"Dissonance," and two three ways through the noise

Over at 327 Market, Camille listens for the music of the spheres but hears noise and is trying to make sense of it. Go and read: a short but rich and searching meditation.

Meanwhile, Ariel, with a bit of help, proposes a navigation system for negotiating the noise of living. It's a bit longer than Camille's post but is no less rich and searching. Here on the cusp of the new year as we are, I don't think I could direct my reader(s) toward two more contemplative, thoughtful places.

Edit: make that three places.

Via 3 Quarks Daily, I learned that Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art has an exhibition of paintings by Mark Rothko, one of which, pictured here, I own a print of and have posted on before, here and here. The Museum's link to images from the exhibition is worth perusing, in that you get a sense of these paintings' scale (my Rothko print, large by art print standards, looks positively postage-stamp sized, now, compared to the original). But I'm drawing your attention to this exhibit because its space is strongly evocative of that of the Rothko Chapel in Houston (N.B.: In person, the paintings at the Chapel are much darker than they appear here in the virtual tour), one of the most calming, tranquil places conducive to spiritual reflection I've ever visited. Though I don't like all work of the New York school of Abstract Expressionists--or all of Rothko, for that matter--at his best Rothko's work invites and encourages calm contemplation that, to me, few other artists can. I hope you'll go and have a virtual sit-down.

Still later edit: If you're into that sort of contemplation arising from those moments when the rubber of the Gospel meets the road of Hard Times, you need to know about Today at the Mission, a blog kept by a Canadian known as [rhymes with "Kerouac"] and which I just learned about via Bruce Alderman's also-excellent blog, It Seems to Me . . . . In keeping with this post's theme of dissonance and ways of negotiating it, I want to refer you to "Finally--It's Over", [rhymes with "Kerouac"]'s Christmas post.

An early Happy New Year to all of you.

Technorati tags:
Religion, Spirituality, God, New Year, Abstract Expressionism, Mark Rothko, Rothko Chapel