ISSUE No. 55 | MARCH 2025
WELCOME
If you’re new to CULTIVARE we welcome you! CULTIVARE is a monthly field guide for life and faith, brought to you by TEND. Each month we explore a specific “field” – a topic or theme through which we seek to cultivate contemplation, engagement, and deeper understanding. Our guiding questions are:
What are you cultivating in your life?
What fruit do you want your life to bear?
Each issue of CULTIVARE is structured into three parts:
Cultivate: Examines a specific “Field” or facet of life and offers questions to unearth and challenge our held perspective; along with concise kernels of truth which we call “Seeds.”
Irrigate: Explores the ways we nurture our understanding, which varies from individual to individual. We offer six means of irrigation: Art, Poetry, Profile, Film, Essay, and Books.
Germinate: Encourages practical ways to engage in becoming more fruitful and free in our lives.
Our name, CULTIVARE, in Spanish means “I will cultivate.” We hope each issue of our field guide will encourage you to do just that – cultivate new thoughts, actions, faith, hope, and fruitful living. We invite you to dig in and DIG DEEP!
FIELD
For we are partners working together for God, and you are God's field.
(I Corinthians 3:9)
Our theme this month is FAITHFULNESS. This is the second in our nine-part series on the Fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:22-23: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control; against such things there is no law (ESV).
As we enter the season of Lent, we feel the topic of faithfulness is fitting for the time in the church calendar that Christians devote to preparing for Easter through repentance, prayer, and self-denial. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and concludes on Easter. Lent is 40 days long as a reminder of Christ's 40 days in the wilderness, and His defeat of temptation (Matthew 4). Here we are reminded that Jesus was also tempted and that He stood firm against Satan's temptations. Throughout Christ’s earthly life he embodied faithfulness time and time again amidst a myriad of challenges and circumstances.
But how about you and me? How do we experience and embody faithfulness? A helpful exercise is to take an attentive look at how faithfulness is defined. The Meriam Webster Dictionary offers these five definitions for “faithful”:
1. Steadfast in affection or allegiance
2. Firm in adherence to promises or in observance of duty
3. Given with strong assurance
4. True to the facts, to a standard, or to an original
5. Full of faith
What is your experience of remaining “steadfast in affection or allegiance?” What is your record on keeping promises, being dependable, keeping your word? Would coworkers or colleagues describe you as reliable, truthful, trustworthy? How do you express and embody faithfulness?
In this issue we profile Joni Eareckson Tada, who turned 75 this past October and who has been living a life of faithfulness as a quadriplegic since the age of 17. We feature an original essay by Andrew DeCort entitled “Faithfulness: Love’s Alternative to Domination and Isolation.” And our Artist of the Month is Makoto Fujimura whose faithfulness to God and to ancient Japanese techniques of painting create the beauty of “slow art.”
We hope this issue will prompt you to reflect on the individuals in your life who have encouraged you by their faithfulness. And we pray this issue will lead you to take a closer look at the faithfulness of God and your own expression of faithfulness. How might you more fully and freely bear the fruit of faithfulness in your life? In what ways is God inviting you to greater faithfulness? (DG)
***
Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. (Deuteronomy 7:9 NIV)
But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”
(Ruth 1:16 NIV)
For your steadfast love is before my eyes, and I walk in faithfulness to you.
(Psalm 26:3 NRSV)
Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.
