What is it with beauty, anyway? It’s so hard to get a grasp on this. God put it in us to love beauty, to respond to it. It can’t be wrong to want to BE beautiful, too, can it? And yet—and yet it makes me so self-centered to think about whether or not I’m beautiful.
I see that this is worth a longer meditation sometime.
2 comments:
Thanks for your comment, Kathy.
It's all just so frustrating, this not knowing how (or whether) to care about our looks. We're supposed to be a thing of beauty, right? But not to enjoy it (vanity) or stress about it. I can't figure it out.
It doesn't help that we have so little in the scriptures to help us. It seems that the scriptures mention when women are "comely," as if it mattered and as if it were a positive thing. It kills me when authority figures introduce speakers: "And President Jones and his lovely wife will then talk . . ." (Would we ever introduce a man that way?)
I was interested in C. S. Lewis's depictions of Eve in his Perelandra books. Of course she was beautiful, but as soon as she noticed it the tone of the book became critical of her.
I've been reading "Lord of the Rings" to A. and B. and paying attention to the women (hardly any, but all beautiful) in it. But then, Tolkien and Lewis were both bachelors for most of their lives, and surrounded by mostly men in their academic careers. Of course they don't know how to speak to and about women.
But who does?
No, I don't think your husband will have a long white beard. And I wish they would get rid of them on the authority figures in the church movie depictions of visions. It kind of gets in the way of my appreciation.
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