John W. Ekstedt

An Arcadian Vision: Giving Form to Faith John W. Ekstedt

An Arcadian Vision is about spirituality and faith. Author John W. Ekstedt presents faith as something enhanced through the exercise of the spirit. Faith is imagined as a real quality of life that can be acquired and improved upon through spiritual growth.

Faith, as a gift of God and as an attribute of human beings, exists in time and space. People carry it with them wherever they are and exhibit it in the way they present themselves or in the actions they take. It is made better with practice, and many people go to specific places for the purpose of growing in it. An Arcadian Vision was written in such a place.

The original Arcadia was a retreat in the Peloponnese Mountains of ancient Greece. It was considered a place of great beauty and pastoral repose. Over time the word Arcadia has come to refer to an ideal "suitable for writing in poetry or prose". To be Arcadian is to be a pleasing presence in an imperfect world.

An Arcadian Vision is prose emerging from a place for spiritual exercise in the northern Rocky Mountains of Canada. It is about church as a means by which people improve their faith. It examines how people do the exercises that give form to their faith.