With all the pressure on women to adhere to impossible standards of beauty set by starving, chain-smoking 20 year-old models in New York City, one would think that there would be nothing new under the “diet fad” sun.

Well, not so fast. Brides-to-be are resorting to feeding tubes to lose weight and fit into the their Brides Magazine dream gown. Yup, that’s right, the same feeding tube your sick grandmother was forced to use in the hospital is now a $1,500 pre-wedding day diet program import from Europe, where it has been popularized for years. Now American brides can skip the gym and meal-time discipline to drop 10lbs in 10 days.

This quick fix seems to be a perfect analogy for the current state of marriage in America – everyone wants a perfect marriage, but few are willing to put in the hard work and make a daily commitment to maintaining and nurturing it.

Alas, as with all things that seem too good to be true, there are some drawbacks to the feeding tube diet (besides explaining to friends and co-workers why you have a tube up your nose).

It also causes bad breath and constipation. Not exactly the stuff of a romantic wedding night.

Jobs was featured in CV's "Imagine Spot 2" as one of the many adopted persons who had a major impact.

Stephen Green has a great short post that enumerates the absolutely remarkable impact this one man had on communications, technology, entertainment, the music industry, and, of course, personal computing. An excerpt:

Even most successful entrepreneurs do not change an entire industry. But that’s exactly what Steve Jobs did to personal computing — three times.

…

In the meantime, Jobs also:

• Created the first “event” Super Bowl ad
• Reinvented the cell phone
• Revitalized and reinvented movie animation with Pixar
• Brought low the old, thieving record labels
• Started from scratch the largest music retailer
• Changed the way people buy, keep, travel with, and listen to music
• Created a physical retailing empire with greater profits-per-square-foot than Tiffany’s
• Apple is currently making people (and the competition) rethink the laptop computer with its diskless MacBook Air

…

You may or may not be an “Apple person,” but the way you work, play and compute have all been deeply effected by the man in the black, mock-neck sweater.

I don’t recall where I saw it, but I read one person’s assessment that perhaps Jobs’ greatest contribution across the board was to insist that eminent functionality and usability be wedded to a user interface that was aesthetically pleasing. Beauty was of the utmost importance to Jobs. A personal computer (or a music player, or a smartphone, or a tablet computer) is not just a tool, it is a part of the person’s life, and thus it must contribute to the person’s overall well being rather than detract.

Thus while in grade school where we did simple educational games on Commodore 64 machines, and then again in high school where we used Windows 3.1, I vastly preferred using the Macintosh II and then LC II (this one had a color monitor… wow!) we had at home. I have owned nothing but Macs ever since.

And per Green’s post, note how the industry has followed every time.

Steve Jobs leaves behind a remarkable legacy of what one man can do if he gets up every day and resolves to do what he loves.

In 2005 he delivered the commencement address at Stanford University, which I highly recommend. He relates “three stories from [his] life.”

It’s not too long, only 15 minutes, but it contains some great nuggets about hope, trust, and boldly following that which strikes you as good and true and beautiful.

Why do I bring this up at CatholicVote.org? Because the impact of Steve Jobs upon humanity has been profound and, I believe, for the better. He took computing—something happening independent of him—and made it accessible, a pleasing experience, more human. He brought his considerable gifts, among them a keen eye on what is beautiful and a devotion to sharing that beauty within technology, and absolutely insisted that beauty be included in everything his companies did. Even down to the packaging that an iPhone or iPod or MacBook Pro is in when it reaches your hands: the adventure of opening the package and seeing your new device for the first time.

Some may cynically call it mere marketing. Sure, it is,  but it was a gamble because it did make his products more expensive. But people like me value the elegance and simplicity. We value the confidence that the company who made our machine has also had a hand in the software that runs on it, that everything syncs naturally and without hitch, that the latest technology will be presented in a package that does not offend the eyes at the end of a long day, and so much more about the Apple experience.

And all that came about because of the singular vision and absolute devotion to detail of Steve Jobs.

I don’t know much about his personal life, I know he was married and I believe he was Buddhist, but I can’t shake the thought that he had accessed at least a portion of that deep core of himself that we all have, written on our hearts, where we find the one, good, true, beautiful, and he realized that he couldn’t not share what he found.

And we’ve all benefited from it. Even if you’re not an “Apple person.”

Steve Jobs, R.I.P. Through the mysterious mercy of God, I pray you see Him face to face.

(P.S., Jobs was adopted mere months after birth—he was one of those featured in CV’s “Imagine 2″ video—by a second set of adoptive parents after the couple who had been arranged ahead of time rejected him. They wanted a girl.)

