EstellaByTheSea

The girl who lives inside of you 🦋

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”

C.S Lewis is literally everything ❤️

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

The thought of sacred art being deliberately used as an instrument of evangelization is so beautiful and so moving that it makes me want to cry.

The idea that beauty itself can participate in evangelization feels so profoundly Catholic.

It also brings to mind our human tendency to want to possess beauty, to grasp at it rather than simply behold it. And when the beauty we encounter is another person, that desire to possess can so easily become lust or objectification, reducing someone who should instead be cherished and treated with dignity.

Maybe part of learning to love rightly is learning how to encounter beauty without needing to possess it.

When you struggle to admire beauty without allowing that admiration to become lust or objectification, remember: the beauty of creation is not an invitation to possess. It is an invitation to contemplate. Created beauty reflects something of its Creator and can turn our gaze beyond itself toward God.

Beauty does not have to awaken possession. It can awaken wonder.

And perhaps that is part of what makes sacred art such a beautiful instrument of evangelization: it does not force. It invites us to look, to contemplate, and ultimately to look beyond the beautiful thing toward the One from whom all beauty comes.

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

I am going down a rabbit hole on the Jesuits’ travels to Asia and the ways they used sacred art in their encounters with other cultures, including presenting Christian sacred art to the Chinese emperor.

It has left me with a question: When a sacred image creates an encounter with Christianity through beauty, persuasion, relationship, and cultural adaptation, how do the results differ from situations in which conversion is entangled with political or military coercion?

In other words, what can the history of evangelization teach us about the power of beauty to invite someone toward truth rather than attempting to compel them toward it? 🧐

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

Definitely a love letter in our story…

[Muse @xmuse_]

Architecture as a love letter, as it should be.

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

How in the world am I supposed to choose between these two classes?! 😭📚

Heroes Ancient and Modern — explores the heroic literature of Ancient Greeks and Romans, then traces the classical tradition and reception of the classical hero in medieval and modern texts. Incorporates history, art history, and material culture from the relevant societies to supplement study of the texts involved.

OR…

Illustrated Manuscripts and Related Objects from Asia — exploring illustrated manuscript traditions across Asia, including their materials, artistic techniques, historical and religious contexts, and the relationship between text and image. And the professor specializes in Sino-European artistic exchange and Buddhist-Christian encounters in printed illustrations, including research on Catholic and Buddhist woodblock imagery in China.

Ancient Greece and Rome, medieval literature, heroes, art history, and material culture…

OR sacred art, illustrated manuscripts, religious visual culture, book history, and Christian encounters with Asian art.

WHO MADE THIS SCHEDULE?! 😂

This is an actual academic crisis.

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

https://t.co/TXlqJ6QjGx

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

https://t.co/SgzmeZCO09

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

🙏✝️

[Aesthetic.Guyy @Aestheticswallz]

God will make a way.

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

🪞

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

@James_9341 I’m dropping the major (actually switching it to a minor which is now complete), finishing my other majors, and then completing a psychology degree at a Catholic school before I apply to graduate school. 😊

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

I am obsessed…

[Culture Explorer @CultureExploreX]

Sainte-Chapelle makes the medieval understanding of beauty clear.

Sacred architecture should change how you feel the moment you enter it.

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

“I would never fall in love again
Until I found her”

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

@mary_got_grace Never ever.

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

@James_9341 I agree.

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

@James_9341 Haha 😂

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

2027

https://t.co/dNK7avulMv

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

🦋🕊️♾️

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

You know who you are ♾️

[Natism @Natism]

If you love someone tell them and love them fiercely because this all ends.

[EstellaByTheSea @EstellaByTheSea]

Pretty 🤩