Some years back I was reading through a book on beauty.  On the porch of a family vacation, my mom and I sat by side-by-side, her with Oprah’s latest scoop, and me working through, Do You Think I’m Beautiful, by Angela Thomas.

“Seems neat that your generation uses that word,” my mom said, catching-me off guard.

“My generation...yours didn’t?”

“No…well, at least my piece of my generation didn’t. I was made fun of when I was young; a boy called me “homely” once.  From that point on, I decided beauty was given to some and not others. And I was a not other.”  

I was heartbroken.  And didn’t know what to say back to my beautiful mother.

A few years later I know a  little more, but am still far from grasping beauties complexities.

The dictionary refers to beauty with words like harmony and elegance, simplicity and brilliance—perceived in their whole as something beautiful.  True beauty is delicate, lasting and far more than meets the eye.  And it doesn’t come from being perpetually skinny or sexy.  It’s transcendent, delighting senses and revealing things spiritual and captivating to my soul (physically, emotionally, morally, cognitively…).  True beauty awakens me to God, connecting me to His lasting work in my soul.  And when I realize God is fascinated by my beauty—by the beauty of Himself imaged in me, I become fascinated by Him.  Mutually fascinated by my Beloved. 

Our final destiny as Christians involves the purest of ecstasies.  “A joy so glorious that it cannot be described” Peter said[1].  The beatific vision[2].  A day is coming when will stand face-to-face with Christ Jesus, Himself, our souls actually looking at God.  And God is the most beautiful Being.  And we are God’s kin.  Logic deduces, then, that functioning as God’s child, obeying the tides of His masterful Creation, images the divine.  Documents Divinity’s beauty to the world. 

Desires and ideals that fall elsewhere from the canopy of God’s beauty will never live-up.  While true beauty bridges a beauty beyond—connects God’s ways to mine, and mine to His—Christ in me, my only hope of glory[3].  And to imitate Christ[4], I am learning, is to believe this.  To walk in a manner believing utmost Worth resides in me—utmost Beauty in my inmost being.

My high school graduation gift was a plane ticket to Florida to visit my cousins.  I loved being with my older cousins who took me out and treated me like a princess.  Everything they did was big: big hugs, big parties, big mistakes, and big faith.  My Uncle Dale is kind of the patriarch of the group and one day when I stopped by his church he sat me down in his office.  He showed me a painting of the prophet Simeon and shared with me how that painting reminds him of his call and inspires his faith.  “What is your call?” he asked, leaning in intently.  “I don’t know. Something about the poor, something about helping people…” I hemmed and hawed.  “What inspires you to do that,” he asked.  “It doesn’t have to be something from the Bible.  Is there a piece of art or a song that compels you?”  It came to me immediately. “The Statue of Liberty,” I blurted out.  The poem on the statue brings me to tears every time I hear it. 

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An energetic speaker and writer, Arlene Pellicane has been featured on The Hour of Power, The 700 Club, and Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah. Her new book, 31 Days to a Younger You: No Surgery, No Diets, No Kidding, has just been published by Harvest House. In it Arlene offers practical solutions to look and feel younger, especially if you want to have more energy, be happier and healthier, and prevent illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.

"All this and more is possible when you take an honest look in the mirror, both at your body and your soul, and allow God to touch your life," writes Arlene. Many women have already found value in Arlene's beauty and health tips, along with her biblical encouragement to "grow more beautiful from the inside out." 

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It's common knowledge that fashion magazines touch up photographs of models. If this is news to you, I'm sorry to have to break this to you; the faces you see on covers of magazines in the check-out counter at the grocery store are no more real than cartoon characters. Jennifer Anniston really isn't that thin. The Kardashian cheekbones don't look like that in real life. Images in fashion magazines are conjured by artists, manipulated and carefully sculpted to deliver a message - mainly that you will never look like this but, you should try as hard you can to.

The process a model goes through to be deemed photographable and the subsequent manipulation of the photograph are well documented in this video that Dove did as part of it's Campaign for Real Beauty several years ago.

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The other day a friend gave me one of those cool insulated water bottles. On the bottle was a sticker that gave the number of disposable plastic bottles that would be saved by using this reusable water bottle. (I never realized that plastic bottles were in need of being saved but perhaps that is another post.)

The sticker got me thinking – we really are a disposable society. We like to use something a few times and then throw it away. It’s much easier and faster. There is no need to clean it, store it or to take care of it. When we’re done with it or tired of it, we can toss it and replace it.

In many ways it feels as if this disposable mentality has infiltrated other areas of our lives. It has moved beyond the items we use in our external lives and has attacked us in the way we many of us see our self-worth.

Broken Shells 

 

Yesterday I was hunting for shells on the beach with my six year old daughter Maeve.  It is one of her favorite beach hobbies and in San Diego we often get really low tides that make the search all the more fun. 

While we were walking the beach together she would run ahead of me, dig out a shell, and run back to ask “Is this a good one?”  Most of the time I would put it in my pocket, but on one occasion, I said, “Nah, it’s broken, we only want the whole ones” and threw it back onto the sand.   

Maeve’s response caught me off guard.  She ran over, picked up the broken piece of clam shell, and said “But it’s still beautiful to me.” 

When we got back to our chairs she showed me a bucket of all of the shells she had found while I was out surfing – more than half of them were broken fragments of shells that at one time had been whole.  Most of us would walk by them on our search for shells that were perfectly complete, but to her, the broken pieces of those once unbroken shells were worth something. 

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I work from home most days. It’s really nice, especially since the lack of a commute saves me time and money. One morning I knew I wasn’t going to see anyone else until late afternoon. The kids were at school, Mark was at the office so I decided to save even more time and go with the “natural” look. I skipped my daily routine of putting on make-up. In a hurry to take advantage of my extra time, I jumped right into work.

About an hour after I started, the doorbell rang. I peeked out the window and saw it was our delivery guy in search of a signature. When I opened the door he looked at me and seemed thrown off a bit, “Oh, you’re home. I sure hope I didn’t wake you.” 

Hmmm…why did he say that? I didn’t delay in answering the door. It was almost 10:00 a.m. on a weekday. Why would he think I’d still be in bed?

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One of the most memorable lines in English poetry appears in John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” in which the poet has his imagined Grecian vase speak directly to the reader, saying “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

That vase was on to something.

Beauty is not just... well, nice to look at. It’s important in a larger sense, because it points toward truth.

I live in Southern California, and my church, St. Michael’s by-the-Sea is named quite literally: you can see the Pacific Ocean from the church campus.

One particular morning I arrived at church as usual, pulled into the parking lot, got out, grabbed my purse, slammed the door shut, all on automatic pilot.

 

A comment to my post on Elmo caused me to consider the “heart” of environmentalism.  I am by no means an expert on the topic, but for me, as a follower of Christ, my heart for the environment begins with an understanding of where creation fits in God’s greater plan of redemption.   

 

A while back I was given the chance to publish an article online at Flourish responding to Wendell Berry’s great work “The Gift of Good Land.”  Looking back, I think it really sets forth my thinking in this area:

 

“The Gift of Good Land,” was published 30 years ago, and we reprinted it in the Fall 2009 issue of Flourish Magazine to celebrate Mr. Berry’s work, but also to provoke some questions: How has the natural world, and efforts to steward it, changed in these 30 years? How has Christianity changed? What is still relevant about Mr. Berry’s words today? What have been our successes and failures as creation’s stewards in these three decades? Where do we go from here?

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