Consider the images on the cover of the new Park Ridge Center Bulletin. Aesthetic sensibility, attention to beauty and visual presentation, capture and convey an essential dimension of the Center's mission and philosophy. Since the beginning of our publishing ventures more than 10 years ago, artistic design and visual imagery have played a prominent role. Although we do cherish aesthetic excellence per se, we also recognize that human experience, particularly moral experience, is often ambiguous and elusive. Mere words are not always sufficient to expose and illustrate the complexities of human thought or seemingly inexplicable behavior.

So, as we seek to explore the criss-crossing fields of health, faith, and ethics, we need more than words. The striking covers of our award-winning journal, Second Opinion, underscored the point. And our book, A Matter of Principles: Ferment in U.S. Bioethics, concretely spelled it out by explaining our distinctive approach to bioethical issues, describing a method that embraces all forms of human experience and the moral dilemmas that characterize it. The visual arts, for example, can play a mediating role in moral evaluation. Engaging and freely interpreting images that spring from lived experience can stretch the moral imagination and extend our conceptual reach. In short, our handsomely illustrated cover is more than a pretty picture.

In her provocative illustration, Karen Blessen, a Pulitzer-prize winning illustrator and designer, invites us to actively engage the issue of assisted suicide before we even turn the first page. Aesthetically speaking, her haunting images highlight stark contrasts, strong forces moving against one another. The hands, light and dark, suggest a struggle between the powers of darkness and the angels of light. But which is which? Is the dark hand a representation of those who would prevent someone from snuffing out her own life or rather those who would lend a helping hand? Does the black stethoscope against faded lines of the Hippocratic oath suggest a negative view of physicians who assist in suicide? Obviously, you will assign a meaning to the black hand and the black stethoscope that reflects your own moral perspective and ethical posture. If you favor assisted suicide, you will see the intrusive touch of a meddlesome public policy establishment that manhandles free choice; if you reject assisted suicide you might perceive the gloved hand of the surreptitious practitioner of voluntary death.

An artist's work may evoke intensely personal responses. As someone intimately involved in the health-care field, I see in the black-and-white motif an allusion to racial conflict in Blessen's work and the fear that people of color, among others, would be the likely victims of physician-assisted suicide in a cost-driven health-care system. Does Blessen's post-modern collage evoke thoughts of a morally fractured, polarized society where civility and mutual respect are in short supply? Does it portend a chaotic political future as the question of assisted suicide is returned to the states? Will the bond of trust between physician and patient be pulled apart? The artist's use of color and disjointed forms definitely conveys much more than the proverbial thousand words.

Karen Blessen's evocative illustration will set the standard for the new Bulletin as a source of spiritual, emotional, and artistic engagement as well as intellectual stimulation. Her work and the content of the Bulletin will no doubt elicit many varied responses from our readers. We hope you will share them with us.