You are a masterpiece.

Dear ladies,

I'm sure most of you have seen the Dove Real Beauty Sketches video that's floating around and flaunts the message "You are more beautiful than you think."  I'm not a fan of the video, though I like the underlying message--many women don't view themselves as very beautiful, and we are in general more forgiving of the flaws in other people than ourselves.

As a bit of a conspiracy theorist (I don't trust any reality TV, except maybe Biggest Loser, which I watch fairly regularly--while eating ice cream and potato chips--because I find it inspiring and it almost always brings me to tears), my first reaction was that the sketch artist was obviously being paid to over-exaggerate the ugliness of the woman's opinion of herself, and to make her opinion of the other woman more flattering.  

Still, the message that we are more beautiful than we think is a tear-jerking sentiment--a great one to get women to buy more of your products. . .

And certainly it helped that the women were thin, white, and consistent with society's definition of a beautiful woman. . .

And we all know that real beauty is on the outside, and we need other people to tell us how beautiful we are to feel good about ourselves. . .

. . .

No, I'm sorry, ladies.  Your true beauty is not defined by your looks, by how you dress or style your hair (thought these can be reflections of your true beauty), and certainly not by other people (nope, not even boys!).  

Your true beauty is the light of your spirit, all of the things that make you uniquely you.  It's your sass, your spunkiness,  your kindness, your ability to bring joy wherever you go, your inherent awkwardness, your quiet understanding.  There's a deep corner of your heart that is your uniquely beautiful dignity.  You don't have to go on crazy diets, and super-charged workouts, you don't have to make yourself look sexy so the boys will pay attention to you.  You don't have to give the boys what they want so that they'll like you or keep you around--they might keep you around, but they won't respect you.  They won't see your true beauty if you're pretending to be something you're not.

Something we women long for is the affirmation of our femininity.  We want men to notice us, to want us, to love us.  When they use us, or reject us, we tend to think there's something inherently wrong with us, or that we aren't pretty enough.  Basically, we feel rotten.  We mask our hurt by resorting to name calling and "boys are stupid," "he's such a d-bag," "someday he'll grow up and he'll wish he hadn't let me go!"  And we feel a little bit better, maybe even empowered, but the hurt remains.

That part of us that desires love keeps looking in the wrong places.  We either close ourselves off completely  to love, or we open ourselves to finding small satisfaction wherever we can.  Until we let that hurt be healed, until we accept that we are truly beautiful just as we are, we will keep looking in all the wrong places.

Our culture, unfortunately, doesn't treat women like they are beautiful.  They create superficial ads to try and make up for the fact that they really view things like fertility--that is, a woman's ability to grow new life--to be nothing but inconvenience, something that gets in the way of a woman getting what she wants.  But what do women want?

Don't we all just want to be loved for who we are?  We want to be considered beautiful--not just our looks, but our hearts, our truest selves.  How do we find ourselves?  Not by looking in diet fads, or fashion, or men, but by looking in our hearts, by discovering what drives us, what makes us who we are, and by simply being that.  I know that I often struggle to simply be.  I feel like I'm constantly striving, like it's an endless battle between me and who I think I should be.  But then I remember that I am beautiful, because I am--we all are--"a masterpiece of His love, wounded, disfigured by sin, but remade by the Redeemer, more beautiful than before."

Yes, we are more beautiful than we realize, because our culture tells us lies about beauty, that it is on the outside and that we should deny our greatest gift to get some small satisfaction where we can.  Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder--it's in the heart.

I want to finish by sharing this letter from a father to a daughter, and please know that there is a Father who wants you to know you are beautiful, and you are worth it, because you are His (whether or not you choose to believe it, it's true!).

from:  http://drkellyflanagan.com/2013/04/17/a-daddys-letter-to-his-little-girl-about-her-future-husband/

Dear Cutie-Pie,

Recently, your mother and I were searching for an answer on Google. Halfway through entering the question, Google returned a list of the most popular searches in the world. Perched at the top of the list was “How to keep him interested.”

It startled me. I scanned several of the countless articles about how to be sexy and sexual, when to bring him a beer versus a sandwich, and the ways to make him feel smart and superior.

And I got angry.

Little One, it is not, has never been, and never will be your job to “keep him interested.”

Little One, your only task is to know deeply in your soul—in that unshakeable place that isn’t rattled by rejection and loss and ego—that you are worthy of interest. (If you can remember that everyone else is worthy of interest also, the battle of your life will be mostly won. But that is a letter for another day.)

If you can trust your worth in this way, you will be attractive in the most important sense of the word: you will attract a boy who is both capable of interest and who wants to spend his one life investing all of his interest in you.

