The Cosmos | Camino Bay Books https://www.caminobaybooks.com Craig Brestrup, Author Fri, 30 Sep 2022 20:49:20 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://www.caminobaybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-cc-hackberry-whitebkgd-32x32.jpg The Cosmos | Camino Bay Books https://www.caminobaybooks.com 32 32 Cosmos Manifests as Truth-Beauty-Goodness https://www.caminobaybooks.com/cosmos-manifests-as-truth-beauty-goodness/ Tue, 07 Sep 2021 13:00:04 +0000 https://caminobaybooks.com/?p=236432 I WAS CAMPED IN THE eastern Sierra Nevada of California at 9,000′ within a roughly enfolded basin, granite cliffs rising at least another 1,000’ all around except for the gap through which the old glacier had eased downward fifteen millennia ago. A hiker approached to talk and share his feeling for the place. I listened quietly and without thinking responded that being in places like this makes us better people. I had surprised myself but knew it was true, just not how or from where the words
came. In what ways do places like this make us better? I have felt certain for many years about the connection between Nature’s power and beauty and human moral and spiritual excellence, and there are others who share the conviction. In her study of Plato, American philosopher and author Rebecca Goldstein notes his “[…] view of the normativity of reality—that is, that we are morally improved by knowing what is what […]” Plato was no “Nature writer,” and meant something slightly different than what I experienced in the mountains that day, but not much. Cosmos manifests as truth-beauty-goodness, he believed—as intelligible order, and we are drawn to know.

Excerpt – Reverence for Existence by Craig Brestrup

Photo by Andrew Sterling on Unsplash

]]> Thoughts From My Journal – Order https://www.caminobaybooks.com/thoughts-from-my-journal-order/ Tue, 18 May 2021 08:26:39 +0000 https://caminobaybooks.com/?p=236306 Why do celestial conjunctions affect us as they do (this question provoked by recent observations of two planets dancing with the moon)? If I step out in the evening and am surprised to see that a planet and the moon have sailed seemingly close to each other, I always pause and smile and look at it for a while. Why? Speculating: In the vastness of space, their conjunction seems improbable, although we know that the arrangement of the solar system guarantees it will happen occasionally. Even so, the vastness, the suggestion of infinity, makes them somewhat rare and within that context, how not to be beguiled? It’s easy to forget that while the plane of our vision makes them seem close, within the depth of space and their placement in it they are not significantly closer in conjunction than at any other time. Like the constellations, the episodic conjunction reminds me of an order out there and that seems to correspond somehow with the order on Earth and within a person. Maybe it suggests connections that we are prone to forget. I know from illuminative experiences that unity is implicit in being, the center of spirit, and I suspect these night visions may unconsciously remind me of that fact, which is so easily passed over. There is also beauty to them, beauty in the sense of harmony and sensory pleasure—the eyes and mind partake. Speculation is interesting but the reality is that I can’t see conjunction and be unaffected, sometimes in a lofty sort of way but at a minimum in a pause to behold.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Benjamin Voros on Unsplash

]]>