Excerpted from Cathedral of the World. Copyright 2009 by Forrest Church. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston. Imagine awaking one morning from a deep and dreamless sleep to find yourself in the nave of a vast cathedral....

A contemporary painter named Debora Jones-Buck has what many consider an unusual approach to her work. She prepares a canvas and then paints a picture on it. Then, when the paint has dried, she paints an entirely different image on top of it. And then another, and another. Eventually she puts the...