Search for Beauty 2024

 I recently watched a documentary style movie, following a 26 year old named Cheryl Strayed who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail alone. She had been experiencing struggles in her personal life, including divorce, heroin, and the loss of her mother to cancer. She was incredibly inexperienced, and had not even trained for the trek. Many things went wrong: she bought the wrong sized shoe, the wrong type of propane to heat her food, and brought too many unnecessary items which made her pack unbearably heavy. Despite these challenges, Cheryl did end up successfully completing the trail, and it taught her much about life and love. She started with the mission of finding the girl inside herself that her mother raised her to be, and she learned much more than that. I think that this movie speaks to the healing characteristics of nature. It speaks to the lessons learned from the immersion in nature, and the connection between spirit and inspiration. There is beauty found in nature, and things ...

In this class, we joined together to watch the Cave Documentary, and had a discussion surrounding the relationship between inspiration and spirit. The documentary shared that the artist who was inspiring you, is using you to create art, "it's not me that's painting, but the spirit painting through you." This quote reminds me of the relationship between religion and art and the ways in which the church believes that God speaks through you. In high school, I attended a youth group where it was common for individuals to give prophetic words that had come from God. In these instances, it wasn't their thoughts or predictions that they were sharing, but God's that was simply being told through them. The prophetic words would bring a sense of inspiration that existed because of the work of the spirit. The Spirit is simply the saturation of presence. It makes me think how the spirit of a place, as well as the emotions that the place brings up inside of you lead to you...

This past Monday, I attended the Panel event held by the Student Sustainability Commission about Nurturing Mental Through Nature. The panelists were Michelle Lange, a Psychology professor and clinical psychologist. Kip Redick, a professor in the Philosophy department and long-distance wilderness hiking enthusiast.  Jeffery Niehaus, a professor in the Psychology department, and Patrick Donovan, a current student majoring in psychology. I was really interested in this event because I believe it related to our class in a sense. I feel like every panelist had a unique view of nature and how it can affect our mental health. I think every panelist was clear on what was meant by nature but then Dr. Redick brought up all the different ways nature could be perceived and that it could be good and bad for us. I enjoyed all the information given on practical ways that nature directly impacts us such as when we study outside or take long walks. It's funny how the weather got brought up and how ...

  3/12 class reflection- Wisdom versus Knowledge “Learning is like deja vu.” Though, there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Somethings I feel like we live a society that values knowledge over wisdom. Though to me, wisdom will always be more impactful and valuable than knowledge ever could be. Not to say knowledge is not important; of course, it is…  But true wisdom is hard to come by; wisdom is faith, trust, and surrender. We live in an anxiety-driven culture that is not very patient. Wisdom requires patience, stillness, acceptance of what is, and not thought, but an observation (not from the intellectual mind) because judgment is in thought as soon as the intellectual mind comes into play. The reality of what we see has vanished, for our perception is all we see. Through unconditional acceptance, is to see things as they are, not as you are.

 Our assigned reading, "Following the Uncharted Way," provides an intriguing conversation about the contemplation of beauty. Redick writes that "phenomenology, in attempting to return to the things themselves, sets conceptualizations aside in order to discover an experience of the uncharted." I reflect on my own experiences, moving to Tennessee for college in search of new experiences and oneness with nature, and then moving back desiring to be closer to home. I think that my decision to come home felt like a journey back to the past, like I would come home and everything would be and feel exactly as it had before I left. What I instead found was that my return was not a return, but another discovery of an experience of the uncharted. Just as phenomenology attempts. I also related to the description of Teresa's sublime experience, and how that experience is found inward, in "the wilderness of her own soul." My creative thoughts and spiritual experience...