Beauty

Many times... I have asked myself - how this same beauty can make me cry and laugh. How the honesty that I found more and more within me comes out - being ugly, sometimes insulting, carrying courage, fears and still holding beauty of life.

How this black and white dance together, how these days - mornings and nights of my life keeps on playing the beautiful melody that is feeding me. Even if its not pretty. Truth is.

Oriah says it with words that I can understand - she carries them well:

"Physicality is a gift. It lets us literally touch one another. I am not interested in theories or practices aimed at getting out of here. I do not want to focus on preparing to go to heaven or evolving into formlessness. I want to learn how to be here fully, in this body, in this world. And I want to live in a world infused with power of the erotic - physical sensation, inseparable from heart and soul, that calls us to live. This is beauty.

Seeing beauty is not about narrowing our vision, designating only some of its manifestations as worthy. It means expanding our definition of beauty, suspending our judgements, and appreciating both quiet joy of riding a bicycle along the lake and the raunchy glee of driving a cherry-red sports car that hugs the open highway. It means accepting the truth of being a middle-aged woman as it is reflected in both lines and sagging muscles of my face and belly and the shine of my eyes.

I want to touch the power of life-giving moisture and recognize the smell of the sea where it caresses the shore in the scent of my sweat, in the salt of my tears, in the slippery wetness that pours from between my soft thights when I am well loved. I want to taste the weeks of rain and sun, the ripening on the tree, the labor of the farmer and the fruit picker, the journey of the men and women who bring fruit from grove to table. I want to receive the beauty that reminds me that there is no separation - that each act I live while I am fully awake cannot help but be both prayer and lovemaking.

Tell me, can you see beauty? Can you let it renew your commitment to life, every day? I dont want to wait for death to be near to receive the beauty in my life. I want to be awed every day by the truth - pretty or painful.."