Imagination, Beauty, and Creativity

This is from an article by poet Luci Shaw; I'm just going to post the second paragraph.

I have come to believe that beauty is something inherent in creation (and by creation I mean the environment, the created universe in which we live). A sense of the beautiful is so integral, so deeply a part of who we are and what we enjoy as human beings, that we may easily take it for granted. Often flawed, or marred, or distorted as a result of human depravity and failure, beauty is still visible in the fingerprints of the Creator on the natural world, in the wilderness, and in human beings who reflect the Creator's beauty.

Only the individual twisted by wrong choices and destructive relationships into perversity and emptiness will create and worship ugliness. Beauty is perhaps one of the few things that constantly calls us back to God, that reminds us of a standard of goodness, vitality, and reality that embodies the beautiful. The Benedictines hold that beauty is "truth shining into being," a principle adopted by John Keats in his famous line "beauty is truth, truth beauty." In this sense beauty is redemptive and powerful. It can motivate us to turn a corner, to pursue a new objective. It awakens a new awareness in us because it is often surprising enough to startle, showing up in unexpected forms and places.

Tim and I are reading The Christian Imagination by Leland Ryken because it was assigned for our upcoming CM conference for a book discussion. The book is a collection of essays; we're just reading Part 2, "Imagination, Beauty, and Creativity," because the theme of this year's conference is beauty, and the essays in this section seemed to go along with that theme.

I suspect that Luci Shaw is getting at the exact point that will be emphasized at the conference, although she comes at it from a poet's perspective, so I felt like I had to wade through a bit of unsettling sentimental fluff to get to what she was saying. Luckily, what she was saying made the wading worth the effort. The gist of it was that beauty seems like an ornamental extra, but it's important enough for God to include in creation and even in decorative elements in the tabernacle, and it seems to be a vital need of humans created in His image.

We also read an essay entitled "The Christian Imagination" by Janine Langan, but that will take a second reading before I grasp enough to have anything to say about it.

Dylan Thomas on poetry

I've been studying Dylan Thomas and his poetry for a paper I'm writing, about his play "Under Milk Wood." In my reading today I stumbled upon this quote which I love:

You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it technically tick, and say to yourself, when the works are laid out before you, the vowels, the consonants, the rhymes or rhythms, 'Yes, this is it. This is why the poem moves me so. It is because of the craftsmanship.' But you're back again where you began.

You're back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps in the works of the poem so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash, or thunder in.

- Dylan Thomas, "Notes on the Art of Poetry"

A thought

The real value of poetry lies
not in expressing a moment
but
in expressing the thing of which
the moment itself
is but an expression.

The Christian Imagination edited by Leland Ryken

For the upcoming CM Conference, I'm going to be reading The Christian Imagination edited by Leland Ryken; they've also listed an article by Alfie Khon about education (Tim and I read that last night) and a short story by Tolkein. The Christian Imagination is a collection of articles by various authors like Tolkein, George MacDonald, Francis Schaeffer about "the relationship between imagination, belief and words." I'll post a very brief synopsis after each chapter. You can see the list of readings they'll be doing on their blog.

The conference is in a couple months. I'm also reading The Lord of the Rings with our local CM mom's group. I've finished the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring, and I'm re-reading it - partly because I want a second look, and partly because we have a six-week schedule for each book and I don't want to get ahead.

My project of proofreading Parents' Review articles has been neglected the last few weeks.

Food Safety Modernization Act

The Common Room calls it CPSIA for farms. As far as I can understand it, for the sake of food safety, only certified-safe food will be allowed to be sold. It makes me wonder if the food co-op raid in Ohio a couple of months ago is only a foretaste of what we can expect to see all over the US.

A birthday

Almost spring today! That is, the calendar says three days to go, but I think it's here already. I'm sitting on a hill on campus, overlooking the baseball field, where there is a game going on--spring training, I think. The sounds from it come up the hill a little delayed: I'm hearing the clap of the ball in gloves and the dull clink of the bat (they use aluminum bats) a moment after I see things happen. I was going to post a picture of my view, but my phone won't cooperate. It's working now!

We are studying Elizabeth's reign in humanities right now (which always makes me think of summer for some reason). Shakespeare is putting on plays at the Globe and Sir Francis Drake's navy just held off the Armada in the Channel. England is happy with their victory, happy with their new Anglican religion, and happy with their Queen. "Now is the winter of their discontent turned to summer by this bright sun--" --of York, Shakespeare said, but I think it can be said of Good Queen Bess as readily as Edward IV. (Or was it V? bother.)

Well, I don't want to write a long post, because if I do it will be all rambling and wambling, but I couldn't let the day pass without mentioning a birthday. Rusticanda has been around four years today! Quite a bit has changed since then--I'm in college now, and brother J is in highschool, and brother L is almost a teenager, and Miss M--well, she's become Miss M :D. We've taken trips, read books, discussed much, and seen seasons change--and now this blog is chock-full of good memories. So--a happy birthday to it! and I hope it sees many more full, changing, blessed years.

The End of Gardening?

The CPSIA lead-certification law was just the beginning; now the government, prompted by Monsanto, plans to outlaw food co-ops, organic farming and backyard gardening.

Look up this bill on google: HR 875

Or, start with these links:

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=12671

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Monsanto-s-dream-bill-HR-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090309-337.html

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1566685/food_safety_modernization_act_hr_875.html

Tree Idenitification

We're starting the Outdoor Hour Nature Challenge. The first week, we're to look for a couple of things to research and identify. We found a tree - the only one in our yard that's never been identified - and a mossy ground cover.

The tree is going to be difficult now. I looked up winter twig identification, but the twig is budding and you're not supposed to use new shoots, which is what the twigs are. But the buds aren't opened to leaves that can be identified. So I guess we're at a dead end until the leaves fully sprout. This is the tree we'll be watching come spring - the dead leaves under it, the trunk, and a budding twig. It has long pods with black flat seeds, my son says. It could be honey locust. Or some kind of willow. Or not.





And here's the other thing we're going to identify. It's from a patch of almost flourescent green mossy ground cover. This is one tiny plant pulled from the patch. It's less than an inch long, roots and all.



I'm guessing it's climacium, a moss that can be a ground-cover. Look at this picture - it looks very much like our specimen.

Bookish glee

You can tell a lot about someone by what makes them excited. So I guess this post will say a lot about me. But-- I had a very cool moment in humanities class today. We've been studying the Renaissance, and last class my professor (who is a bibliophile) was telling us about his collection of books. Today he brought in one of his old books for us to look at. And when I say old, I mean it: this was a 1525 edition of Theophylact's Gospel commentaries, in Latin, with the original leather binding. It was in beautiful condition: the paper was heavy, the print was clear, the binding was worn but intact. My professor got it as a gift from a friend who found it at a library booksale, somewhere in Illinois, for the bargain price of $1. (It's worth tens of thousands!) I got to look at it after class and read a little of it. The page layout looked just like one of Howard Pyle's books, with the decorative caps and ornamental title illustrations and side-note summaries. It was hard to realize that I was holding something printed before the founding of the US, before the Pilgrims, before Queen Elizabeth, before Shakespeare. That must be something like how the scholars of the Renaissance felt, when they were rediscovering classical writings and having fresh conversations with old manuscripts.

Dr. Seuss Meets the CPSIA

This is funny! It begins--

"In the town of Beddubble, far out on the Moor,
There lived a small tot, who was not more than four.
Little Annabelle Ruth (her close friends would recall)
had swallowed the string off a dilly-dunk ball..."

You can read the rest here.