Thursday, September 18th
A new favorite past time of mine is “star-tipping” I was shamelessly introduced to the technique earlier today. It starts with someone spinning around in a dark field while staring up at the stars, and then unexpectedly flashed with a bright light, and the result is a sudden, yet dramatic crash to the ground. Some of us are more apt to hit the ground face first, but that just makes it all the more entertaining! After our long days of studying, we figure there needs to be some mind-less activity going on here every once in a while..
It is hard to believe the week is almost over. I have fallen into a set routine, which has made my days more relaxing than last week. Wake up at 6:30, and at the end of the day, attempt to get to bed at a decent hour. There are no afternoon classes this week, other than Monday night’s “Art and Culture” class, and Wednesday night’s group discussion on The Intellectual Life. The study load is overwhelming at times, most days spending at least three hours absorbed in one of the six books we are currently reading, several of which have to be completed by the middle of October! Hopefully, the amount of reading will subside in the coming months.
Before arriving here at Summit, my analyzation of various questions would have pointed to answers I had previously heard, or the first thing I could find. Not here. A seemingly simple question such as “What is art?” has been talked about here all week, and has yet to have a specific answer. My first inclination in answering that question would have been “art is something created by humans intended to be beautiful”. Now, after so much discussion on the subject, I would be more wiling to say that art is something intended to be truth, but the perception of art can be true or false. I am still unsure of how art and beauty coincide. Beauty, in my definition, is anything that reflects God’s glory. For art to be beautiful then, it must be true in a way that earnestly reflects God’s glory, which is rarely evident in most art today. There are still so many thoughts racing in my mind about the subject, that I should probably refrain from writing out all these unfinished thoughts…
