i suffer from all the maladies of my culture... insecurity, envy, self-everything. the voices shouting out from the advertisements have done me in. my hair is not shiny enough, my skin not smooth enough, my hips not narrow enough, my teeth not white enough.
woe, indeed.
i have a little book on my coffee table called "the lady who was beautiful on the inside". after hearing her woe over the ladies in the magazines, her hairdresser says to her, "... your beauty comes from DEEP WITHIN you. and that is the most beautiful BEAUTY of all."
so she goes off into the world, trying to believe her hairdresser (who had vanished after his pronouncement). sun shone, flowers bloomed, children laughed and people danced... and though she wondered if it was a "strange & fortunate coincidence", the book ends this way:
"in the end it did not matter. for the lady had seen the POWER of the beauty INSIDE her. and from then on, everywhere she went, LOVELINESS happened. for she did have a very BEAUTIFUL beauty indeed."
could it be true? could we each, differently, have a very BEAUTIFUL beauty within us? could it be that our very selves might be beautiful? that my very self might be? wouldn't it be wondrous if under our rather stubborn hair & lumpy sweaters, deep beneath, lay a beauty to make children laugh and people dance? and even more, what if we had the courage to let our beauty be seen? to let it grow and fall on the people around us, giving them freedom to live into and out of their own gift of beauty? what if we learned to live so that everywhere we went, LOVELINESS could happen?
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