Shadowed Beauty

[Mika]

We hide in our shadows,
Afraid of our light,
It’s easier!
Behind the masks
No one can see
Our brilliance
Shine!
No one will be
Blinded
By our beauty!
No expectations
Forthcoming,
That can’t be met.
No pedestals
From which to fall!
Smaller than life
We can remain
Hiding!
Till there is
No difference
Between us
And what’s
In the shadows
Behind us,
Above,
To the side,
Or below!

2012


The soul's beauty is harder to see than beauty of the body.
— Aristotle quoted in The Force of Character by James Hillman


This world is nothing more than
Beauty's chance to show Herself.
And what are we? —
Nothing more than Beauty's chance to see Herself.
For if Beauty were not seeking Herself,
we would not exist.
— Ghalib quoted in The Inner Treasure by Jonathan Star



May you walk in Beauty in a sacred way
May you walk in Beauty each and every day.
May you walk in Beauty in a sacred way
May you walk in Beauty each and every day.
May the Beauty of the Fire, lift your spirit higher,
May the Beauty of the Earth, fill your heart with mirth,
May the Beauty of the Rain, wash away your pain,
May the beauty of the Sky teach your mind to fly
- Unknown


***

In our reviews of his previous books, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom and Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Yearning to Belong, we affirmed poet and Catholic scholar John O'Donohue as a cartographer of the soul with a rousing, passionate, and philosophical purview. With Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, he offers a sweeping and intense survey of beauty that will stir your soul and stoke the fires of your imagination.

Humans yearn for beauty and seek it everywhere, O'Donohue observes. But sadly, there is a surfeit of ugliness, coarseness, and tawdriness in the media, in architecture, and in our environment. "In turning away from beauty, we turn away from all that is wholesome and true, and deliver ourselves into an exile where the vulgar and the artificial dull and deaden the human spirit." Also lamentable is our habit of mistaking glamour for beauty. Far too much emphasis is put upon good looks, image, and fashion. Far too little attention is given to the dignity, grandeur, and nobility of the human spirit.

O'Donohue is convinced that it is time to invoke and awaken beauty in all aspects of our lives. He takes us on a grand tour of beauty in art, music, dance, poetry, colors, nature, the human face, love, the shadowlands of pain and despair, and even death. He is agile and adept whether writing about the paintings of Vermeer, the philosophy of Aquinas, the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, or the meaning of flaws in Japanese objects. He embraces the spiritual practices of reverence, grace, faith, and imagination as beauty enhancers. "It is the deepest dream of the human soul to be in the intimacy of Divine Beauty," he concludes.

O'Donohue's enthusiasm for whatever he is writing about is his most endearing quality, and you will delight in all the fresh openings he reveals for beauty in your life.

http://www.spiritualityandpractice.c...ks.php?id=8306

[versicolor]

Thanks Mika, I admire your creativity.

Also interesting to read your insight into all things spiritual.