The Operation of Grace collects a decade's worth of essays by Gregory Wolfe taken from the pages of Image, the literary journal he founded more than a quarter century ago. As he notes in the preface, his Image editorials, while they cover a wide range of topics, focus on the intersection of "art, faith, and mystery". Wolfe believes that art and religion, while hardly identical, offer illuminating analogies to one another - art deepening faith through the empathetic reach of the imagination and faith anchoring art in a vision beyond the artist's ego. Several essays dwell on how aesthetic values like ambiguity, tragedy, and beauty enlarge our understanding of the spiritual life. There are also a series of reflections that extend Wolfe's campaign to renew the neglected and often misunderstood tradition of Christian humanism. Finally, there are sections that contain more personal meditations arising from Wolfe's involvement in nurturing and promoting the work of emerging writers and artists. The Operation of Grace demonstrates once again why novelist Ron Hansen has spoken of Wolfe as "one of the most incisive and persuasive voices of our generation".Table of Contents A Metaphorical God RETURNING TO THE CAVEThe Cave and the CathedralART SPEAKS TO FAITHThe Wound of BeautyThe Tragic Sense of LifeSingularly AmbiguousStrange PilgrimsSecular ScripturesShouts and WhispersFully HumanFAITH SPEAKS TO ARTThirty Seconds AwayReligious but Not SpiritualCurrent EventEast and West in MiniaturePicturing the PassionWhy the Inklings Aren't EnoughART AND FAITH IN THE PUBLIC SQUAREThe Culture Wars RevisitedAlways NowTwo-Way TrafficKeeping a Private AddressConservative ElegiesPoetic JusticeCHRIST IAN THEN AND NOWLooking for a RenaissanceGiotto's RatioFollies Worldly and DivineThe King's Great Matter . . . and OursBecoming the OtherWORDS AND THE THE WRITING LIFEThe Humiliation of the WordStalking the SpiritThe Operation of GraceWho's Afraid of Geoffrey Hill?The Poetry of ExileSCENES FROM A LITERARY LIFEThe Voice of This CallingScenes from an Editorial LifeThe Four CulturesMugg, Hitch, and MeBreathAcknowledgments