Via Kuriositas:

Deep underground in Poland lies something remarkable but little known outside Eastern Europe. For centuries, miners have extracted salt there, but left behind things quite startling and unique. Take a look at the most unusual salt mine in the world.

From the outside, Wieliczka Salt Mine doesn’t look extraordinary. It looks extremely well kept for a place that hasn’t minded any salt for over ten years but apart from that it looks ordinary. However, over two hundred meters below ground it holds an astonishing secret. This is the salt mine that became an art gallery, cathedral and underground lake.

Situated in the Krakow area, Wieliczka is a small town of close to twenty thousand inhabitants. It was founded in the twelfth century by a local Duke to mine the rich deposits of salt that lie beneath. Until 1996 it did just that but the generations of miners did more than just extract. They left behind them a breathtaking record of their time underground in the shape of statues of mythic, historical and religious figures. They even created their own chapels in which to pray. Perhaps their most astonishing legacy is the huge underground cathedral they left behind for posterity.

It may feel like you are in the middle of a Jules Verne adventure as you descend in to the depths of the world. After a one hundred and fifty meter climb down wooden stairs the visitor to the salt mine will see some amazing sites. About the most astounding in terms of its sheer size and audacity is the Chapel of Saint Kinga. The Polish people have for many centuries been devout Catholics and this was more than just a long term hobby to relieve the boredom of being underground. This was an act of worship.

Amazingly, even the chandeliers in the cathedral are made of salt. It was not simply hewn from the ground and then thrown together; however, the process is rather more painstaking for the lighting. After extraction the rock salt was first of all dissolved. It was then reconstituted with the impurities taken out so that it achieved a glass-like finish. The chandeliers are what many visitors think the rest of the cavernous mine will be like as they have a picture in their minds of salt as they would sprinkle on their meals! However, the rock salt occurs naturally in different shades of grey (something like you would expect granite to look like).

Still, that doesn’t stop well over one million visitors (mainly from Poland and its eastern European neighbors) from visiting the mine to see, amongst other things, how salt was mined in the past.

A representation of Da Vinci’s Last Supper … carved out of a wall of salt:

This stunning chapel has to be my favorite:

Many more photos here.

Maybe even Lot’s wife would feel at home here.

Magnificent, because just reading the column made my heart swell with the remembrance of beautiful places and sounds.

Katrina R. Fernandez wrote of the power and indispensability of beauty for the soul, the heart, the mind.

“Beauty makes the soul soar,” she notes, continuing:

[Beauty] is as essential to the spirit as food and water is to the body, yet it is mocked as sentimentality and foolishness. It is wiped out of churches and untaught in school curricula, because who is permitted to define what is beautiful, anymore?

The Gesu, Rome. Click on the above picture to view more photos I've taken of objectively, transcendently beautiful churches.

But beauty is not something to be defined: it is to be experienced; entered into; realized. I recall the first time I walked into La Basilique Notre-Dame de Montréal in Montreal, Quebec. I had seen pictures of it, but entering into the space itself took my breath away. My friend, who had never even seen pictures of it, gasped. The sheer magnificence of that sacred space lifted my heart. The artistry danced. The massive members were light in true gothic style. And the blue which came behind everything transported the entire scene beyond the walls of the basilica into the ethereal. I had never been so affected by a sacred space, and for the first time a sacred space made me feel terribly sorry for my sins—how could I possibly choose to do anything against the God who inspired such beauty?

I didn’t define the beauty of that space, but I could not escape it.

The late Father Thomas Dubay, S.M., wrote a book called The Evidential Power of Beauty. In it, he does not propose to tell people what they should and should not consider “beautiful,” rather he shows that beauty is objective in the thing considered according to its comeliness, proportion, harmony, unity, wholeness, and how well it radiates its inherent form. He explains that recognizing and experiencing the beauty in a thing requires a level of maturity. But “maturity” does not equal “education.” Indeed, as both Father Dubay and Fernandez note, it is frequently the educated who set aside the spontaneous recognition of beauty for the sake of some other perceived good.

Fernandez notes, “even art schools brush aside notions of beauty; they favor a modern art that can be empty or profane, but rarely bourgeois ‘beautiful.’” She continues: (Click “Continue Reading” not “Read Entire Post”)

Indeed, when I was studying art history at Virginia Commonwealth University my own refuge was the Richmond Cathedral. I was fortunate that my dorm was right next door. In a harsh environment, feeling assaulted by the vulgar modern art so lauded by my instructors, I found retreat and renewal at that cathedral.

