There’s a beauty that makes the heart ache. A beauty that transforms and inspires, that brings us closer and closer… to what? To a lover, to our selves, to nature, to the whole of life, to the divine – does it matter? To some degree it is the “closeness” that matters – the sense of expansiveness, vulnerability, intimacy and tender belong that is so often awakened by a genuine encounter with beauty.
In the west, this kind of beauty has become lost within a tyranny of “attractiveness” and the terrible pressure placed on women – and all of us – to look a certain way. While women have gained so much power in the outer world, we have also let patriarchal ideals about what is beautiful undermine our own ability to see, feel, and embody the real power of beauty.
But beauty is an essential quality in all life – many have called it a divine quality. As we have lost touch with beauty, we have lost touch with our own selves at this deep and sacred level. This is a tragic aspect of our patriarchal culture – it has contributed to our forgetting of the living beauty at the core existence.
Beauty has long been recognized as feminine both in the world of cultural norms, which link women’s value to their beauty and men’s value to other qualities and capabilities, and also in spiritual traditions where beauty is an aspect of the divine in contrast with masculine qualities or male gods.
Like all things “feminine” women have a particular closeness to beauty. The Islamic Hadith describing Muhammad’s night journey through the heavens articulates this connection:
Women are not created weaker but more generous than men. They are created more beautiful, and less fierce, as beauty hates to hurt and harm others. That is why they seem weak to people but in reality they are not. Angels are the strongest of created beings, and women are closer to the angelic nature than men, and they are readier than men to carry angelic light.[i]
The relationship of women to beauty in our modern sensibility is often muddled. On the one hand, many of us want to free ourselves from the yoke of cultural norms that tell us that we are more successful as human beings if we are attractive. On the other hand, we have a genuine longing to know and express beauty that we must protect as we free ourselves from the oppression of “pretty.”
The deep purpose of beauty is also muddled in our modern world. We know the power of attractiveness and how it helps many get what they want. A Jerry Harrison song says it clearly: “A pretty girl can go anywhere, all doors open for her….” But real beauty has a mysterious purpose that we need to reclaim. This is why beauty is on the “Power Wheel” – it is a power that serves us and also sustains life itself. It is not easy to describe this power, but some have said it clearly – like Rachel Carson, the founder of our environmental conservation movement: Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
Our longing to know and embody beauty is not other than life’s calling to be seen and experienced in the most intimate ways, and protected for its true nature. As we honor beauty, we are brought into right relationship with life – one that includes a conscious awareness of harmony and humility, and our own place in a vast and magnificent wholeness.
Beauty is alive beyond all the power structures of this world and it transports us into a dimension of life that is free. It is given freely and also frees us from things that bind us. A walk in a meadow – light on the tips of grass, birds calling, enveloping summer warmth – transport us directly into the mystery of existence where the real nourishment of life is always available. The beauty of a child’s eyes reminds us of what is important and enduring. Knowing our own beauty is to find ourselves in the sublime landscape of our soul. Sensing the divinity of beauty ignites our relationship to God.
Like so many feminine qualities beauty asks women to walk a thin line, compelling us to honor it without using it for our own ends or allowing others to impose their versions on to us. In a patriarchal culture, feminine values and qualities are always vulnerable to corruption and abuses.
As women sense into the power of beauty, we always have to take responsibility. No matter how much we blame culture’s adoration of women’s attractiveness, we must become more and more confident to stand wrapped within beauty, at the same time withstanding the unfairness of imposed cultural ideals. This is no easy task. But as women, it is largely up to us to reclaim and honor the forgotten feminine.
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