. "He put his own sensibility, his own intellect, his own need and desire to fathom the mysteries of Christian faith, centre stage."


A superior user's guide
The heart of the book, written in observance of the 500th anniversary of the start of the work by Michelangelo in 1508, is Graham-Dixon's interpretation of the Sistine Chapel ceiling itself. While not ignoring style, he focuses on what Michelangelo meant by what he painted, how the pictures' meanings unfold, the subtle ways through which the artist gave expressive life to this amazing group of interlinked compositions.


As a user's guide to the Sistine Chapel, this book is superb.


Graham-Dixon walks us through each section and each panel of each section, pointing out not only beauty and the technical skill but why each figure is painted the way it is.

What we learn is that Michelangelo was a student of Holy Scripture -- especially the Hebrew Books -- and that he aimed to paint "his own vision of what he believed to be the eternal truths of Christianity," the author states.


Readers will come to understand the geography of the chapel ceiling, how the famous depiction of creation -- with God's pointed finger reading out to touch the finger of Adam -- fits into the rest of the biblical history, with the great cast of characters including Eve, Noah, David and Goliath, Judith, Jeremiah, Jonah and on and on.


Graham-Dixon gives his excellent interpretive skills to helping readers grasp in much the same way Michelangelo's "The Last Judgement," painted 15 years after the ceiling. Taking up the entire wall behind the chapel's altar, it is a monumental fresco as rich with meaning as the ceiling above.


Sadly, details of this beautiful work are depicted only in black and white photos, which hardly do justice to this colorful masterpiece.


Bigger would be better
And, if there is any fault at all in "Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel," it is the small size of the pages -- six inches by nine inches. There are 32 full-color pages that bring the Sistine's ceiling right into our hands, but I couldn't help but think how much more delight to the eye would have been deivered in a larger format. Perhaps Skyhorse Publishing will be able to work that out in a later edition.


As it is, though, I compared the printing in this latest book with the same Sistine Chapel panels printed in a larger, coffeetable-sized book given to me as a gift several years ago.

The color work -- the brightness and the clarity -- in "Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel" is far superior.


If you plan to visit the Vatican, take this along to read on the plane ride. It's a fact-filled yet easy read with the beautiful prose that is the hallmark of a fine writer.-- bz

Monk's poetry invites us to view biblical stories and characters from non-traditional perspectives

"God Drops and Loses Things,"

by Kilian McDonnell

Bible stories we've read before, biblical characters we've met before, but never this way. That's what fills the pages of Benedictine Father Kilian McDonnell's third book of poetry (St. John's University Press).

Perhaps you -- like myself -- feel you are out of your area of expertise in reading, no less reviewing, poetry. But take a chance, challenge yourself and try to see with the eyes of this monk from St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minn.

I stuck a Post-It note on at least a dozen of the nearly 50 works because they said something to me.

For one thing, Killian gives a voice to the women of Holy Scripture -- Miriam, for example, and Mary Magdalene -- whose thoughts the Bible authors mainly ignored.

My favorite might be "Widow Rachel: Matchmaker," as much a short essay as a poem, but cleverly imagined thoughts from the mind of a woman trying to find a wife for the carpenter, who doesn't seem to be interested:

"Mary needs grandchildren. The man is thirty and still at home with his mother, so of course the women whisper as they gather at the market stalls."

It's a treasure.

See how quickly you find the "prodigal daughter" entry.

Moving from the Hebrew Testament to the New Testament, Father Kilian re-writes parables with a new, imagined tone that somehow makes the stories of Jesus mean more to today's hearer.

I loved "The Catholic Thing," an accusation in poetic form that correctly charges us Christians with being so unchristian at times.

Toward the end Kilian favors us with a few pieces that come from his person -- family and Benedictine family -- that are filled with rich images, take us to the places he chooses to share with all of us. We're so blessed that he does. -- bz

Meet the man behind the weather report

"Nature's Messenger: Memoirs of a Prophetic Meteorologist,"

by Craig Edwards

Craig Edwards was the man behind the scenes for our weather in Minnesota and the rest of the Upper Midwest.

As the Twin Cities area chief meteorologist for the National Weather Service, the St. Hubert, Chanhassen parishioner recently finished a 34-year career warning people about storms, tornadoes, blizzards -- you name it.

It's from that experience of watching the weather patterns and witnessing scientifically the dramatically visible changes we see and feel that Edwards moves from telling his life story to almost a self-appointed role as prophet about climate change and global warming.

Edwards, who upon retirement from the weather bureau in 2007 took a job in the weather department for Minnesota Public Radio, religiously -- pun intended -- writes about his Catholic upbringing in Illinois and his fascination with the weather from an early age.

Readers of a certain age are going to see parallels with their own youthful years, I'm sure, and I didn't find much of that part of "Nature's Messenger" compelling reading.

But when you get to page 56 of this paperback, that's where the good stuff starts.

Come behind the curtain

Edwards takes readers on a lengthy behind-the-scenes tour of operations at several Weather Service locations around the Midwest, into the personnel issues, how and why the government got behind commercial television stations in working with new technologies like Doppler radar.

