CONVERGENCE

THE LIFE-CHANGING ART OF TIDYING UP is all about beauty. The ordinary beauty we make for ourselves in our homes. Yet in a culture that devalues beauty, attempts to define it down to function, and links the value of everything to the money it can produce, our lives are filled with clutter and ugliness. Returning to my original discussion of the loss of beauty in our culture see how wrong the culture has this entire concept? “What is beauty?” is a question that this culture is as ill-equipt to answer as Pilate was to answer his own, “What is Truth?” … Continue reading

Ordinary Beauty VI: health

Our culture does not value beauty beyond its relationship to function or earning power. Girls are taught to pursue careers and earn good money; they are taught to develop a career before they consider marriage and family. Men seek wives who can add a solid second paycheck; men used to seek wives who had the skills to create a beautiful home for a family. There was a time when the beauty created by home makers was valued. Girls were taught the skills and could expect to have those skills valued.  Those days are long gone. Our culture glorifies the career … Continue reading

Everyday Beauty V: Tidiness is a result of aesthetics

An empty desk is functional but is it beautiful? A cup holding pens is functional, but a pen cup made from cut glass in a metal frame is beautiful beyond its function. So it is with all things pertaining to beauty including the art of tidying. Marie Kondo, in her book, THE LIFE-CHANGING MAGIC OF TIDYING UP, writes of taking an object into one’s hands and asking, “Does this object bring me joy?”  That action is about aesthetics, not about function.  An object may be beautiful due to its function but what causes you joy is not merely function–it is aesthetics. … Continue reading

Everyday Beauty IV: Aesthetics

Ayn Rand argued that mechanical function was in itself beautiful and that decoration did not make it more beautiful but less. In THE FOUNTAINHEAD, she uses architecture, which at the time often hid the functional aspects of a building behind a facade of classical motifs, to argue for function being beautiful in itself and that decoration was fake.  I do not disagree at all that functional things have their own inherent beauty, and that adding a fake exterior to hide the functional beauty does not add but may even detract from the true beauty of the object, but why must … Continue reading

Everyday Beauty III: Dreams of Beauty

I spent a fascinating hour discussing the function and definition of beauty with someone who is a philosophical follower of Ayn Rand. Now, I am an admirer of but no follower of Ayn Rand on the subject of Beauty, being that I am of the philosophy of Dietrich von Hildebrand, Saint Josemaria Escriva and Saint John Paul II.  I see beauty as the reflection of the creator, thus as a higher good. Ayn Rand’s is a view that true beauty has no aesthetic beyond the mechanical function; I argue that beauty is more than but includes that function. My parents have a … Continue reading

Everyday Beauty II

People in our culture are starving for beauty.  I remember when Trudy Krise, a wonderful woman, would bring her deserts to class for the snack.  Those days we had standing room only! People stood around the table exclaiming over the beauty of her deserts. They were indeed a work of art, and what is more, they tasted BETTER than they looked! People are so starved for beauty that knowing her art would be at the next class was all it took to get standing room only. Why the popularity of the Extraordinary form of the Mass? We often call it … Continue reading

Beauty Of the Everyday Kind

Beauty is missing from our culture. Oh, there are still a few beautiful buildings put up, and you can buy pretty things, and you can find artists making art, but the everyday making of beauty is missing.  We have devalued it until it has almost completely vanished. The mentality that if your work is not producing a paycheck then your work has no value is killing off everyday beauty. Home making is both work and an art form that is almost dead from neglect because it does not bring in a paycheck. Few are those who knit or crochet beautiful … Continue reading