What is the Mosaic Ark? What kind of a livestream is it? The best way to describe it is this: it is a cruise ship! The Mosaic Ark takes its viewers on a cruise through an ocean of information, images, art, science, history, and (very occasionally) political events. Professor Rachel Fulton Brown, Medievalist and Tolkien expert, is your cruise director bringing you to interesting ports of call every week with her co-hostesses. They discuss what they see, what it means, how each port is connected to the other ports and how all are oriented towards Christ and His mother, Mary, the Star of the Sea. Come aboard! We’re expecting you! —Streamed August 16, 2024

Watching the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics, many people were outraged by the display of drag queen camp and hedonism included in the show, particularly because it was done in a way that many claimed mocked Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” Christians world-wide demanded apologies in the strongest of terms. The ladies of the Mosaic Ark were also outraged—but not for the same reason! Presuming that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness,” we argue that the Paris Bacchanalia show was merely trying (poorly) to grasp what it could not reach: the scandalous joy of the Liturgy of the Lamb. —Streamed August 8, 2024

“’Twas our Right!” to write poetry, and thereby speak our creative world into being. In this week’s Mosaic Ark, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown speaks about J.R.R. Tolkien’s creative process, how it began and how he was able to create an entire world using both poetry and prose. But, most importantly, how without his poetry there would’ve been no story; poetry was the engine that drove the vehicle of his prose and without it, there would be no Middle-Earth. So how did he begin? He began at the beginning of course, by first learning how to scan. —Streamed August 2, 2024

Who elects a King? Is it God or the Barons? Who elects a President? Is it the billionaire class, the tech oligarchs, the “donor class”? Is there a difference between any of them and the Barons; between a King and a President? If one looks at the rhetoric of the past and present, there doesn’t seem to be a difference. But there is another similarity between the power struggles of the past and present that might be overlooked: the power of the people to assent to their new rulers or reject them. This is a constant that all would-be rulers know about and use to support their cause of self-promotion. Join the ladies of the Mosaic Ark as we discuss how image and rhetoric can turn a commoner to a King, and a King to an “also ran.” —Streamed July 26, 2024

On July 13th, 2024, former President Donald J. Trump was shot while speaking at a rally for his re-election campaign in Butler County, Pennsylvania. To protect him from getting shot again, the Secret Service agents quickly tackled him to the ground. He was down for what seemed like minutes as the crowd waited anxiously to see if he was alright. Though bleeding, he was alive—the would-be assassin failed. Trump rose to his feet, blood on his face and fist defiantly in the air, and shouted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” A photographer who was present for the rally had jumped towards the stage in this moment to take pictures, and captured perhaps one of the most iconic pictures of the century. That picture flew through the Internet, across the country and the world, and into the eyes and minds of billions within minutes. What did all of those people see? What did you see? Join the ladies of the Mosaic Ark as we discuss this rare moment where the electronic mosaic was activated world-wide. —Streamed July 19, 2024

Did you hear about those weird secret symbols embedded into the layout of the 19th-century Bomberg Talmud? Or similar layouts, symbols and coded messages found throughout a medieval Christian book called the Glossa Ordinaria? Oh come now, everyone has read Dan Brown. Those monks and rabbis were up to something. There must be a conspiracy “they” don’t want us to know about. Well, no, not really. It was just the medium used to convey the messages of those times, similar to the typical layout of almost all newspapers of today. But why were they so similar? And how does the medium of print and the form of their layouts convey (or amplify) their message? On this week’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies continued to discuss Marshall McLuhan’s The Mechanical Bride, and wondered how the medium of newsprint is affecting society, and whether the medium of the Internet was amplifying this affect. Join us! —Streamed July 12, 2024

In 1951, media guru and secret medievalist Marshall McLuhan published his first book, The Mechanical Bride. His purpose was to encourage his readers to contemplate the way that advertising and technology shape society, both for the advertisers and for their targets – the buying public. The ladies of the Mosaic Ark have been contemplating McLuhan’s writings for several years now and it has shaped the way we see the world and the way we write our own fictional stories. Join us as we discuss McLuhan’s early inspirations and his spookily prophetic observations. —Streamed July 6, 2024

This month the ladies of the Mosaic Ark talked about the sin of pride in its various forms. As Providence would have it, our last stream on this topic occurred one day after the first US presidential debate, where two men sought to convince a nation to give one of them power. Was that debate informative or merely a display of pride? This question got us thinking of two other persons who also sought out power – Prometheus and Satan. In this week’s conclusion of our own “pride month”, we discussed the character traits of Prometheus (from the Greek myths), and Satan, from an Old English poem that contains a speculative meditation on the fall of Adam and Eve (the Genesis of Bodleian MS Junius 11). Join us as we attempt to unravel the characteristics of pride and how we can identify it in ourselves and others. —Streamed June 28, 2024