Writer, blogger and essayist James Lileks has an interesting riff on the idea of beauty. Lileks writes for the Minneapolis Tribune, and also maintains his own web site at Lileks.com. He grew up Lutheran in Fargo ND, and is the same age as my loving wife. I always appreciate his view, so I check his site for his daily updates. Since he always has something interesting to say, I recommend his blog. Consider these paragraphs, which are his meditation on beauty:
I went down to the Macy’s Flower Show to see if I could get something, but the video muse did not whisper in my ear. Mostly I saw a bunch of stupid flowers…
As for the “stupid flowers” – sorry. I like flowers. I miss flowers. I look forward to seeing more flowers. But I had expected a room full of flowers, awash with the perfume of faraway lands, and instead they moved the show to the main floor from the 8th, and stuck the flowers in the aisle. It was less than impressive. Also, some flowers are creepy. They’d eat you if they could figure out how. They don’t have to, so they don’t.
I think we’re just lucky that flowers are beautiful; it would be a strange world if flowers and most plants revolted the hell out of people the way most large insects do. Well, you can say, our aesthetic preference to flowers is simply the result of millennia of acclimation. There is no inherent beauty there; we mistake our inbred subjective reaction for an object truth. If flowers looked “hideous” in the same sense as big insects – a revulsion that’s also grounded in subjective reactions, not AGGGH THERE’S A COCKROACH ON THE DESK GET IT OFF GET IT OFF
Sorry; it was just a shadow. Anyway: we would have thought “ugly” flowers were beautiful if our species’ consciousness had evolved alongside “ugly” flowers, or perhaps we would have regarded them as neutral, the way we regard most small ordinary rocks. It’s possible another species might land on Earth on a mission from Voltarus IV, examine our great botanical gardens, throw up en masse and leave, never to come again.
Possible.
So why are the heavens so beautiful? Why, when we look deep into space with the eyes of Hubble and other machines, does everything seem so gorgeous? It’s not as if we evolved looking at that.
It would be interesting if it turned out Keats was right: beauty is truth. Imagine that: an aesthetic standard that exists whether we do or not. The tree that blossoms in the forest with no one around to see it.
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty” says Keats. In paragraph 2500, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says:
Truth is beautiful in itself. Truth in words, the rational expression of the knowledge of created and uncreated reality, is necessary to man, who is endowed with intellect. But truth can also find other complementary forms of human expression, above all when it is a matter of evoking what is beyond words: the depths of the human heart, the exaltations of the soul, the mystery of God. Even before revealing himself to man in words of truth, God reveals himself to him through the universal language of creation, the work of his Word, of his wisdom: the order and harmony of the cosmos – which both the child and the scientist discover – “from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator,” “for the author of beauty created them.”
“An aesthetic standard that exists whether we do or not.” James – I think you’re on to something.
Interesting thoughts.
We are obviously not the creators or definers of beauty, but the discoverers of it.
We can recognize it.
There is objective beauty. Something that goes beyond individual taste.
A rose IS beautiful.
But when it comes to things made by the hands of men- like buildings- I think the challenge is to express objective beauty as well as is humanly possible.
Behold the task of the arquitect!
Hi all,
Being computer illiterate I hope this gets posted at all, much less in the right place LOL.
I would really like to see the fixing/repairing or replacing of the bells that we used to have in our bell tower. I’ve been a parishioner here for 43 years and I remember as a child hearing the bells calling us to worship Jesus in the Eucharist during the Holy Mass. Also hearing the bells chime the Angelus. Then they had festive pealing of the bells at Christmas, Easter, 4th of July etc……..and of course the solemn tolling of the bells at funerals. I think it would be a good evangelization tool as well. It just made me think of Jesus whenever I heard the bells chiming.
I would also like to see somewhere in the foyer of the Father Puhl Center/overflow, hallway etc….a wall of pictures of all the past shepherds of our flock here at Holy Trinity in the last 50 years. To have some kind of picture of all the priests and nuns that have guided all of us parishioners, whom they served. I realize at this point we couldn’t get matching types of photographs of all the priests and nuns , but I think it would still be a great reminder wall to have the pictures up there, with the name and dates they served our parish. As well as their birth date and date they went to meet their Lord and Savior. We might have to contact the Servites home office for some of this. Does anyone remember Sister Cheryl…..she came to my bridal shower in 1977. LOL
Another long time thought/wish of mine is to have somewhere easily seen and accessible to the parishioners to obtain information on whats going on in the different parish groups such as our pro-life group (Culture of Life Apostolate) , youth group, school news, scouting news, etc….have a place where parishioners can obtain important brochures/pamphlets on things like Project Rachel (post abortive ministry), The Gabriel Project (assists pregnant women), Archdiocesan news, etc…
I don’t know if it should be a nice brochure rack, book racks, bulletin boards etc………but whatever way is chosen is greatly needed.
Thanks alot for your thoughts on the above matters,
Nancy
sweetcaroline1:
I do love the idea of bells. Our family used to pray the angelus daily when we lived near a church that had bells. And it was the church bells that I reminded me to go to Mass during my college years.