Beauty and Truth — Essential Dietary Ingredients as We Stumble Toward the Kingdom of God”
Calvin Mulligan, Futurescapes21C, Aug 16, 2022 (c)
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ – John Keats
If the Great Covid Deception has taught me anything, it’s that there are depths of knowing and understanding that were never possible prior to this crucible moment. In retrospect, it’s clear many of the things I thought I knew — like the essential importance of beauty in our lives, I only grasped superficially. That’s not to say I haven’t long appreciated beauty in its many and varied forms. Growing up in a Christian context on a farm in rural Manitoba was a rich aesthetic experience. The tapestry of the farmscape was refreshed daily, monthly and seasonally. There were freshly-painted morning and evening skies; a succession of ripening fields of clover, alfalfa, wheat, and flax; stunning post card winter snowcapes and occasional northern light shows just to cite a few.
There was an abundance of music in our lives. The goosebumps associated with learning to play my part of a Moonlight Sonata duet didn’t ever go away. My farm chores sometimes featured beauty of a different kind. On many occasions, I got to assist a cow bring her newborn into the world. Within minutes of its birth, I would witness her wobbly baby miraculously find its mother’s udder and nourishment. That kind of beauty wowed me every time. It was a rich diet of everyday miracles that intertwined truth and beauty. And I took it for granted.
The transition from life on the farm to life at the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg) was relatively easy because campus life included so much of what I had known back home. There were herds of cattle, expansive green pastures, test plots of various grains and horticultural crops and the same seasonal agricultural rhythms I’d known all my life. To say the campus was beautiful was an understatement. And as challenging as the academic experience was, there were still opportunities for me to hang out with photographers and musicians and nurture my aesthetic sense. By third year, I was so attached to the place, I didn’t want to leave.
The big shock came upon graduating with my ag degree and decision to accept a job offer from a livestock feed company. It’s office was located at the intersection of Portage and Main streets in Winnipeg. My new habitat was situated in a cluster of older grey brick buildings and office towers at what could have been more descriptively called the Intersection of Concrete and More Concrete. I felt an immediate sense of sensual deprivation and longing for the lush green settings of the University and the farm. I recall heading outside during coffee break one morning, determined to experience renewed contact with nature. God’s sense of humour was apparent. I had barely exited my office building, when I was shit-bombed by a pigeon. I had to laugh, but the touch of nature didn’t sustain me long. Within a couple months, I’d made my escape in search of a more inspiring setting.
Decades later, I encountered a song with an haunting title and melody by Christian recording artist and song writer, Jim Groegaert. It was called: “Why do we hunger for beauty?” It’s a great question. Why do we? Some of the lyrics resonated with my childhood observations.
Frost on the window
Is never the same
So many patterns
Fit in the frame
Captured in motion
Frozen in flame
And in the patterns
Is there a name
Why do we hunger for beauty?
As a kid, I had noticed the same fragile, fractal beauty in the frost patterns that formed each winter on the glass of my bedroom window. And I had, like Croegaert, marvelled at the exquisite nature of the artwork that appeared unsolicited.
Dr. Jordan Peterson brought me back to the question of our desire and need for beauty in an excerpt from a lecture entitled; “Why you should buy art.” He recalls his visit to a New York art gallery where people from all over the world inhaled the magnificence of a room of priceless paintings. What was it in the art that so entranced the visitors? Peterson explains that a (presumably beautiful) piece of art is a window into the transcendent. He elaborated…”And you need that in your life because you’re finite and limited and bounded by your ignorance and lack of knowing, and unless you can make a connection to the transcendent, then you don’t have the strength to prevail. And that’s part of the covenant …the covenant with God.”…”Beauty is one pathway towards God.”
Peterson encourages the members of his audience to purchase art, acknowledging there’s an element of risk. Friends may notice and question or criticize. But the venturing remains important as in this process of developing our capacity for art, there’s an element of “stumbling toward the Kingdom of God.” Yes, genuine learning and discovery are always a matter of stumbling, aren’t they? That’s as it should be because it invites humility.
