Reading Reflection:
August 1, 2011
The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis (Harper Collins, NY, 2001)
I suspect that many of the most beautiful women today do not get the fame and recognition that those pretty-packaged Hollywood ladies are receiving. One of the most vivid descriptions of a beautiful woman that has stuck in my mind was penned by C. S. Lewis. He was describing a sort of heavenly parade in the honor of one woman who had finished her life on this earth:
And only partly do I remember the unbearable beauty of her face.
“Is it?...is it?” I whispered to my guide.
“Not at all,” said he. “It’s someone ye’ll never have heard of. Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green.”
“She seems to be…well, a person of particular importance?”
“Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.”
“And who are these gigantic people… look! They’re like emeralds…who are dancing and throwing flowers before her?”
“Haven’t ye read your Milton? A thousand liveried angels lackey her.”
“And who are all these young men and women on each side?”
“They are her sons and daughters.”
“She must have had a very large family, Sir.”
“Every young man or boy that met her became her son—even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter.”
“Isn’t that a bit hard on their own parents?”
“No. There are those that steal other people’s children. But her motherhood was of a different kind. Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more. Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives” (188-119).
Now this is the beauty that I aspire to be! I want to be beautiful like Sarah Smith. It is a beauty that changes people. It is a contagious beauty that isn’t prideful. Beauty is not something that we acquire over others, rather, it is a component of our sexuality that we share with others in an appropriate way. It is not the lack of beauty in someone else that makes me more beautiful. Quite the opposite, another person’s beauty can enhance my own!
How often do we let jealousy corrupt our beauty or the beauty of others? What are we doing to make others beautiful? Woman have a unique opportunity to pass God’s beauty to so many others: our husbands, our children, our in-laws, our neighbors, our churches, and our communities. Just think of the ripple effect this could make if we were to take it seriously! We need to recognize the lie that our culture is selling about beauty and turn our eyes to the Creator of all that is beautiful. There is much emphasis today on cleaning up the environment and keeping it beautiful. Well, how about ourselves?