(Luke 16:10 NRSV)
***
TEND CAN HELP! If you would like to take tangible steps working toward a new chapter in your life TEND can help. Explore our offerings by clicking here:
SEEDS
A handful of quotes to contemplate and cultivate into your life
Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. (Mother Teresa)
We are not called to be successful, but faithful. (Oswald Chambers)
“You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin – to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours – closer than you yourself keep it. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo. Anyway: there it is. We know most of what Gandalf has told you. We know a good deal about the ring. We are horribly afraid–but we are coming with you; or following you like hounds.” (JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings)
Christian virtue, including the nine-fold fruit of the Spirit, is both the gift of God and the result of the person of faith making conscious decisions to cultivate this way of life and these habits of heart and mind. (N.T. Wright)
By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity. (Saint Augustine)
“Some people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway.” (John Green, The Fault in Our Stars)
Being faithful in the smallest things is the way to gain, maintain, and demonstrate the strength needed to accomplish something great. (Alex Harris)
There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness. Religion in our time has been captured by the tourist mindset. Religion is understood as a visit to an attractive site to be made when we have adequate leisure. (Eugene Peterson)
What makes authentic disciples is not visions, ecstasies, biblical mastery of chapter and verse, or spectacular success in the ministry, but a capacity for faithfulness. Buffeted by the fickle winds of failure, battered by their own unruly emotions, and bruised by rejection and ridicule, authentic disciples may have stumbled and frequently fallen, endured lapses and relapses, gotten handcuffed to the fleshpots and wandered into a far county. Yet, they kept coming back to Jesus. (Brennan Manning)
ART
Makoto Fujimura
By Bonnie Fearer
Makoto Fujimura thinks deeply about time, and he wants you to think about it too.
Specifically, he challenges us (in his art and his writing) to ponder the relationship between time, culture, and faith, and how each relates to— –and influences—-- one another. The result is what he calls “slow art.” In Japan, it is a specific style of painting called Nihonga, which is a discipline that uses mineral pigments, and occasionally ink, together with other organic pigments on silk or paper. It takes layers, and it takes time. Of this process Makoto says, “You control all the elements. …There are sometimes over 100 to 150 layers before I start painting the image. And that's part of the meditative quality of what I do, which appeals to me, but it's slow. And it's also mutable. The pigments will settle over time. And some of the works will use silver, which will tarnish over time. And, and that's part of the calculation of Nihonga -- you're actually capturing time itself.”
The result is paintings with an iridescent dimensionality that invite the viewer (as well as the artist himself) to slow down and take the time to contemplate the image. In the words of writer David Brooks, “Mako once advised me to stare at one of his paintings for 10 to 12 minutes. I thought it would be boring, but it was astonishing. As I stood still in front of it, my eyes adjusted to the work. What had seemed like a plain blue field now looked like a galaxy of color.”
The concept of Kairos (grace) time, which is spatial and slow and appreciative, – versus chronos (chronological) time is deeply rooted In Fujimura’s Christian faith. He says, “Art making, to me, is a discipline of awareness, prayer and praise. Imagination gives us wings to create, but it is through Christ’s tears and the invitation to the feast of God that we can be partakers of the New Creation.”
Fujimura’s journey to faith began in his mid-20’s. A self-proclaimed atheist, he read William Blake’s poem “Jerusalem,” and found himself deeply stirred by the questions that the character Albion (symbol of humanity) asks Jesus on the cross, and by the answers Jesus gives him. Something clicked, and from that point onward he has made it his life’s work to connect his faith with his art. He does this not only in the privacy of his studio, but in lectures, symposiums, and in his writing. He has written several outstanding books, one of which is the story of his coming to faith, entitled, “Refractions: A Journey of Art, Faith and Culture,” and his more recent book, “Art and Faith: A Theology of Making.”
Makoto Fujimura was the youngest artist (at age 32), to ever have a piece acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. He was also commissioned to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the publishing of the King James Bible by creating a painting for each one of the gospels. It was the first time that a single artist had been commissioned to illuminate the four Gospels in nearly five hundred years. The list of his accomplishments goes on and on, but the important piece of all of it is that Fujimura takes seriously the importance of art pointing to faith in Christ. It is a message he has remained faithful to throughout his life as an artist. As he says, “One aspect of our stewardship is to become poets of Creation, to sing alongside the Creator over Creation.”
To read more about Fujimura, and to explore some of his art, click here
POETRY
Those Winter Sundays
by Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
PROFILE
Joni Eareckson Tada
(1949 - present)
By Lisa Hertzog
I would agree with [Charles] Spurgeon: “If as my days so shall my strength be, then let the days be long and dark, for so the strength shall be mighty, and God shall be glorified, and His servants shall be blessed!” Oh, friend, to me, that is valiant living, that’s bold and courageous living. I would’ve never chosen quadriplegia for myself, but since God wrote it into the script of my life, I will embrace it and I will not miss the shallows where
life is only lived ankle-deep. (Joni Eareckson Tada)
A bestselling author, speaker, artist, and advocate for people with disabilities, Joni Eareckson Tada has spent more than five decades demonstrating what it means to trust God through suffering. In 1967, Joni Eareckson Tada was swimming in the Chesapeake Bay when she experienced a diving accident that left her a quadriplegic in a wheelchair at age 17. After two years of struggling through depression and rehabilitation and wrestling with God, Joni emerged with a deep trust in God and a determination to help others in similar situations. Her story became widely known through her bestselling autobiography, Joni, which was later made into a feature film, both of which were translated into many languages and introduced her to people around the world.