While Peterson makes no mention of the Covid deception in the excerpt, the notion that beauty (or in this case, art) provides the “strength to prevail” is particularly relevant now. A year of two before the Covid deception was unleashed, I grappled with the question of how I could best survive the unfolding political oppression. My simple response was to prescribe, initially for myself, ten counter tactics. The list included things like continuing to set goals and maintaining daily routines. But the one that seems to have amplified in importance since the initial brainstorm is tactic number seven: Increase the amount of beauty in your life (music, art etc) Shortly thereafter, I took up nature photography as one means of increasing the focus on beauty in my life as a means of staying healthy and whole. Nature photography fuses truth and beauty in the same way my experience helping birth calves on the farm did.
In retrospect, it’s pretty clear that those who orchestrated the Pandemic Deception and its dystopian 1984 control measures were seeking to defeat us spiritually. Social and spiritual — specifically aesthetic deprivation — were/are central features of their scheme. It’s dressed up of course as being in the public interest. Their goal was imposing a barren aesthetic landscape and a starvation diet as it relates to our experiencing beauty and truth. Why else would they deny access to every conceivable source of play, insight and pleasure from playgrounds, parks and beaches to live concerts, classrooms, theatres, churches, sports events and even gyms where aspirations of developing healthy beautiful bodies are nurtured?
The diabolic forces of darkness were intent on denying us any possibly opportunity to experience the transcendent, a touch of the divine or a taste of an out-of-this-world experience. The absolute thoroughness of the campaign is perverse proof of the demonic origins of the campaign. In total, the campaign proved to be far more anti-human than anything any normal human being could concoct. And then came the vaxx itself with the rumours that one of its potential effects is weakening our connection to our Creator. Based on a notion of God as our sustaining source of spiritual light, then severing that connection amounts to nudging humanity in the opposite direction of the Kingdom of God.
As the struggle against the dark side continues, the prescriptive importance of keeping up the truth-beauty quotient in our lives remains… or grows actually. We need our daily dose to remain healthy. And just like exercising and managing our diet, we need to be intentional about it. We shall overcome because we refuse to accept a diet of thin transhumanist gruel deficient in the essential elements of truth and beauty. We will overcome as we persist in nourishing our souls.
Beyond the matter of our personal “dietary” need for truth and beauty in various forms, is the matter of our “service” to others who may be suffering from acute deficiencies. Such deficiencies are exacerbated by daily exposure to the toxic output of the Propaganda Machine. A return to health begins with kicking the habit — the individual’s addiction to fear-laced propaganda. Replacement with something wholesome is required. I recommend sources of enduring truth and mega doses of beauty in various forms (natural, musical, artistic, spiritual…). It’s a matter of cracking open those windows to the transcendent and allowing for the healing touch of the divine. Many of us anticipate a painful period of collective grieving relative to vaxx-engineered injuries and deaths lies ahead. Understanding how truth and beauty can be essential antidotes to consuming despair will be important when we enter this period.
Not all our gestures, however well-intentioned, will be received as such. Some of our attempts at outreach may be awkward or inelegant. But that’s no reason to surrender to detachment and isolation. Let’s venture with renewed courage into the realm of bringing the light of truth and beauty to others — stumbling toward the Kingdom of God. It can be as simple as a full-faced smile, a “Good Morning”, a hug or non-judgemental listening. Who knows? If we dare lose ourselves in this journey, we may one day discover that the Ultimate Artist has fashioned something truly beautiful out of our lives.
Calvin
@unicornivorous1
Endnotes:
Why you should buy art: https://www.bitchute.com/video/hvvftAATAVM/
Why do we hunger for beauty (Jim Croegaert): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyR7aIIP28A
Something Beautiful (Gaither Trio): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2Jk0Q0sAVY
Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmtV3q2wFtU
Ode to a Grecian Urn: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44477/ode-on-a-grecian-urn