Video and Conference Presentations
of the Mount Angel Institute

Christian in the World: Underground Symbols of Christianity

with Christine Schlesser

Christine Schlesser, Director of the Classical Iconography Institute, explores how early Christian symbols developed during the age of persecution and the early Church and how those symbols evolved into the symbols of Christianity we understand today.

Learning to See: Discovering the Beauty Around You

with Helen Bouchard

Silverton artist Helen Bouchard shares on the value and benefit of art for everyone, why beauty matters, the role of the artist, and how learning to see can enrich your life by finding new connections with beauty that have been lost in our modern culture. Bouchard was the Mount Angel Institute’s Artist-in-Residence for winter 2025. She is trained in classical painting and drawing and also teaches art classes. Bouchard is also an employee in the Abbey Bookstore and Coffeehouse.

Learn more about Bouchard and her artwork on her website.

How to Pray When You’re Too Busy:
Living a Contemplative Life in the World

with Jennifer Anna Rich

How can we, as Christians, practice stillness, ceaseless prayer, and being with God in a busy and often distracted world? Embedded in her Orthodox tradition of praying the Jesus Prayer in ways both fixed and free, Jennifer Anna Rich will share some insights on how she strives to live a contemplative life in a complex and busy world with wisdom from the Philokalia.

Jennifer Anna Rich is an author, scriptorium book artist, and urban farmer. She holds a master’s degree in Theology and has been a lifelong student of contemplative prayer. Rich leads Orthodox prayer retreats and pilgrimages with a deep desire to help others love their prayer lives. She is the author of Prayer Spa: Ancient Treatments for the Modern Soul, and The Little Way of a Pilgrim, recently released by Ancient Faith Kids Publishing. She oversees Oblation Papers & Press with her husband and occasionally their two grown daughters and offers letterpress prayer cards from her private studio, Poustinia Press.

Sacred Art, New Evangelization, and Sacred Scripture

with Tomasz Misztal

Tomasz Misztal shares how art and its creation has transformed and affected his life. Focusing on the sacred and incorporating figurative and abstract elements in his pieces that express the human condition and spirit, learn how his artistic approach has transformed and evolved over time.

Misztal was born in Poland and currently lives and works in Portland, Oregon. He earned his Master of Fine Arts and PhD from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk, Poland, and taught as a faculty professor there from 1982 to 1993. He has also taught art privately throughout his career.

Misztal has worked in many international museums and institutions, including Sachseln, Switzerland; Lisbon and the Azores, Portugal; Berlin, Germany; Warsaw, Gdansk, and Warka, Poland; and most notably, the Vatican Collection.

Misztal’s talent has been recognized numerous times, including with a silver medal in the category of Work on Paper at the 2011 International Biennale of Modern Art in Florence, Italy. He has also had several solo exhibitions in the United States and abroad.

In this presentation, research in the neurosciences and education will be the basis for asking questions about the effects of digital mediums on the development and the sustaining of deep reading processes, particularly empathy/perspective-taking, inference, and critical thinking — the precursors to the contemplative function and our deepest insights. Just as Proust saw reading as the vehicle to thoughts by us that go “beyond the author’s wisdom,” Wolf asks what are the contributions and the impediments to deep reading processes in a digital culture that we must address in ourselves and in the development of the next generation.