Reclaiming Beauty

Sunday, September 28, 2014

The Power of Beauty

Rosary Circle
Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio

I have been invited to present a paper at the conference The Power of Beauty in Steubenville, Ohio, at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.

Here is my proposed paper.

Reclaiming Beauty: Winning Back Our Western Civilization
Proposal for the conference The Power of Beauty
Kidist Paulos Asrat

The paper Reclaiming Beauty aims to document the contribution that beauty has made toward our Western civilization, from the earliest records of God’s love of beauty, to a young child who sees beauty almost as soon as he is born. Our civilization thrived, prospered and matured through beauty. Our great artists, architects, writers, philosophers and scientists have always referred to beauty with awe and wonder. It is in the modern era that beauty began to be undermined and eventually neglected by intellectual leaders.

Reclaiming Beauty will show that the abandoning beauty leads to the death of culture, and eventually that of society. Modern man’s neglect of beauty has initiated the cult of ugliness, leaving us with bleakness and nihilism.

Yet, people want beauty. And they will surround themselves with some kind of aesthetic quality. The man on the street may be able to recognize beauty, but he would not be able to explain why it is beautiful. He may desire beauty, but does not know how to attain it. And he is easily distracted by destroyers of beauty. It is the the task of experts to guide him in the right direction.

With Reclaiming Beauty, I will make a historical, cultural and societal review of beauty. I will trace the steps when beauty was eventually abandoned as a paradigm for civilization.
Rather than attributing beauty to a Godly goodness, philosophers, writers and artists began to view beauty as their as their nemesis. They saw God as a judge who would not let them do as they wished. In order to pursue the image of beauty they desired, they began to look elsewhere. They began to abandon God, and by abandoning God, they began to change their world, filling it with horror and ugliness.

Part of the ideas for my paper will be revisions of what I've been developing over a number of years online at my websites Camera Lucida, Our Changing Landscape and Reclaiming Beauty, and in my articles from Kidist P. Asrat Articles.

The website Reclaiming Beauty is interactive. Members can post their original articles, short commentaries, and articles and excerpts from other authors. I encourage feedback and comments from members. I plan for this online group to develop into more formal groups which can meet in physical locations regularly, where they can building beauty societies whose purpose would be to develop ideas and strategies for bringing beauty back into our culture, and to eventually reclaim beauty.

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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The Freedom Ideologues

Freedom of Choice Ideologue, Hiris Ali

I wrote a few weeks ago about Ayaan Hiris Ali in Hirsi Ali is no Spokeswoman for the West:

She is not fighting an existential fight, but what looks like a personal one. She spent all these years fighting Islam, compromising herself and endangering her colleagues in order to escape Islam, and the best she can come up with is that she will let her son decide his religion (or no religion), and that she's "hoping it does not happen" that he "choose" Islam. For this declared atheist, the freedom of choice of her son is more important than his spiritual integrity. And this is her fatal problem, making her a dangerous spokesman for the West's survival. She has no armor with which to combat this combative religion other than "freedom of choice."

Mark Richardson, at Oz Conservative, continues to write about freedom of choice, and the idea of freedom in the West. He writes this time specifically about incest:

Here again [where incest is considered to be a "fundamental freedom"] we have a problem doing great harm to Western societies. Freedom is held to be the sole, overriding good and freedom is understood in a limited way as individual autonomy. Other goods in society are sacrificed to this one reductive understanding of morality - which means inevitably that people don't even end up feeling free or autonomous.

In my post about Ali, I write that giving her son this freedom of choice (to choose his religion), ultimately risks letting her son choose to not be free.

Irrelevant also of Ali's decisions affecting her son, what we should be concerned with these freedom of choice ideologues is that their belief system is flawed, and it is ultimately dangerous to our way of life.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Wednesday, September 24, 2014

The Book of Your Choice

From the inside cover:

The illustrations are frm books written and drawn by Kate Greenaway, the famous Victorian painter who greatly influenced the art of the 19th century. The cover and back are from "Marigold Garden", published in 1885, and the inside from "Under the window", published in 1878.

The Dancer

The Dancer
By: Kidist Asrat

With gliding entrance, and touch of doubt,
The dancer makes her entrance.
As supple as a a feline, ready for attack
She lunges into lively conveyance.

Hers is the stage, an empty stage,
Earthly, and void of enchantment.
A magical message she has to disclose,
And does so with fiery entreatment.

One perceives a sudden change of mood,
And the stage has lost its drear.
Her audience now she tries to lure
As her final act draws near.

Winner of Poetry Prize
Dover College
England
1978
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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She Plays the Piano and Violin, and She Also Sings

East Kent Mercury, Thursday June 3, 1976

Kidist (13) wins Collegs award

The 13-year-old head girl of Betteshanger School, Kidist Asrat, has won a scholarship at Dover College

Until last year the College was for boys only. But there are now an increasing number of girls being accepted, and Kidist is the first girl to win such a scholarship at the College.

She gained the award at the recent Scholarship Examinations at the College, and it is to a maximum of 500 per year.

Called the Astor Scholarship, it was awarded to Kidist for her all-round qualities of work, music and character. She plays the piano and violin, and she also sings.

Kidist comes from Ethiopia.

The Raggle-Taggle Snake

The Raggle-Taggle Snake

I am frightened not knowing
what to do. I start screaming,
I start
to run
But my
legs are stiff.
I can't see it but I hear it.
Now I see it, wiggly, waggling
With its long ugly body.
I jump up
And down
Screaming.
My heart
thumps
fast.
I'm scared.
I bow my head for the poison to pass above me...
My heart stops thumping and happiness falls over
My face.

By Kidist Asrat
Form 3h
English School
Ethiopia
1972
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Sunday, September 21, 2014

The Scripture Prize

I'm going through some photographs and documents, and I found this. I won the Scripture Prize as a young girl. I don't know how I got that honor except that I remember going to confirmation classes in my primary school (I was thirteen), thinking I would be confirmed. But the protocol was more complicated than that since I was at the school as an Orthodox (Ethiopian Orthodox). I sang in the choir, attended church service every Sunday (with the choir), and probably some other days too. I performed in some of the great cathedrals (they were generous to small school choirs), celebrated Christmas and Easter and other holidays with choral aplomb, but I still wasn't an Anglican!

I think (I don't remember my exact thought process) that attending Divinity classes might earn me an honorary Anglican membership. And I participated eagerly, interested and engaged. And that might have got me the Scripture Prize! That same year I also got the Music Prize, and later on, the French Prize. I think I was the proudest of the Scripture Prize. It was unique and serious. Knowing something worth being rewarded for about religion, the Bible and other sacred things is not an easy feat!
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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