Beauty of God and the Holy Cross Essay -- essays research papers

Suppose that you were standing by a beach at sunset and you become deeply moved and utter the words, "This is beautiful, this is glorious." You are ultimately pleased by a feeling that we as a culture refer to this response as, beauty. A feeling that possesses an enormous power to touch us deeply while holding a tremendous potential to grip and transform us. For beauty stirs and satisfies our deepest longings as well as attracting us, provoking our adoration, and inviting us to adorn ourselves with its luster. Indeed, our society naturally celebrates beauty automatically through experiences that arouse affections for that which we find attractive. But what is it that poses us to allow us to obtain such a feeling? The reason for this, I think, is that there is in every person a God given sense that beauty must have meaning that is larger and more enduring than short felt satisfaction. That this urge for ultimate meaning is evidence of God’s creation of beauty. Therefore, if God has created all things and has given everything its form and its purpose, then I define beauty as a relation to God. For to know God is know beauty, to know beauty is to know God. Just as God is the source of all truth and goodness, God is also the source of all beauty. God is the Supreme Artist – the Creator of all. Thus, everything that is beautiful reflects God’s artistry. The Church Father, Hilary of Poitiers, wrote: â€Å"Surely the author of all created beauty must himself be the beauty in all beauty.† -2- Born and raised a strong Catholic, I feel God’s presence in my everyday life and I am blessed to be encompassed with this company. His power in my life allows me to unquestionably declare him as the sole individual who most ... ...s ago has opened the path to eternal life for all who believe in him. In every human sole there is a place where we yearn for beauty’s power and presence. We need beauty. We need to be overwhelmed by it and drawn into its inexplicability that arouses our desire and captivates our affections. For I believe that we all want to be moved by some rare glimpse of greatness. We long for a vision of nirvana, something that endures our soul and bring peace to our hearts. I am persuaded that the reason it is there is because God is the ultimately beautiful one and he made us to long for himself. And we can know that our desires are remnants of this urge for God because everything less than God leaves us unsatisfied. Only one vision will be sufficient for our avid hearts, the glory of God. For that we have been made, and it is for this we long, whether we know it or not. Beauty of God and the Holy Cross Essay -- essays research papers Suppose that you were standing by a beach at sunset and you become deeply moved and utter the words, "This is beautiful, this is glorious." You are ultimately pleased by a feeling that we as a culture refer to this response as, beauty. A feeling that possesses an enormous power to touch us deeply while holding a tremendous potential to grip and transform us. For beauty stirs and satisfies our deepest longings as well as attracting us, provoking our adoration, and inviting us to adorn ourselves with its luster. Indeed, our society naturally celebrates beauty automatically through experiences that arouse affections for that which we find attractive. But what is it that poses us to allow us to obtain such a feeling? The reason for this, I think, is that there is in every person a God given sense that beauty must have meaning that is larger and more enduring than short felt satisfaction. That this urge for ultimate meaning is evidence of God’s creation of beauty. Therefore, if God has created all things and has given everything its form and its purpose, then I define beauty as a relation to God. For to know God is know beauty, to know beauty is to know God. Just as God is the source of all truth and goodness, God is also the source of all beauty. God is the Supreme Artist – the Creator of all. Thus, everything that is beautiful reflects God’s artistry. The Church Father, Hilary of Poitiers, wrote: â€Å"Surely the author of all created beauty must himself be the beauty in all beauty.† -2- Born and raised a strong Catholic, I feel God’s presence in my everyday life and I am blessed to be encompassed with this company. His power in my life allows me to unquestionably declare him as the sole individual who most ... ...s ago has opened the path to eternal life for all who believe in him. In every human sole there is a place where we yearn for beauty’s power and presence. We need beauty. We need to be overwhelmed by it and drawn into its inexplicability that arouses our desire and captivates our affections. For I believe that we all want to be moved by some rare glimpse of greatness. We long for a vision of nirvana, something that endures our soul and bring peace to our hearts. I am persuaded that the reason it is there is because God is the ultimately beautiful one and he made us to long for himself. And we can know that our desires are remnants of this urge for God because everything less than God leaves us unsatisfied. Only one vision will be sufficient for our avid hearts, the glory of God. For that we have been made, and it is for this we long, whether we know it or not.

