For today, Ash Wednesday: “God Help Me!” by Ni Ketut Ayu Sri Wardani. Oil on canvas: ow.ly/i/4NJHU

Modern spiritual consciousness is predicated upon the fact that God is gone, and spiritual experience, for many of us, amounts mostly to an essential, deeply felt and necessary but ultimately inchoate and transitory feeling of oneness or unity with existence. It is mystical and valuable, but distant. Christ, though, is a thorn in the brain. […]