Kim Vrudny

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. Without any hint of patronizing, the author nurtures readers, brooding like a hen over an egg, attending to the reader’s well-being so that as members of society, we may live into healthier, even holier, lives of meaning—into persons awakened, indeed, into artists alive. Engaging with Thomas Merton as well as other prophetic voices who respond with encouragement in times of ‘endless war, crushing poverty, and horrific violence,’ 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.