In 1979 she founded Joni and Friends to provide Christ-centered ministry to special-needs families, wheelchairs and the Gospel message to those struggling with isolation around the world, and Disability training for churches. Through its Wheels for the World program, Joni and Friends have delivered over 200,000 wheelchairs and Bibles to people living with disabilities in developing nations who are often rejected and ignored.
Joni has served on many national and international committees advocating for disability rights, including the National Council on Disability and the U.S. State Department’s Disability Advisory Committee. She has visited more than 50 countries, working to improve accessibility and inclusion for people with disabilities.
During her rehabilitation, Joni also learned to paint by holding a brush between her teeth. What began as a way to express herself became another avenue for ministry, with her artwork now displayed in galleries and sold to support disability programs.
Joni’s painting (above), New Life, captures the symbolic beauty of the new life we have in Christ. Using ink and watercolor, Joni portrays a Monarch butterfly’s struggle to break free of its chrysalis, representing the hardships we as believers face as we become more like Christ.
As an author, Joni has written over 50 books on topics such as suffering, faith, and disability outreach. Fellow author Philip Yancey once said of her, “Through her public example, Joni has done more to straighten out warped views of suffering than all the theologians put together. Her life is a triumph of healing—a healing of the spirit, the most difficult kind.” She has shared her journey with God through her sufferings in her books, including her experience with stage III breast cancer in 2010 and writing a daily devotional A Spectacle of Glory offering insights from her battle with chronic pain.
In 2017 Joni celebrated 50 years of God’s faithfulness to her in her wheelchair. Having surpassed life expectancy estimates for a spinal cord injury patient by decades, Joni celebrated her 75th birthday in October 2024 with deep gratitude for her unexpected longevity. Having lived in her wheelchair for almost six decades, Joni is one of the longest living quadriplegics to date.
A sample of quotes by Joni Eareckson Tada illustrating her faithfulness of resting in God:
God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other afflictions, as his chisel for sculpting our lives. Felt weakness deepens dependency on Christ for strength each day. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away.
The weaker I am, the harder I must lean on God's grace; the harder I lean on him, the stronger I discover him to be, and the bolder my testimony to his grace.
I'd learned that you can't wear a crown unless you bear a cross - that if our Savior had learned obedience through suffering, we should expect the same.
He has chosen not to heal me, but to hold me. The more intense the pain, the closer His embrace. The greatest good suffering can do for me is to increase my capacity for God. Real satisfaction comes not in understanding God’s motives, but in understanding His character, in trusting in His promises, and in leaning on Him and resting in Him as the Sovereign who knows what He is doing and does all things well.
To learn more about Joni Eareckson Tada, explore the Joni & Friends website:
FILM
Each month we recommend films focused on our theme
Feature Film
Of Gods and Men
(2010)
Eight French Christian monks live in harmony with their Muslim brothers in a monastery perched in the mountains of North Africa in the 1990s. When a crew of foreign workers is massacred by an Islamic fundamentalist group, fear sweeps though the region. The army offers them protection, but the monks refuse. Should they leave? Despite the growing menace in their midst, they slowly realize that they have no choice but to stay... come what may. This film is loosely based on the life of the Cistercian monks of Tibhirine in Algeria, from 1993 until their kidnapping in 1996. Time magazine film critic Richard Corliss described the film as: “A luminous tale of faith and heroism.” Directed by Xavier Beauvois. Winner of the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. French with English subtitles.
