Beauty and the Sacred

     The world loves beauty, doesn’t it?  Mention the word beauty and 9 out of 10 will focus on feminine beauty – the ideal female – as portrayed by what their culture dictates.  We have worldwide beauty pageants and flourishing modeling agencies that describe for us the meaning of beauty.  We have magazines that extoll the secrets to gaining that precious gift – and how to hold onto it longer.  We compare celebrities beauty, how well they wear their clothing, their capabilities of keeping their frames anorexically thin, how well they wear a bathing suit.  We have reality TV shows of  women entering weekly contests to win ongoing plastic surgeries, or extreme body makeovers.  Beginning younger and younger, we hear of parents entering their toddlers in pageants or getting their pre-teens cosmetic procedures.
And we want it NOW, with little inconvenience or wait time.  We see guarantees of 10 lb weight losses in a week, diet supplements without the need to alter your food intake or exercise.  Advertisements that claim the magical ability to wipe away cellulite and crows feet and age spots.  Plastic surgeons who cut away the unacceptable and sew in perfection.
I wish I could look at this ridiculousness and say that I’m far beyond its external clutches to those evil messages in my brain.  I’d like to say my eyes are open to the bullshit our culture feeds us about true beauty.  Yet there are still days that I frown at the mirror and scale, thinking I’m losing the game.
I was raised in a house that was big on competition and comparing.  Importance was placed on being polite and intelligent, but being a beauty as a daughter was a magnificent bonus.  Dad had stacks of Playboys in his nightstand, watched all the pageants on TV, and marveled over the pretty faces and dance costumes of the ice skating programs my mother routinely watched.  There was a silent message of beauty putting you one giant step ahead of the game when all else was equal.
In a community of well-to-do professionals, wives that often don’t work, there’s also a message that states you’re nothing if you’re not still in shape with a pretty, unweathered face.  Maybe it’s a sign of success that your wife is the sought after “trophy wife”; as we age, there’s an unspoken message to keep it together or be replaced by a younger model.
But somewhere inside, someplace deep, deep inside, there’s a voice that says beauty is so much more than that which draws fleeting attention and competitve snarls.  It’s in the yawn of a puppy, or the tears of a proud parent, the glisten of sun on fresh fallen snow, or the struggle of a paraplegic to stand.  Beauty is found within the wabi sabi imperfection of changes in parental relationships, the full moon that shines bright over your driveway and within your son’s dorm window, and the jittery bravery of unveilng your secrets despite unsupportive opinion.  Beauty is deep, it’s emotional and courageous.  It fights cultural norms and standards, accepts the unacceptable and forgives the unforgivable.  Beauty is deep and enduring love, beyond all that sappy romantic stuff.
Last year, I likened my spiritual journey to chasing butterflies, following where I’m lead.  A new perspective on that has emerged in reading “When the Heart Waits”, by Sue Monk Kidd.  She suggests that our true beauty that God intended, our core butterfly, if you will, cannot emerge without time in silence, reflection and waiting within our cocoon.  That we can’t rush this process of growth, awakening, and understanding.  It strikes home for me, often feeling that I’ve unpeeled the onion, come to an inner core – I’m ready to fly!  Shekinah, my God within, let me spread my wings!  I’m ready!  I feel that colorful beauty both inside and out.
Then a day passes where I’m begrudging the carbs I ate, the cosmetic eye surgery that might help my weary-eyed look, the stable needle on my scale, and I know, I need to wait within my cocoon longer.  Continue learning, reading, contemplating, writing, painting, seeing the beauty within all that surrounds me in order to fully embrace Shekinah within this awaiting butterfly.
So I wait, trusting in a sacred, beautiful WOW to emerge.

The Clay Gate- Sensuality

Where the hell is my sensuality and sexuality these days, that’s all I’m asking.  Sometimes I think it went out the door the first time I sat beside my dad’s bed, fantasizing that I’d one day look like all those Playmates in the magazines he kept beside his bed.  Or perhaps it left when I was on some ego trip, working as a cocktail waitress as a nurse with her skirt cut up to there, in bedazzled high heel shoes, feeling proud at the end of the night by the thickness of her tip pocket.

