In a very real way our sensing of beauty comes as we sense a particularly vibrant “balance”. Drabness would be when a balance is uninspired. When we are sensing things out of balance altogether – that’s ugly.
Clearly, Syracuse has its share of beauty, drab, and ugliness. After our wintry months, too much of these latter two are apparent. The drab and the ugly call out to us for a creative remedy, a renewing-to-our-spirit solution.
The 4 Element movement is about creating an inspired balance. An individual’s health and a community’s beauty to come to the degree that balance is present. The holistic model for living suggests that improved balance – with its greater beauty, health, and vitality – occurs most easily when one is able to appreciate what these principles are.
Our Civic Heart, Beauty & Soul Campaign has been created to help us all to recognize the principles which need to be in balance. These principles would include such polar, or opposing principles represented by the big: the small, the natural: manmade, self: other, the spiritual: the material. As we civically find ways to balance these principles we become a more vibrant and healthy community.
What’s involved?
- 1. Billboards that promote positive civic ideals.
- 2. City neighborhood-based contests that focus upon creating beauty and “heart” within different demographic/cultural parts of our city. Beauty and heart are stirred into existence as we strive to create a higher balance.
- 3. Development of joint projects, with other civic organizations, perhaps even helping them to better appreciate their own mission within the principle-based perspective of Four Element Thinking.
