I try to push myself and do well until suddenly a part of my brain just seems to shut off, and I stop caring entirely. Sometimes the rest of my brain is yelling, SCREAMING, for that part to WAKE UP and try something! But it won't. I end up in bitterly frustrated tears because I can't force myself to ACT. I feel like a ghost looking at myself in exasperation and wailing in agony as I watch my grades plummet and my life fall apart under my inattentive fingers.
Some days I just want to buy a ticket and hop the first plane home. To just give up, because it stopped being worth it a long time ago. And then... I remember why I'm here. Why I'm pushing myself through this morass of homework and painful self-hatred every single day. Because the Lord loves me and can see my future clearly, the future I can have if I keep trying.
I have days where I feel like the scum of the earth, sucking up people's tithing money and doing nothing useful in return. A parasite on the world. Lower than dirt. Then I remember that I'm a daughter of God, and he has a plan for me. I might be dirt, but he loves that dirt dearly and wants that dirt to be carried on the winds of change, landing in some distant place and growing something amazing...
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Plato, Tolstoy, and Art
The way Plato viewed art was very bland and one-dimensional, only because the Greeks "art" was comprised of copying life to the most precise degree. He thought it useless and frivolous, completely necessary even! But we know this isn't true, it illicits such compelling emotions within us that it cannot be called useless.
So what view should we hold to? To my knowledge and in my opinion, Tolstoy's view is much closer to the truth. He says that art is a way to unify the souls of men. To bring them into one way of thinking, to feel together in empathy and caring.
Tolstoy would have us picture a river, this river of religious perception. It is flowing just out of reach, but through emotion and art we can tap into it and pull up a draught or two.
I picture it as having an prism in the center of your being, and every time you experience art it's like a beam of light hitting that prism. Your soul is suddenly connected to another person by that tether, and as you connect to more people it becomes a web of emotional collusion bringing all of humanity together.
Art is the focal point of our existence. The expression and combination of feeling that allow us to interact beyond the barriers that separate us into individuals. We can use art as an access, a portal into the mind and hearts of other beings. Our souls become as one, our purposes become as one, and our divine purposes become more clear.
So what view should we hold to? To my knowledge and in my opinion, Tolstoy's view is much closer to the truth. He says that art is a way to unify the souls of men. To bring them into one way of thinking, to feel together in empathy and caring.
Tolstoy would have us picture a river, this river of religious perception. It is flowing just out of reach, but through emotion and art we can tap into it and pull up a draught or two.
I picture it as having an prism in the center of your being, and every time you experience art it's like a beam of light hitting that prism. Your soul is suddenly connected to another person by that tether, and as you connect to more people it becomes a web of emotional collusion bringing all of humanity together.
Art is the focal point of our existence. The expression and combination of feeling that allow us to interact beyond the barriers that separate us into individuals. We can use art as an access, a portal into the mind and hearts of other beings. Our souls become as one, our purposes become as one, and our divine purposes become more clear.
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