Respite for the Remnant

From the archives, originally posted on 3/8/24

Phyllis Beveridge Nissila

Have You Noticed?

Have you noticed, too, how a lot of ads, these days, feature dark, dreary colors? New paint colors for interiors and exteriors, for example, have gone from soothing grays and peaceful aquamarines to ashy charcoal and funereal black.

For a different kind of ad, this one pale in color, a pharma company is selling pills and potions for some dread disease featuring grossly-magnified wormy parasites that suddenly pop up and slither their way across part of an article you are engrossed in, but now you’re just grossed out.

Still other offensive pop-up “health” ads feature anatomically correct images of, well, what most people prefer to view in a doctor’s office or the privacy of their own bathrooms.

Food ads–whether the food is good for you or not–are often smeared with shapes and colors looking like the contents of a petri dish gone bad or THAT leftover now stuck to the back of the fridge, the only color emanating from it a thick layer of faded bacterial fuzz smothering the top of some now-unrecognizeable old casserole, or something,  if you even stop to investigate before tossing both leftover and maybe your lunch, too (so that’s where that smell came from…).

And one more example, this from the fashion industry, the very ad that assaulted my eyes the other day and prompted both a grimace and this post, and a brief look-back at fashion that used to actually be fashionable.

Certain lines of contemporary haute couture are not necessarily, as the term has always suggested, “the creation of exclusive custom-fitted high-end fashion design” (source) although they still cost high-end bucks.

The fashion line I still can’t get out of my mind’s eye, a torn, tattered uneven line, looked more like discards gathering mold and moths shoved in the back of the costume warehouse 0f the old post-apocalyptic flick Water World. The colors seemed shoveled up from a barnyard palette, if you get my drift, the models looking as depressed as their “dresses” and expressions…

Or is it just me re all this?

I understand that gone are the days of my youth when the mothers, even from lower income brackets with a pile of kids to care for like my mother, took pains with their grooming, gowns, and accessories, hats and gloves a must even for department store forays, dressed in those ubiquitous, colorful, freshly-ironed shirt-waist dresses and, alternately, flowery maternity tops and matching expando-waist skirts.

The sixties’ garb is long gone as well, splashed and splattered as it was with bright colors and bold designs. A lot of paisley, too, for some reason.

Then along came the blousy, “back to nature” collections of the seventies’ in soft, subtle earth tones, followed by the stern emergence of “power suits” in the eighties, their substantively padded shoulders helping Successful Women wedge their way to the top floor executive offices…

Gone also are (my favorite)  the feminine, pastel-rich hues of the eighties when I was raising my two daughters (although I am sure the extra-strength hair spray needed to secure–come rain, sleet, or snow–the expansively curled and coiffed hair styles to go with, has by now petrified more than a few curled hair strands that are plastered, still, in the corners of abandoned powder rooms everywhere).

Even the nineties grunge at least had some shape and style to it, the tears and zippers suggested symmetry, the messages on pins stuck to the lapels of black leather jackets (or printed on the T-shirts beneath) were spelled correctly, as compared with the current (Water World) collection featuring, as far as I can tell, a burlap-sack profile, accessorized by random hanging threads and undertones of despair. Coal-black eye shadow and nail polish sold separately.

Haute couture, at least that saggy, baggy, raggy collection I viewed the other day on this very monitor, looks more like hurt couture, IMO.

So why has the world of color gone so gloomy and doomy in many corners, it seems–and not just in its ads for paint, pharmaceuticals, food, and fashion?

Shades of La Révolution?

Outside of whatever the fashion designers can get away with on the runway for fun and profit, those who run away (sporting the Street Cred collection?) to join the latest clash between some haves and have-nots fighting for their rights–but typically damning yours–(clad in the noir-black hoodies and blood-red rags of some Révolution brand?) set aside such bourgeoisie fashion-bother to follow the crowd–as well as the politics du campus.

Long live the, ah, colour revolution?

Say what?

Number 7: Debase Art

If you think about it, these days certain art and craft seem more like art and crash, more like Alice Bailey’s Ten Point Plan to replace western civilization’s uplifting principles of freedom and justice to the downward twisting spiral of New Age spiritualism and One World (Totalitarian) Order (source).

Bailey’s point number 7, and to the point, here:  “Debase art, make it run mad.” Mad and dour, I would add, if not de-faced, neglected, or destroyed completely. Her idea of debasement includes subject matter as well.

So the assault to the senses happens not only in forgotten warehouses, medical side-bars, foul-smelling refrigerators, dulled-down furniture and walls slapped with a fresh coat of dark paint (the Hovel collection?) but also, sadly, everywhere, it seems, these days.

I will have to leave the art and science of what a full color palette, whether in fashion, food, or anything else, does to brighten, inspire, and enhance the mind, emotions, and spirit of human beings everywhere, to artists and scientists to analyze.

But even old-fashioned common sense suffices.

In short, a full spectrum of color–or lack thereof–matters.

Let’s just hope “they” don’t come out with perfumes, too, Eau de toilette taking on a whole new meaning, here.

On the Original Palette

Before I depress you more, however, dear reader, by continuing to describe a world fast going gloomy in a variety of senses, I want you to be refreshed, amazed, encouraged, and inspired by He Who not only engineered but also lavished His creation with every dazzling color on the original palette, every inspiring sound for the ear, soothing and sensual texture for touch, sweet scent for smell, and delicious taste for the palate.

This is best said with His own inspired Words, brought to you by King David, as He invites weary passersby to a better scene–and experience:

Psalms 19:1-6

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.

I invite you (and me, too) to mute the increasingly fearful/gross  sights, harsh sounds, noxious smells, course textures, and sour tastes of this blighted world for a few moments, and think on the Creator of creators.

His original art and craft.

I mean, from where else could all of it have come alive–and thrive–from the primordial tabula rasa?

Could mere man necklace the sparkling lights across the night sky or nurture a rose from seed to bud to bloom–and add an exquisite scent (after all, He didn’t have to add that)?

Sit under a wide tree in the sun, if you have one or both, or some other restful place while you’re at it and think on these wonders.

Let your spirit rise above all the muck and mire of a world spoiled and dulled with evil.

And should the world’s gloomy landscape attempt to force your eye and heart downward, remember there is another place He has prepared for us, a realm where,

…as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

Look up…

~~~~~

Why and how to enter into the world of His love and redemption from all this darkness and ugliness? Here is a good summary: ABCs of Salvation

Today would be good.

Ponder that, too, while ye yet may.