If you're old enough you'll be able to relive some of the major weather events of the past 34 years, including record snowstorms, tornadoes and of course the Red River Valley floods. Edwards calls the central part of North America "the world's greatest playground for the forces of nature," and thus a prime spot for weather people to work in.

All along the way in this life story of a man with an interesting job he works in what's going on with his family life and especially his faith life, including his finding blessing in Eucharistic Adoration and teaching in his parish confirmation program.

Interesting, too, is this comment about the parallels between life and weather: "There are a large number of days when things are just simply partly cloudy."

A man on a bigger mission

There's a good bit of preachiness here about the importance of striving for excellence in one's career without having to be pushed by outside forces, but Edwards doesn't over-do it. His writing style like his leadership style is more of collaborating, mentoring and preaching with his actions.

But when he starts laying out his thoughts about climate change, Edwards preaches a tough-love homily. "The planet is more vulnerable than ever before," he claims, and we humans have brought it on ourselves.

He sees the evidence of global warming as disrespecting God's creation, and he drives home with paragraph after paragraph of evidence the fact that we ignore all the warnings at our peril.

The answer lies in "a substantial sacrificial response and personal accountability," Edwards said. "All God's people have an inherent purpose to preserve the goodness of the earth."

Edwards does speaking engagements on the topics he writes about in "Nature's Messenger," an iUniverse title. Reach him at www.naturesmessenger.com. -- bz

Do you know where you came from?

"Disguise,"

by Hugo Hamilton

What's your earliest memory?

You've heard from parents and extended family stories from that part of your life for which you have no memory because you were just too young to remember.

But what if you discovered that maybe you hadn't been told the complete truth about those early years?

What if there was evidence that the people who call themselves your parents may not be your parents at all?

Hugo Hamilton gets inside the mind of a character in that very scenario. It's a novel that traps you into reading to the end.

Who are we, really?

The setting is Germany, and the story starts during World War II and flips back and forth between the generations and decades after the war and 50 some years later. Hamilton offers us a wonderful sense of place in every one of the locales he takes us to.

And as much as "Disguise" offers plot as a main device, it's really character that is in the spotlight, and not just for the family whose story is drawing us in.

How is who we are and where we come from -- and who we come from -- important to what we become?

What impact is there on our psyche in knowing our ancestry, or, more to the point, of not knowing? What does it do to you when you can't trust -- or don't know if you can trust -- your own parents? If you don't belong in a place, where do you belong?

How do you know when you're home?

No formulaic ending

"Disguise" isn't a book I'd jump up and down to recommend. By grade, maybe it's a "B+" thanks to the absolute beauty of the prose.

But I do recommend this Harper title (www.HarperCollins.com).

We need to read literature that doesn't have the formulaic endings of best-selling novels where you know before you start that the hero will conquer evil. -- bz

Most useful and used gift book you could buy this Christmas is about, of all things, the Rosary

"The Rosary: A Journey to the Beloved,"

by Gary Jansen

It's one of those small, easy-to-handle books, only 100 pages or so, and the pages are of the 5 inch by 7 inch variety, but "The Rosary" may be one of the most useful gifts you wrap this Christmas.

Gary Jansen, a book editor by trade, rediscovered the Rosary as a prayer of transformation, a prayer of peace and a prayer of hope, and his little book will help others do the same. As he explains about his own "dark night of the soul," "God had not abandoned me; I just hadn't been listening."

He wrote "The Rosary" as a short introduction on how to listen to God's words in day-to-day life and as a reminder that we are never alone.

There's some introductory pages that offer down-to-earth questions you may have asked yourself at one time or another, like: How long have Catholics been praying the Rosary? What's the point of repeating Hail Mary's over and over? What's behind the "mysteries" of the Rosary?

Jansen offers this simple way to look at the Rosary:

See the Rosary as sitting with Mary and paging through a scrapbook of Jesus' life; it will let you know Jesus on a whole new level, an emotional one, a loving one, and a familiar one.

But can we ever just sit and take the time to do the Rosary?

We 21st century people may have to re-learn how to reflect, not "just do it." Just the opposite of doing, Jansen encourages praying the Rosary as a way to sit with the stories in each of the four mysteries -- Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful and Glorious:

• See them as the high points in the life of Jesus;


• Think about their meaning;


• Become a character in the scene (for example, a waiter in the gospel story of the Wedding Feast at Cana), and ask yourself how you might have reacted, what you would be thinking were you there at the time, what you might have done in response.

Don't know thing one about the Rosary? There's an easy to use how-to section.

After you've read those introductory pages, though, you'll find Jansen's work useful time after time as you pray The Rosary. Just pick up at Page 39.

You'll see the opening prayers, and then a scripture passage and beautiful painting that goes with each of the 20 mysteries to help you focus on that aspect of Jesus' life story. None is more than one page, most very short, and the simplicity is perfect for helping target your attention.

Art buffs will appreciate the credits in the back that identify each of the paintings and their artists.

All will appreciate this Faith Words imprint (www.faithwords.com). -- bz