Animal figures fused with humans, faces wracked with screams of abject anguish, grinning skulls, and bizarre reifications of angst, suffering, death and scatology are some examples of images of the grotesque used in art and literature throughout the centuries. These images provide us with an arresting way of looking at the world in which we live---a paradoxical world of freedom and order, good and evil, and fallenness and redemption. Editor Wilson Yates writes, 'wherever the imagery of the grotesque plays a role in the drama of the religious life, it does so by taking us out of everyday life and providing us with a different way of seeing the center---the center in its demonic manifestations and the center as the place where we can know the grace of God.'