Watch the trailer: View Now
Documentary Film
Corrie ten Boom:
A Faith Undefeated
(2013)
When Nazi forces invaded Holland in 1940 and began rounding up Jews, Corrie ten Boom, her sister Betsie, and their elderly father risked their lives to save as many as possible. A hidden room was secretly built in their home where the oppressed Jews took refuge until a Gestapo raid put an end to their operation. For their “crimes,” Corrie and Betsie were sent to the notorious concentration camp at Ravensbruck, where they suffered relentless cruelty. Struggling to reconcile God’s goodness with the terrible realities of the camp, the sisters clung desperately to their Christian faith. Betsie died in the camp, but Corrie was miraculously released due to a clerical error. She spent the rest of her days caring for other death camp survivors and sharing her story with the world. Corrie’s 1971 best-selling book, The Hiding Place, provides her account of persevering faith and forgiveness in the face of terrible evil. Directed by Robert Fernandez.
Short Film
Side by Side
(3 minutes)
When Sonia Vallabh was diagnosed nine years ago with a rare, incurable disease, she and her husband decided to take matters into their own hands. The catch: neither of them knew anything about medicine. CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Steve Hartman illuminates the extraordinary expression of faithfulness that happened next.
Podcast
Fruit of the Spirit: Faithfulness
The Father’s Business Podcast
Many discussions of the fruit of faithfulness highlight God’s faithfulness in the face of our lack of it. But what does it look like for us to grow in this area and bear its fruit? What is the human character of faithfulness? This month, we feature an episode from the devotional podcast The Father’s Business. Hosts Elizabeth Gunter Powell and Kimberly Roddy discuss what it means to be faithful in our relationship with God and in our interactions with other people. They dig into the definition of faithfulness as dependability, reliability, honesty, and godly loyalty.
Read their own introduction and listen to the podcast below. Fast forward to about 3:30 to skip the opening retreat advertisement. Listen Now
ESSAY
Faithfulness:
Love’s Alternative to Domination and Isolation
By Andrew DeCort
Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without
and know we cannot live within. (James Baldwin)
When I was growing up, Braveheart was a movie many of us were watching. However romanticized, it told the story of the Scottish freedom fighter, William Wallace, and his resistance to English tyranny.
After Wallace’s wife gets brutally executed, his struggle for independence intensifies. The pusillanimous prince, Robert the Bruce, finally promises to come to his aid. But behind the (fictional) scenes, Robert cuts a deal with the crown to protect his family and position himself for power. In the decisive battle, Robert turns his back on Wallace and flees from the fight, only to return and personally strike him down.
When Robert removes his helmet and the fallen Wallace beholds his betrayer, his face is a portrait of heartbreak. His eyes swim with tears. His head tilts to the side like a dumbfounded dog. He slumps backwards to the ground, speechless and groaning.
Regret haunts Robert. When he visits his leprous father to announce his victory, he explodes instead with a grief-stricken confession: “I betrayed him! And I saw it in his face! And it’s tearing me apart!” The deformed man is unmoved. He reminds his desperate son of the power he had won and retorts, “All men betray.”
“All men betray” – it could almost serve as a banner for our age. Faithfulness is for suckers and losers who get left behind in the dust of greatness. How much of our public life is dominated by thrice-married celebrities who tell lies and break laws to public approval? How many of our ministers have been unmasked as manipulators, embezzlers, and abusers?
When betrayal governs, domination and isolation become the rules of (dis)engagement. If we can’t trust those with whom we might cooperate, we must conquer them and make them conform to our wishes. Or, we must go it alone and keep others far enough away to prevent them from exploiting our vulnerability.
Both options armor us against betrayal. But they ultimately leave us empty and alone. No wonder we live in an age of escalating authoritarianism and an epidemic of loneliness.
As old-fashioned as the word may sound to our age, faithfulness is the perennial alternative to domination and isolation. It’s the field in which freedom, trust, and thus the miracle of our enduring cooperation can grow. In the bonds of faithfulness, neither party dominates nor isolates. Instead, each voluntarily makes and keeps promises to the other, come what may. In this practice, the faithful preserve the fragile faith that we can speak and act and co-create a life of integrity with one another.
The world created by faithfulness is the paradox of spiritual adulthood: all parties are free to be their full selves, and yet their freedom is mutually bound to the other’s flourishing. In this way, faithfulness is simultaneously out-of-control and committed, a “non-sovereignty” according to historian Hannah Arendt that liberates us from both coercion and chaos for enduring covenant. Author James Baldwin called this “a bondage which liberates [us] into something of the glory and suffering of the world.”