Angeles Arienne in “The Second Half of Life” suggests that one of the tasks for moving through adulthood is passing through the Clay Gate, which is about our earthiness, sensuality and sexuality.  “When clay is moist it remains elastic and moldable.  When our clay dries out, it becomes cracked and fragile.”

Well hell, I’m feeling pretty cracked and dried out — and I’m not just talking about my skin, sisters.

When I was young, I used to pose and primp in front of the mirror naked , holding my breasts up in hopeful anticipation.  Now I hold them up in rueful realization that I’m losing the game, tending more often to race by the mirror while naked, daring little more than a flash of bare skin.  It’s like trying to shovel snow in a snowstorm.  What’s the use?  Even though you know your driveway is somewhat clearer than your neighbor’s ice and mounds, he’s inside having hot chocolate by the fire, while you’re sweating your ass off knowing your back’s gonna give out when you get out of bed in the morning.  Who’s the more wise?

There was a time in my youth that I’d try having sex with as many good looking men as possible – thinking their attention meant I was truly sexy and desirable.  I’d play games with myself to spy the hottest guy in the bar, thinking that by going home with him I was winning some personal prize.  Looking back I realize that seducing young men is hardly challenging, it’s more like dealing with a hungry puppy.  They’re not very discerning; they’ll eat vomit out of the trash can.

I’m not one for shopping; I hate the crowds, the over stimulation, the dressing rooms.  I rarely escape the room without gasping in the mirror, those that give you a full 180 view of the attack of dimples across my dierriere and thighs.  Indeed, I truly have a love affair with the shadow of myself as I walk in the park, liking the athletic looking profile of myself, but unwilling to accept the rolls and dimples within the bathroom mirror.

Perhaps that’s why most people keep the lights off in the dark during lovemaking — what’s so alluring and pretty about what’s going on in there?  The grunting, sluicing in each other’s juices, sweating and groping.  Did God even put a second thought into the appearance of our genitals?  The down deep knowledge that you’re no Playmate, and hell no, he’s no Tom Cruise either.  Is this passion?  Because let’s face it, if it’s just all about that ultimate feel good feeling, then I can do that all by myself.  And frankly, a whole lot more efficiently.  AND I can just go to sleep after or get up and fix dinner without all that smothering, cuddly stuff afterwards.

Lately however, I’ve been walking through the pumpkin patch and noticing all the pumpkins with character – the warty ones, the elongated shapes that look as though the curvaceous Goddess has used it to prop herself up in the seduction of the Gods, the pumpkins with long and thick stems – why is it that they attract me so?!  The pumpkins of varied shade and color.  These are the ones that catch my eye — not those that are perfectly smooth in brilliant orange, their shape a perfect magazine pumpkin roundness.  How boring!

I find myself noticing the strangelings in supermarkets — it’s typical to find them working in Trader Joe’s, those earthy liberal dance-to-their own-beat individuals.  Young ladies with high top Converse’s, hippy swank tops, their hair a myraid of color and pulled back to one side unattractively with one barrette, their lip pierced.  I almost wish I didn’t have that natural, everyday beauty in my youth.  Or perhaps it’s that I tried too hard to fit within that framework so that I was finally successful and fit the mold, so that now in adulthood I’m left trying to find that nerdy creative strangeling within.

I’m enamored by women that are who they are, those that you can plainly pick out because they’re obnoxious and bold, saying the things that many of us are thinking but would rarely utter in public, those that walk on the beach in bikinis, their rolls jiggling like a happy Shar-pei, flaming homosexual or lesbian youngsters, their behavior and voice in buoyant color, individuals tatted up stem to stern like an artist’s canvas.   I don’t want to BE them, but they are the ones that I envy for their inner bravery…..    Or are they?  Maybe it’s their insecurity that yells FUCK YOU to the world in their loud rebellion to form.  Perhaps acceptance is a bit more subtle.

