beauty...

i hate that when i type 'beauty' into google various sites offering the latest cosmetics and tips on how to be more beautiful...many refer to these things as secrets... one site says: "Beauty is to look more beautiful without losing the essence of what makes you uniquely attractive." (which i think vaguely suggests that one isn't beautiful enough in their naturalness and it's necessary to enhance things if you want to achieve ultimate beauty)....i went to the area of google where it finds images for you...and using 'beauty' once more i came across a variety of fashion shots of thin, perfect women with their peach-painted complexions. sort of makes me sick looking at the whole of their symmetrical inerrancy. there was one picture of a city with an astounding array of colors in the sunset above it...when going to the site it originated from, i found it to be an anti-war site ...against the wars in israel. and another painting found in my search was of sleeping beauty...merely a fairytale....

one site let me to some quotes which i find appealing...

"Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time...." -Albert Camus

"The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself." -Henry Miller

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." -Albert Eintstein

"When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other." -chinese proverb

i want beauty...not the beauty of a symmetrical face or perfect body... i want beauty of life. i want to feel the same intense pleasure and deep satisfaction you get when you look at the most beautiful thing you've ever seen...that feeling that turns your insides up into your heart and almost makes you cry and not one other thought can pass through your mind because your entirety of being is centered on absorbing every and any ounce of the complexities within the simplicities...i want to be whole...i want passion...i want my life to be something i couldn't create on my own... i want healing... i want hope... i don't want to lose the beauty i've found... i don't want the colors to fade... i don't want the dreaming to stop... i want love... i want strength.... i want community...i want to be able to really hug a person...to be honestly vulnerable... i want to lean on someone... i don't want walls around my heart forever.... i don't want to lie...

i don't understand how to... how to be included again... how to get called up for a movie or something... if i didn't have my brother...i'd be really alone... but...i'm afraid i've done that to myself... i'm afraid i've pushed these people away for so long they've forgotten me... it's hard to push through into someone's heart when you're scared to share yourself... scared to give...

it seems like we're all so freaking broken... desperate for acceptance but unwilling to show enough of ourselves to really know if we were ever accepted in the first place....

here's what i want in my life: real raw beauty. i'm tired of putting make-up on. i'm tired of waiting for the latest tips to be beautiful...the next secret to wholeness.

i want to be real
i want to be raw
and i want beauty

please Lord...