Little One, I want to tell you about the boy who doesn’t need to be keptinterested, because he knows you are interesting:

I don’t care if he puts his elbows on the dinner table—as long as he puts his eyes on the way your nose scrunches when you smile. And then can’t stop looking.

I don’t care if he can’t play a bit of golf with me—as long as he can play with the children you give him and revel in all the glorious and frustrating ways they are just like you.

I don’t care if he doesn’t follow his wallet—as long as he follows his heart and it always leads him back to you.

I don’t care if he is strong—as long as he gives you the space to exercise the strength that is in your heart.

I couldn’t care less how he votes—as long as he wakes up every morning and daily elects you to a place of honor in your home and a place of reverence in his heart.

I don’t care about the color of his skin—as long as he paints the canvas of your lives with brushstrokes of patience, and sacrifice, and vulnerability, and tenderness.

I don’t care if he was raised in this religion or that religion or no religion—as long as he was raised to value the sacred and to know every moment of life, and every moment of life with you, is deeply sacred.

In the end, Little One, if you stumble across a man like that and he and I have nothing else in common, we will have the most important thing in common:

You.

Because in the end, Little One, the only thing you should have to do to “keep him interested” is to be you.

Your eternally interested guy,

Daddy

Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

I've been cleaning and sorting and organizing like a crazy person trying to clear my writing area and make room for inspiration, but every time I sit down to write, it's just a white blank page.

I hate the term "writer's block," so we'll call it a hiatus.

From Heather King's Shirt of Flame (which I highly recommend):

Lord, help me to lie fallow every so often and reassess what or whom I'm working for. 

Help me to enjoy the quiet morning and the still-point of evening; the light of the moon and the incessant, slow but steady movement of the universe that fills me with love. 

Help me to accept myself the way I am, not giving up the idea of healing and growth, but giving up the idea that I am ever going to reach some future point where I can rest.  I can rest here.

divine mercy

a heart breaks and reaches
out,
grasping at air for a hand to bring
it back to safety
before the whole bridge comes tumbling down.

but the hand laughs and slaps the other cheek
before walking away.

the heart falls deeper
and deeper
drowning in dreams and blue eyes,
drowning in hopes and fears,
drowning in unmet expectations
and misunderstandings.

she fades
into the darkest shadows
but only here can she see the Light
that raised Love from the fall.

For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have Mercy on us and on the whole world.

The Alchemy of the Cross

I read this in my Magnificat one day:

"The Lord gathers up the tears of humanity and transforms them into the waters of life by the alchemy of the cross, where suffering and death are changed into joy and life by the self-gift of love."

And then I read it again:

 "The Lord gathers up the tears of humanity and transforms them into the waters of life by the alchemy of the cross, where suffering and death are changed into joy and life by the self-gift of love."

I see it:  the Lord walks among us, teaching, healing, collecting our salty tears--the blood of our souls.

I see him, Christ, drink the tears, swallowing our tears for us, being brave and strong for us like we can't be for ourselves.  He sits with his friends and drinks, sits in the garden and begs his Father to find another way.  He knows, though, that this is the only way.

He takes up the cross, and they beat him until he bleeds--the blood of the Lord, spilled out and given for us.  He carries his cross and they nail him to it.

He takes his last breath, and they pierce his side.  Blood and water pour out--baptism.  They lay him in the tomb and on the third day, he is gone.

He is risen, and he brings with him salvation and new life for us.

All this is the result of a gift of self for love.

In my study of Theology of the Body, this is a recurring theme:  self-gift of love.  It points to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.  He did that for us, and if we are to follow him, we must be faithful in every aspect of our lives.

After Mass on Holy Thursday, Jesus' question to his disciples kept coming back to me:  "Do you know what I have done for you?"

On Good Friday I watched the priest and deacon process in in silence, and then lay face down on the ground in front of the altar. It struck me that this is what Christ has done--he laid his life down for us.  And the priests have done this in his example.

"Do you know what I have done for you?"

At the Easter vigil I counted my blessings, looking back at the many ways I could see how God saved me in grace, how he brought me where I am instead of taking me where I wanted to go for a specific reason--to give me new life.

The hard part now consists in dying to my old self, and giving myself completely out of love for him.

That reminds me of a funny experience I had about two years ago:  I was praying, and meditating on the Institution of the Eucharist when I suddenly heard John Cusack as Lloyd Dobler (from the 80s film Say Anything) in the back of my mind saying, "I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen."  I realized that it was the same with me and God.  I had given him the pen to write my story, but he had given me his whole heart.  He didn't just want my pen, to be the narrator of my story in an Emma Thompson from Stranger Than Fiction kind of way.  He wanted all of me.  Just as he gives himself to us in the Eucharist every single day, he wants all of us, not just a part of us.

He wants us to let him love us, just as we are.  Only when we let him love us can he turn our pain and sorrow into joy.