Faithfulness, then, unlocks the secret garden we all long for but fear, the fertile soil in which our lives can grow: vulnerability with safety. In this wild field, our unpredictable freedom and precious worth are wed to one another and slowly yield healing fruit.
In a previous age of domination and isolation, Paul imagined the Spirit of God gardening our lives, and he wrote that faithfulness is among its essential fruit (Galatians 5:22). Significantly, Paul saw love as the first fruit of divine presence and thus the seedbed of all faithfulness.
A convert from religious nationalism’s lust for power, Paul understood a radical insight: love so cherishes both itself and the other that it organically unfolds as faithfulness, that nuclear bond of mutual freedom and flourishing in ecstatic, enduring embrace. However fragile and fraught with affliction, love’s faithfulness is what divine power produces in us. “It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” (1 Corinthians 13:7).
“Every man betrays.” To this leprous cynicism, the grief-stricken Robert counters, “I want to believe as he does! I will never be on the wrong side again!” It’s a cry for faithfulness – to give our lives to a love higher than power and self-preservation. However buried in our time, this cry for faithfulness lives inside all of us, often breaking through our hardened soil with grief and longing.
Faithfulness is the organic evidence of God’s empowering presence in our lives. It offers a perennial alternative to the domination and isolation that are currently withering us.
What is growing in your garden? What is growing in our communal garden?
***
Andrew DeCort is the author of Blessed Are the Others: Jesus’ Way in a Violent World (BitterSweet Collective, 2024) and Reviving the Golden Rule: How the Ancient Ethic of Neighbor Love Can Heal the World (IVP Academic, forthcoming). He founded the Institute for Faith and Flourishing, co-leads Prophetic: The Public Theology Fellowship, and writes the newsletter Stop & Think.
BOOKS
Each month we recommend a book (or two) focused on our theme
NON-FICTION
A Long Obedience in the Same Direction
by Eugene Peterson
Since Eugene Peterson first wrote this spiritual formation classic more than forty years ago, hundreds of thousands of Christians have been inspired by its call to deeper discipleship. As a society, we are still obsessed with the immediate, but Peterson's time-tested prescription for discipleship remains the same―a long obedience in the same direction.
Long obedience requires a deepening life of prayer. Peterson finds encouragement for today's pilgrims in the Songs of Ascents (Psalms 120–134), sung by travelers on their way to worship in Jerusalem. With prophetic and pastoral wisdom, Peterson shows how the psalms teach us to grow in worship, service, joy, work, happiness, humility, community, and blessing.
FICTION
Code Name Verity
by Elizabeth Wein
October 11th, 1943 -- A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it's barely begun.
When "Verity" is arrested by the Gestapo, she's sure she doesn't stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she's living a spy's worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution.
As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity uncovers her past, how she became friends with the pilot Maddie, and why she left Maddie in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. On each new scrap of paper, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage, failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy?
CHILDRENS
If Jesus Came to My House
by Joan Thomas
A classic for over half a century, If Jesus Came to My House is a tender tale of how a young boy realizes that he can welcome Jesus into his life by helping all people both young and old. This rhymed reflection provides refreshing insight on how we all can learn to be respectful, courteous, giving, and loving toward others. The original two-color illustrations by Henri Sorensen bring the simple inspirational message of this story to life. For generations to come, parents and children will find inspiration in Joan Gale Thomas's classic book time and time again.
DIG DEEPER
Practical suggestions to help you go deeper into our theme
1. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
Devote some time and thought to these reflective questions on our theme:
a. What comes to mind when you think about faithfulness?
b. Who has embodied faithfulness in your life?
c. What does it mean to be faithful?
d. How can you demonstrate faithfulness in your relationships?
e. What are some situations where it can be challenging to remain faithful?
f. How does your faith influence your commitment to faithfulness?