It started there, my conversion. I had lived completely unchurched, and no argument from another Catholic would have swayed me from my atheism. But in Richmond Cathedral, there was no arguing against the beautiful peacefulness that filled me in that place. There was no refuting the absolute Truth represented in the soul-engaging beauty of this church.

And then she really hammers home the matter with regard to church edifices, artwork, and music (bolding mine).

Churches used to be the source for transcendent beauty, the places where ordinary people could experience that overwhelming gasp-inspiring spiritual soaring because they were surrounded by it, immersed in it. Churches used to make the soul sing for God.

Beauty in the Church is essential. I don’t want God brought down from the Heavens and made “relatable” to me. I want to be carried up to Christ so I can meet Him there and be awestruck and changed by his beauty, expressed all around.

People often justify their ugly little parishes by saying they don’t believe in wasting money for garnishments that insult the poor. Little do they realize that their bleak and barren churches are spiritually depriving the poor by starving their very hearts and souls; hard lives ache for beauty. I often wonder why people think the poor need (or deserve) only the basic-and-bare minimums. A dreary life needs more, not less, uplifting beauty. A church should be a refuge from a harsh and ugly world, a place where deprived senses may swim in beauty. To deny us that refuge or to deny the poor a chance to be awestruck seems an injustice to me.

Indeed. St. John Vianney, who slept on a board, who ate little more than a potato, whose cassocks were routinely threadbare, had beautiful vestments and chalices. He lived his life sparing no expense for the worship of God, while sparing every expense for self.

A tour of Catholic churches in New York or any other major city will show the many expressions of faith and devotion the poor immigrant laborers poured into their houses of worship after the several waves of immigration. They were usually built by the laborers who had finished a day’s work already, but who needed that spiritual home to refresh their tired spirits. They frequently donated their time and talent. And the results are consistently beautiful churches with spires, columns, wonderful art, beautiful high altars, inspiring statues, and an unambiguous purpose.

A rarely seen angle of Michelangelo's Pietá. I took this picture at St. Joseph's Seminary in Dunwoody, New York, where they have a full-size reproduction of the masterpiece.

“The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me,” Christ said when Judas objected to Mary, sister of Lazarus, anointing Christ with expensive oil. Judas argued that the money ought to have been saved and spent on the poor. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Something else which has remained the same in spite of change is Christ’s presence amongst us. Christ is not with us as He was with the Twelve, but He is with us sacramentally in the Eucharist, and we meet him especially in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The beauty of the church, the sculpture, artwork, vestments, music, and chalices do not, of course, add one iota to the glory of God, nor are they intended to. They bespeak our own devotion to and regard for His ultimate sacrifice. They indicate the lengths to which we will go to offer the better portion of our labors and bounty for His service. In serving Him, of course, we serve one another.

The church itself ought not be comfortable and simple like our homes, it should be more grand and glorious. The vestments ought not be simple and straight-forward like our regular clothing, they should make one realize that he who wears them is in persona Christi capitis. The music ought not be banal and remind us of our favorite songs that get us going, it ought to elevate our mind and spirit. In every way, the experience of worship ought to be above and beyond our everyday experiences, because the mystery we enter into at Mass is above and beyond everyday experiences.

There’s a story about the building of one of the great medieval cathedrals of Europe. A person went to the carpenters and asked them what they were doing. “Building scaffolding to hold up the arch,” was the reply. Next the person went to the masons and inquired what they were doing. “Laying stone to build the wall,” they said. The person next went to the glazier and asked what he was doing. “Making the panels for the great rose window,” he said. Then the person went to the old woman sweeping the floor far below the unfinished vaulted ceiling and asked what she was doing. “We are building a cathedral,” she said.

None of those responses was incorrect, of course, but the woman’s response indicated a deeper appreciation, greater maturity, for the whole enterprise. None of those working on the structure would see it through to its conclusion, but that did not dissuade them from their work. She and they were building a home for transcendent beauty and an experience of the divine: a place where all people, through generations, were equal in the eyes of God and were equally surrounded by beauty; a place that expressed, in the best manner our poor human arts can muster, the dignity and glory of what was to take place there “on behalf of all and for all.”

The church and all that goes into worship is not just a meeting, a banquet, a performance: it is to be an offering of the best we have to offer. It is to be an experience of the divine. It is to be, in every sensual, emotional, and intellectual way, a “place made by God, an inestimably holy place, without blame.”