Monday, September 10, 2007

Beauty, The Four Loves, Theology of the Body, and Public Transportation

So, I was riding the bus from work yesterday (I work at St. Joseph's Parish in Belmont, MA about an hour's ride on two buses) and I was either bitten by the muse or in a peaceful, all-encompassing state of mind. The state of mind makes somewhat more sense since I was reading Surprised by Joy, CS Lewis' Autobiography. In any case, I began pondering beauty: how is it that simply seeing a person can be so... enlightening, exciting, delightful, profound? I mean, in some case on hardly even knows the person or is likely to know the person, yet there is still this non-sexual delight in the physical beauty of the other. It seems to me that there are a few different kinds too, at least to me. Some people I see and take delight in, I really have no desire to meet or converse with, whether it be that I am tired, lazy, anti-social, non-confrontive, or don't want my image of them to be compromised, I know not. Other people fascinate me entirely, such that not only their physical beauty, but also their perceived characteristics make me curious and interested in meeting them. Also, in some I don't find any physical attraction at all, but they intrigue me as conversationalists or story-tellers. I'll be able to read the Four Loves by CS Lewis later in the semester with Peter Kreeft and I plan on writing on this subject in concert with the Theology of the Body. Where it will lead, of what precisely it will consist, and how it will be enlightening at all I have no clue. But it is indeed interesting.

Boston has so many cool opportunities! I've been slavering over the academic programs offered at Harvard, Boston College, Boston University in Classical Philology, Byzantine Greek, Renaissance Literature, Economics, Cognitive Philosophy and more... ahh. God is Good.

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