Maybe I noticed some turnaround as I heard the (hopefully) reverse psychology my internist was using with me when I last had my annual exam.  After acknowledging my perfect health in blood work, blood pressure, and heart rate, he commiserates with my constant struggle with weight.  My frustration that despite my usually persistant attitude with diet and exercise, I still reflect a BMI that’s slightly overweight with over a 30% fat profile.  He suggests plastic surgery, and I’m flabbergasted.  What about the attitude of acceptance in aging? And by God, the biggest question, where would I begin?  The flappy upper arms, the dimpled butt and thighs, the muffin top, the bra squish?  Let’s face it, I’m not 21 anymore….and thank God I’m not.  I cringe at the youngster I was, how much I lived for everyone else’s approval, having little sense to my own desire, self-worth, just floating on the whims of other’s expectations of me.  Can’t we have wisdom with youthful, perfected bodies?  Do we really have to sacrifice one for the other?

Maybe that’s impossible.  Maybe with all the media definitions of “beauty”; the televised Beauty Pageants, the popularity of “What not to Wear” or “Fashion Police”, the “Most Beautiful People” in People’s magazine’s annual release, it’s impossible to create one’s own definition of beauty as a youngster.  Especially if one’s parents buy so heavily into that picture?  Perhaps it’s this complete acceptance of who we are, loving the imperfect try-too-hard beauties of our yesterday, and the dimpled, flapping, aching body of today that brings us our true sensuality for today.  But further, and deeper than that (is it the chicken or the egg?) the acceptance, appraisal and celebration of the Laurie today — whoever that truly is, the true essence of the light within, that is only housed in a body that is slowing breaking down so that this is all we’re left with.  Indeed, that this shadow I’m in love with is just a mere shadow of all that I truly am.

Perhaps that’s why sensuality only comes with age.

Where sensuality is so much more than what happens behind closed doors – in fact, it’s all about an attitude that’s wide in the open: a sense of knowing ourselves fully, letting it all hang out, living out of your core no matter who you piss off in the process, breaking the rules, being daring and adventurous, jumping naked from the rooftops of our masked beings and riding the peaceful parachute of our truest self down – our upper arms and jowls flapping – to the ground.

So that now, when the lights are out — or left brightly on — we can truly look within the other as you’ve looked within yourself to love deeply, wholely, and without restraint or inhibition. And sluice around in their juices, allowing yourself to get dirty, drinking in their imperfection and light just as he does for you, reaching a God-given height of a mind blowing climax that says, This is It and You’re Wonderful!!

PHAT

Several years ago, when my kids were toddlers, I used to go out with my girlfriends on “Lady’s Night Out” to go dancing.  To drink, look at single men and fantasize what it was like before children and husbands.  Before we had sticky fingers clinging to our legs and eyes that looked longingly at our bare breasts when we undressed at night, whether for 5 minutes in Heaven or a comforting sip of Nature’s honey.

I’d be flattered if a young man asked me for a dance or bought me a drink.  I knew, despite his possible hopes for more, that nothing would happen at the end of the night, but we were both glad to dance the game of desire and fantasy.

I remember one night when I fooled myself into thinking I was extra hot that a tall, handsome black man asked me to dance.  He held my hand as he pulled me onto the dance floor and I giddily followed along, shy as a schoolgirl in my attempts to match his easy rhythm and sway to the beat of the music.
“Your ass is so PHAT!” he hummed in my ear as I tried an artistic twirl in front of him.  This was one of those new words that initiated ones like it that teens are using today, like SICK! and BAD! in order to express glorifying descriptions of approval.  In my rational adulthood, it’s always been a wonderment to me that these descriptive words have become so backward to their actual meaning.  How in the world did that ever start?  How did PHAT, SICK, BAD mean anything that was possibly……GOOD?!  However, I do digress.

So, this black guy keeps the supposed compliment going, telling me repeatedly what a PHAT ass I have, while I become increasingly sure he’s NOT using the new twist of the word, he most assuredly is telling me my ass has one too many jiggling pounds on it.  And who knows – this being a guy of African-American persuasion, it’s equally as likely that he really DID like some extra poundage on the kaboose of his women.  But I suddenly found him rude, irritating and ugly without any sense of dancing ability and I stopped mid-song to exit the dance floor to rejoin the safety of my girlfriends and cocktail.