2. TIM KELLER MEDITATION ON FAITHFULNESS AND MEEKNESS
In this short devotional meditation by author and pastor Tim Keller, he illuminates how faithfulness and meekness work hand in hand. View Now
3. BOOK FOR LENT: RELIVING THE PASSION
If you are looking for a thoughtful and moving book this Lent, we highly recommend the Lenten book Reliving the Passion by Walter Wangerin Jr. The meditations in Reliving the Passion, which received a Gold Medallion Award in 1993, follow the story as given in the gospel of Mark―from the moment when the chief priests plot to kill Jesus to the Resurrection. But these readings are more than a recounting of events; they are an imaginary reenactment, leading the reader to re-experience the Passion or perhaps see it fully for the very first time. As only a great storyteller can, Walter Wangerin enables the reader to see the story from the inside, to discover the strangeness and wonder of the events as they unfold. It’s like being there.
4. SONG: “PRESSING ON” by BOB DYLAN
In 1980 singer and songwriter Bob Dylan released a gospel album entitled Saved. The sixth track on that album is the gospel song “Pressing On” and speaks to faithfulness amidst the challenges of life. We invite you to listen to the song at the following link: View Now
5. PRAYER FOR FAITHFULNESS
Dear God,
We pray for faithfulness in our lives. Help us to stay true to our commitments and to honor our promises. May we be faithful in our relationships, showing loyalty and trustworthiness. Let our actions reflect our dedication and integrity.
Thank you for your faithfulness to us, even when we falter. Help us to be faithful in return. Guide us to be faithful stewards of the resources and opportunities you have given us. Help us to remain faithful in our spiritual practices, seeking to grow in our relationship with you. May we be examples of faithfulness to others, inspiring them to live with integrity and commitment.
We pray for faithfulness in our communities and institutions, asking for honesty and accountability in all that we do. Thank you for the strength and stability that faithfulness brings. Help us to cultivate it in every aspect of our lives. AMEN
ROOTED
But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.
(Jeremiah 17:7-8 NIV)
POLLINATE
CULTIVARE is a ministry of TEND and is offered free to our subscribers. We are grateful to our donors who help underwrite our costs. If you would like to support the ongoing work of CULTIVARE, please consider us in your giving. All financial contributions to TEND
(a 501c3 ministry) for CULTIVARE are tax-deductible.
Subscribe to CULTIVARE for free!
FIELD NOTES
Images used in order of appearance:
1. FIELD: Nathan Williams / RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution);
RNLI is a British charity, Date unknown.
https://rnli.org/safety/beach-safety/beach-activities
2. SEEDS: Allan Hise, Flying Buttresses of Strasbourg Cathedral, Nov 27 2006
https://www.flickr.com/photos/allanimal/308857676/
3. ART: Makoto Fujimura, Spirit in the Desert, 2021
https://spiritinthedesert.org/events/makoto-fujimuras-art-and-faith/
4. POETRY: Julio Cortez /Associated Press, Jan 4 2018
https://abcnews.go.com/US/brutal-bomb-cyclone-snowstorm-numbers/story?id=52159331
5. PROFILE: Joni Eareckson Tada, Life Today, 2025
https://lifetoday.org/life-today-tv/guest-directory/joni-eareckson-tada/
6. FILM: James Stanfield, Wedding Feast, Nat Geo Image Collection, December 1983,
Northeastern Romania
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photo-of-the-day/photo/romania-wedding-food-party
7. ESSAY: Käthe Kollwitz, The Mothers, 1919, Art Gallery of New South Wales
https://www.wikiart.org/en/kathe-kollwitz/not_detected_235972
8. BOOKS: Unknown photographer, AFP news, July 8, 2018
9. DIG DEEPER: Edvard Munch, The Sick Child (oil on canvas), 1926
Munchmuseet, Oslo, Norway
https://www.munchmuseet.no/en/our-collection/the-sick-child/
10. ROOTED: Gregory King, Support #2, 2020, Louisville, KY
https://www.gregking.space/photo (available as a limited edition print)
TEAM CULTIVARE: Duane Grobman (Editor), Greg Ehlert, Bonnie Fearer, Lisa Hertzog, Ben Hunter, Eugene Kim, Greg King, Olivia Mather, Andrew Massey, Rita McIntosh, Jason Pearson (Design: Pearpod.com)
WE'RE LISTENING:
We welcome hearing your thoughts on this issue
and suggestions for future issues.
Email us at: info@tendwell.org
