Edith Schaeffer, widow of the apologist Francis Schaeffer, passed away on March 30 at the age of 98. WORLD Magazine reports:

Among Edith Schaeffer’s greatest contributions to the world: her humanity, artistic nature, humility, and hospitality. Sometimes Sunday lunch boasted as many as 36 guests, but she always made more food than she expected to need. She made rolls by hand, forming them individually, sometimes into the shapes of snails, topping them with different kinds of seeds, and turning the leftover dough into cinnamon rolls. She would sometimes stop in the process of roll making to take a phone call, then pray for the caller. “You keep making the rolls,” she’d say to her assistant Mary Jane Grooms. “I’ll pray.”

I was in the same room with her once, a few years back, at L’Abri in Rochester, Minnesota. I didn’t introduce myself because, although it would have meant a lot to me, she looked very frail and I didn’t feel it was worth tiring her.

Absent from the body, present with the Lord.

Radix Magazine, “Where Christian Faith Meets Contemporary Culture,” did an interview a while back with the director of Monsters, Inc., Pete Docter. Pete has since directed Pixar’s Up and written Wall-E and Monsters University. (via Jeffrey Overstreet)

Here’s part of it:

Radix: How would you say that being a Christian affects how you do your work?

Docter: Years ago when I first spoke at church, I was kind of nervous about talking about Christianity and my work. It didn’t really connect. But more and more it seems to be connecting for me. I ask for God’s help, and it’s definitely affected what I’m doing. It’s helped me to calm down and focus. There were times when I got too stressed out with what I was doing, and now I just step back and say, “God, help me through this.” It really helps you keep a perspective on things, not only in work, but in relationships.

At first you hire people based purely on their talent, but what it ends up is that people who really go far are good people. They’re good people to work with, and I think God really helps in those relationships.

Radix: I know you do a lot of praying, and that’s a big part of the artistic part of what you guys do.

Docter: Yes. You could probably work on a live-action movie that takes maybe six months hating everybody else and you’d still have a film. But these animation projects take three or four years, and it’s really difficult to do without having a good relationship with the people you’re working with.

Pete goes on to describe how spelling out the moral of a story, if you have one in mind, undermines your message. “To me art is about expressing something that can’t be said in literal terms. You can say it in words, but it’s always just beyond the reach of actual words.”