When I pray, most days it’s quite likely that I’ll have some words with that Supreme Being about making me thin. (despite knowing that She’s got War, Hunger, and Cancer on Her mind.  I’m selfish and narciscist sometimes.  I don’t think I’m alone in that.)  I ask that She’ll open the gates of wisdom and understanding to show me the magic key that will make diet and exercise work so that I’ll look like every other celebrity in the gossip magazines that’s over 40 with a waist that her partner can circle with his two hands.  Or even moreso, being over FIFTY, without arms that droop below like winged dinosaurs.

Now, it’s not like I’m under some disillusionment that I’m terribly overweight.  I never have been.  I think the largest size I ever wore was a 12 – and that was before kids.  Generally, I’ll hover between a size 8 and 10, even though I agonize lately that I’ve never weighed as much as I do now.  More now than I did at my heaviest in pregnancy, even though I can understand that my persistance at the gym and lifting weights has created a more solid, hard frame.  Though, who can see that, I criticize, under all these soft rolls that stare back at me in the mirror.

I understand that those celebrities are airbrushed and beautified, or that their health is endangered, as is their psyche, in their need to maintain an unhealthy skinny shape.  I can even rationalize and justify and talk myself into feeling better saying how fit and healthy I really am, how active I’m still capable of being, that I’m almost FIFTY, for God’s sake!  And yet, that inner voice still frowns on all my accomplishments, saying, “You gotta be better than the average Jane.”  Thighs that don’t rub, abs that are ripped and don’t pillow over your zipper, and arms that don’t flap in the wind.  Is it really so much to ask when you watch what you eat every day, exercise religiously and pray to God for enlightenment?  Why does it have to be so hard?!

Sometimes if I’m quiet and listen, I sense Her response, “You are my blessed child.  You are precious.”  I grow frustrated with Her and argue back, “But you don’t know!  You can’t want me to be like this!  Help me to be my best!”  And I hear Her again, “You are my beloved child.  You are precious.”  Now I’m getting angry.  “You are just biased.  You’d say that to all of us!”  And somehow in my competitive brain, this is not helpful.  I’m like the jealous sibling wanting the parent’s approval all to myself.  I sense I hear, “ You are so hard on yourself.  You need to let go.”

I envision Letting Go.  If hard work and stress brings me this, then Letting Go means they’ll be paying quarters outside the circus tent to hear the fat lady sing.  OH, she’s likely a lovely lady with a beautiful singing voice.  And she’s probably happier than all of us put together – me AND the skinny bitches in the magazines.

But hey, I agrue and stomp my foot – I’d rather be miserable and thin.  Memories of guilt and shame over diruretics, laxatives and restrictive fad diets flash through my mind.

“Guess you don’t need me, then, “ She says.  “You got that already.”

When my mom was around my age, I remember her biking nightly, swimming as many laps at the neighborhood pool that each rest period would allow, the liter bottles of Fresca on the counter.  It was never a spoken message: “Does my butt look too big in these?” or an all out lament that she felt like a cow; she was just always trying.  Now, at 75, in a state of health that is always struggling, she’s rail thin.  I think she’d rather be fatter.

If I were advising my daughter, I’d tell her she was beautiful.  She had eyes that shone from within with such beauty that would shine no matter what the scale said.  I’d tell her that my weight never fluctuated much more than 20-25 lbs, and yet I’d wasted so much time being unhappy with myself.  I’d look back on pictures of the past, remembering my feeling obese and ungainly only to discover later how pretty I looked at the time.  Is it really worth it to spend so much time and angst over it all?  Missing out on the focus of what was truly important in the world?

If I were to envision God, She’d not be all angles and perfection.  She’d be soft, with dewy skin, eyes that emblazoned love and large arms that you’d ache to crawl beneath.  And She’d be yelling at me, “Laurie, you got one PHAT body, girl!!  Go out and USE it as a blessing to others before you can’t any more!!”