A Beautiful New Blog and Some Thoughts on Beauty

I wanted to highlight a beautiful new blog I have saved on my sidebar under Catholic (Western).

 It is Kindred Spirit's Trail of Flowers blog. She combines gorgeous artwork, breathtaking poetry and inspirational quotes for a restful reminder of what is important.  Her blog is the sort of place you want to stop by every morning before getting down to the business of the day,  every afternoon while drinking a cup of your favorite tea, or every evening before going to sleep.

Her blog is perfectly illustrative of the spiritual concept that "beauty will save the world".  Humanity's search for beauty has led us down many a stray path in recent times and our despair is reflected in much of our art and music. As we give in to this despair, we dig ourselves a hole which is difficult even to see out of.

True beauty, in all its forms, is the way to and expression of the Divine in the world.  Genesis tells us that "God saw that (His creation) was good."  Mankind attempts to encompass that Beauty through our own creation.  When we reject that goal and create things that purposely go against our quest for Beauty, we debase our own soul.    

If you like the art at A Trail of Flowers, drop by the Art Renewal Center whose mission is to support classical realism in art. The artwork they have in their online library is inspirational, breathtaking and gorgeous as well!

This includes the picture above, A Young Woman Holding a Bouquet of Summer Flowers by Ferdnand Toussaint.  You can browse their museum and even buy some of their prints.  Part of their mission is encouraging high standards in today's artists and  to that end they have a category of paintings in their gallery called "Living Masters" that you can enjoy and purchase as well.

As many of us try to dig out from recent winter storms of historic proportions, I encourage you all to continue the search for Beauty in all its forms and to visit A Trail of Flowers as part of that search.