Emerging from the chrysalis, the butterfly is weak, her wings wet. In the struggle to exit the chrysalis, the wings are strengthened, but she must still sit and fan them, slowly drying them and expanding them to their full potential. She knows herself to be transformed, but yet is not ready to fly. It comes…
Category: Beauty Qua Beauty
Creating Beauty
Creating beauty requires love, skill, and craftsmanship. Displaying beauty well requires a good eye, appreciation, and adequate raw materials. Copying beauty without keeping its essence requires none of the above. What is beauty? Half my library is devoted to this discussion. We all know beauty when we see it, but pinning it down is problematic….
Beauty vs. Making a Statement
There is a very excellent house in my neighborhood. This house sits on a corner lot between two busy-ish streets. Many a house in such a setting goes for privacy, quiet. But not this house, oh no. The house is yellow, with purple trim – and the picket fence around the house is purple too….
Hidden Beauty
One of my parents’ students from China dropped by to see them the other night, and I had an interesting chat with him about hiding beauty during the Cultural Revolution. He was eight when it started… he remembered the Protestant church next door the day they brought out all the illustrated books and pictures, piled…
Is Beauty an Absolute?
Reading philosophy is valuable. Philosophers spend their time delineating concepts that are, for most of us, somewhat vague. Whether or not you agree with them, the value of their writing lies in the asking of the question and thus the crystallization of your own thoughts. What is Beauty? Beauty is difficult to pin down, and…
Beauty is intrinsically worthy
It is good that there is beauty in this world. I was admiring a picture of a stained-glass room this morning. Absolutely stunning. I don’t need to own that room to receive value from it. I can know that it exists. I can see it.. maybe one day in person. It pleases me, to know…
Living works of art
The courage to be a living work of art is the courage to allow yourself to be beautiful. To allow yourself to be truthful. It is the courage to allow yourself to be fully, authentically, whom you were created to be. Beauty is truth. Beauty is a window to the transcendent. Beauty is not for…
Beauty is a window to the Transcendent
We all crave Beauty. And our lives saturate us in faux-beauty. It’s like feeding a starving man a stack of Pringles instead of an honest potato. It’s gotten so that we conflate one with the other. And yet. And yet. Beauty, because of its ability to show us transcendence, cannot truly be counterfeited. We hunger…
Whatever happened to Public Beauty?
I often watch historical documentaries, and have noted that in both WWI and WWII, women were asked to beautify themselves for the purposes of public morale, and more specifically, the morale of soldiers on leave. When did we lose the concept that we contribute to the overall beauty (or ugliness) of the landscape? Is…