Snow Dancers

Tags

Beauty, Nature, Poem, Snow, Winter

Out on the field of tawny yellow

winter’s drear, and among the bare

skeletal branches of forlorn trees

plays a breeze slyly slight;

the sere sky glows with veiled light,

a beauty strange and unlooked for,

and out on the field of barren blond

snow-flurries dance, they wheel and rush

a strange romance of winter demure, a-blush

with half-concealed glory.

Snow-dancers amid the stark and cold,

you coyly call, softly unfold the mystery

of beauty bursting through the bleak,

of love in clouded seasons,

and glory waiting to be.

Lord’s Day: Morning

Tags

Beauty, Creation, Glory, God, Praise, Prayer

Almighty God, you fill the Earth with your glory as you fill the horizon with morning light. The clouds proclaim your beauty in their colorful parade, and even bare tree boughs reddened with sunrise and the dull grass of winter calmly reflect your majesty. Fill this day, fill my heart, with awe before your greatness. Be glorified, Glorious One, in your world, and in your church, and in your servant today—Amen.

Gone Bananas

Tags

Art, Beauty, Culture, Media, Postmodernity, Society, Truth

I know, I know, but I just couldn’t help myself.

You have perhaps already read that a banana duct-taped to the wall has been declared a sculpture and sold (in three versions) for $120,000 or more each.  This is only the latest demonstration of the farcical level to which the art world has sunk in the (post)modern era.

There is an absurd pretentiousness about it all.  Consider the words of the gallery’s founder, Emmanuel Perrotin:

Prior to the reported sale, Perrotin told CNN the bananas are “a symbol of global trade, a double entendre, as well as a classic device for humor,” adding that the artist turns mundane objects into “vehicles of both delight and critique.”

Such is the vacuous defense of the debasement of art in a culture that has lost sight of truth and goodness.  Those are the three characteristics classically referred to as the “transcendentals”: the true, the beautiful, and the good.  It makes sense that our cultural elites, who have so constantly twisted the truth and perverted goodness would develop a debased sense of beauty.

The ready reply is that, by seeing foolishness here instead of brilliant artistic satire, I only show myself to be a Philistine who doesn’t understand art.  Ignorance is why someone like me rejects modern art.  This is the paradox of our educational system; somehow, adequate education and enlightenment is supposed to produce people who think a duct-taped banana is art, and that eating that banana is “performance art.”

Yet there is a comfort in the observation of common grace.  I think that this story is so widely publicized because most people see this situation for what it is.  Only those initiated into the nonsense of (post)modern art are deceived by this; only the elitists are buying it–figuratively and literally.

Nature’s Encore

Tags

Autumn, Beauty, Colors, Fall, Poem, Season, Weather, Wonder

Autumn comes

on blustery wings,

in breeze that sings

through thinning boughs

festal bedecked

bright, orange-flecked

plumage waving.

 

Autumn leaps

upon the year

in breezes clear

as trumpet blasts,

triumphant casts

its colored cape;

wond’ring we gape

nature’s encore.

A Brighter Light

Tags

Beauty, Celebrities, Celebrity Culture, Culture, Faith, Glory, God, Life, Meaning, Truth

So small the glitterings that satisfy

our little minds, the fading glamor

which captivates our child-eyes,

the sparks we take for stars eternal,

entrancing flickers in the night.

We are too satisfied,

too soon bewitched

by shadows vague and fading fast.

How brighter, fuller, shines celestial

the fiery pillar everlasting;

how brighter burns that majestic

Light of all light,

Light unending,

which alone can satisfy.

Beauty’s Prophecy

Tags

Beauty, Creation, Eschatology, Nature, Poem

Thank you, Lord, for this world

that you have made;

for the glory of its spreading skies

and every leaf and tree

and bit of painted paradise,

green fields of morning mist-veiled

or dew-bejeweled,

proud trees boastful with verdant plumage,

and every leaf and flower,

harbinger of that new age

and worlds renewed.

The gift of beauty prophesies

in fields and trees and spreading skies.

Strangely Beautiful

Tags

Aesthetics, Beauty

I was just observing my cup of tea–which is a wonderful thing in any case–more wonderful by the lighting that enables me to see the steam swirling about, wispy as a ghost.  Isn’t steam a lovely thing, playmate of the air?  And it makes me reflect on God the artist, who fills this world with ordinary things strangely beautiful.

An atheist could appreciate the beauty, but only so deep, for the beauty of coiling steam above his cup would only be an accidental side-effect of the laws of nature.  And surely it is a side-effect of those laws.

But I can’t help thinking that God might have designed a more pragmatic universe, a world where function did not bring about such superfluously lovely forms, or a world without beings who had a sense of aesthetics, beings who saw strange beauty in ordinary things.

Here, then, a mug of tea testifies to an extravagantly generous and artistic God.

But it is my seminary mug.