A Fortune

Well at least according to his mother, the lady with a black gig, using most of her time crying, because she fears the narrator will grow up and be like his father. Growing up in a trailer park, the family didn't have a lot of money. This is one of the reasons for his father teaching him pick pocketing in the age of five. This pick pocketing is still a part of his life, even after his old man left town without leaving a note or a phone call. The reason for him still pick pocketing lies in the hope he has, of his father someday returning: â€Å"One day Pop will show up again.I'll hand him the boxful of money, he will throw me some bills, and then Ill Just stow them way without counting them. That's what I think. † (Line 31) It's not that he needs the money. In fact he has a Job. But he Is longing for the recognition from his father. As he says himself, when arguing why he didn't ever count the money his dad gave him: â€Å"l Just didn't want to know how much Pop thought I was worth. † (Line 13) When working his Job, he earns enough money to take Sundays of. It's not to go to church, but to recharge his batteries.Not being religious is something he learned in his childhood. His uncle Barney used to come around dressed like Santa, only to lose his eared and ask for at stiff drink. That taught him to be realistic, only to believe in what you can see yourself. Though not having had the most love full childhood, he still loves his mother: â€Å"l have to give her credit for trying to make me an honest boy. † (Line 1 5) He still visits her at the trailer park, reading the notes from fortune cookies aloud to her. When speaking of the fortune cookies, these play a big part In his life.He always saves them, after eating a low-price dinner at the Chinese restaurant. As he says: â€Å"I love those stupid fortune cookies. † (Line 38) When using â€Å"love† and â€Å"stupid† in the same line, he contradicts himself. The fortune notes inside the cookie are stupid, it's such a small thing, and the fortune usually doesn't come true. But he loves them, because when they tell him things like â€Å"love and happiness will be yours in abundance† it's something he has never heard before, it's something he hopes will come true.These fortune notes tell him everything he has longed hearing from his parents, the loving things they never told him. When seeing the little boy at the market, he reminds him of himself. The boy is about seven ears old, following his father, Just like the narrator at the age of five used to follow his father when they would go pick pocketing. When he sees the boy standing all alone In the street, he feels forced to take care of him: â€Å"l don't know what compelled me, but my feet Just sort of walked over to him before I told them to. Kid, you lost? â€Å"Do you want to come with me? † I heard myself talking and I swear I sounded Like a stinking Clapper. Eve never Ana a problem wi lt stealing wallets, D stealing lost kids is out of my territory. It's Just that, it must be nice, you know, to be mound† (Line 75) He feels a connection to the boy, which express itself in the last line. When saying it must be nice to be found, the narrator is no longer talking about the boy. He is talking about himself, and how he is longing to be found by his father. To be found, and being told that he is loved.When taking the boy to his house, the similarity between the two gets stronger. At first the narrator doesn't quite know what to do with the boy. But because of his loneliness, it's nice to have some company. He chooses to show his collection of fortune notes to the boy, and the two of them are paving a blast. The narrator never cries. But this boy touches something in him. When looking at his lop-sided smile, he gets all emotional. He has already given the boy a fortune note saying â€Å"time is of the essence, use it wisely,† when choosing to give all his fo rtune notes to the boy.Why? Here's why: mean it, kid. I want you to have my fortunes. You know why? You deserve it, kid, you earned it. † â€Å"Here it says, ‘Long life will be yours. ‘ I want you to have that one especially, because you deserve a long life† (Line 116) The narrator puts on the role of fatherhood, making sure that this id, opposite to himself, knows what he is worth and that he is deserves to have a good, long life. He is telling the boy the things that the father is supposed to tell him.By telling the boy what he is worth, he states the fact, that the boy is a fortune in himself – hence the title. His father is a lucky man, and he doesn't appreciate it. If he did, he wouldn't have yelled harshly at the kid when they were at the market. The text is build up as a flashback at first. The narrator is looking back at when he first saw the boy, then going on telling about his old childhood. When he's done telling about myself, he returns to the story: â€Å"Like I said, it was a Sunday when I saw this man and his son†¦ (Line 34) It goes on chronologically from here on, and the story ends sudden when the narrator has dropped the boy of at his house. The narrator is a 1. Person narrator, not knowing how other people know or think. By this kind of narrator, we focus on the narrator himself, although the main event of the story is the little boy. As fortunes being the main theme of the text, there's no talk about fortunes as a materialistic thing, but the fact that everyone is a fortune in themselves.But people aren't told, and it hurts the most when not hearing it from one's parents: â€Å"That guy didn't need his credit cards or cash or oilskin wallet. He didn't know what a fortune he had 159) Before meeting the boy, the narrator got a fortune cookie that said: â€Å"A change in your daily routine will lead you to treasure. † When telling the boy what he is worth, he immediately feels better with himself. The message of the text comes as a result of this: It's important to tell people what they're worth, no matter if they are rich or poor, leaving them happy and leaving you as feeling like a good person.

LACMA Museum Visit Essay

The third floor of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art houses a permanent collection on Ancient Egyptian art. One of the pieces there is a 13†³ high figurine of the goddess Wadjet, sculpted from bronze in during the 26th Dynasty, est. 664-525 BCE. The figurine is in the round, with only the goddess’s feet attached the rectangular base she stands on. The hieroglyphs on the base identify her, as well as the name and parentage of the person who dedicated her figurine. She is shown in the traditional ancient Egyptian pose, with her left foot forward. She is wearing some sort of dress, but her decidedly feminine figure, with a curved abdomen, narrow waist, and protruding breasts, is clearly portrayed through it. Her right arm is held rigidly at her side, again in strict stylistic convention, and her left arm bends only at the elbow to hold whatever less enduring material was placed there. In fact, both of her hands were clearly intended to encircle props, but these have been lost and as such, what they once were can only be inferred from other portrayals of the goddess. She clearly wears necklaces, armbands, and bracelets; this highly detailed work is also present on her lion’s mane, which is shaped similarly to the pharoah’s headdress. She has the head of a lioness, upon which rests the sacred cobra and sun disk, called the uraeus. The goddess Wadjet was emblematic of Lower Egypt- she was often portrayed with her counterpart in Upper Egypt, Nekhbet, handing their joint power to the pharaoh of the time. Other than those human depictions, she was usually shown as a cobra, which allows this piece to be dated- she was only pictured with the lioness head after her mythology was merged with that of Bast, the war goddess of Lower Egypt, in the Late Dynastic period. (source?) As a symbol of Lower Egypt, it can be surmised that she was holding a papyrus  scepter in her left hand, and an ankh in her right. These figurines were commonly bought by wealthy patrons visiting temples. They often had the remains of animals inside them. Put more stuff here. Sources: _Figurine of the Goddess Wadjet_. 664-525 BCE. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles. Watterson, Barbara. _Gods of Ancient Egypt_. 1984. Godalming, Surrey: Bramley Books Limited, 1999.