Anam Cara

Science tells us that the more symmetrical a face is, the more beautiful it is. Though order is necessary for beauty, the interesting thing is that a face that is not overburdened by structural perfection can still be very beautiful. More often than not it is the inner beauty of heart and mind that illuminates the face. A smile can completely transform a face. Ultimately, it is the soul that makes the face beautiful. Each face is its own landscape and is quietly vibrant with the invisible textures of memory, story, dream, need, want and gift that make up the beauty of the individual life. This is also the grace that love brings into one’s life. As the soul can render the face luminous so too can love turn up the hidden light within a person’s life. Love changes the way we see ourselves and others. We feel beautiful when we are loved, and to evoke an awareness of beauty in another is to give them a precious gift they will never lose. When we say from our heart to someone: ‘You are beautiful’, it is more than a statement or platitude, it is a recognition and invocation of the dignity, grandeur and grace of their spirit. There is something in the nature of beauty that goes beyond personality, good looks, image and fashion. When we affirm another’s beauty, we affirm something that cannot be owned or drawn into the grid of smallmindedness or emotional need. There is profound nobility in beauty that can elevate a life, bring it into harmony with the artistry of its eternal source and destination. Perhaps Beauty does not linger because she wishes to whet our appetite and refine our longing so that we enter more fully into the limitless harvest of our inner inheritance.

T

HE

J

EWEL WITHIN THE

F

LEETING

M

OMENT

BEYOND THE VEILS OF LANGUAGE AND THE NOISE OF ACTIVITY, the most profound events of our lives take place in those fleeting moments where something else shines through, something that can never be fixed in language, something given as quietly as the gift of your next breath. Days and nights unfold in the confidence and continuity of sequence. Most days take no notice of us; but then every so often there is a moment when time seems to crystallize. A voice changes tone and a deeper music becomes audible. A gaze holds and a hidden presence is glimpsed.

One year in university at the end of the semester I returned home for the summer holidays. When I walked into the kitchen my father looked up at me and I saw something in his gaze that I had never seen before. Some finality had entered his looking. Whether it was out in the mountains or among the fields around the house, his eyes had glimpsed a door opening towards him. His countenance had become more luminous and his natural gentleness was being claimed by a new silence. As we held each other for a moment in that gaze I knew death had picked his name out. Days later illness arrived and in three weeks the door of death had closed behind him. The gaze had revealed everything; time had stood still. The image of that gaze has always remained with me for it was a moment of the deepest and most tender knowing, a moment radiant with the strange beauty of sadness.

‘I

N

D

IFFICULT

T

IMES TO

K

EEP

S

OMETHING

B

EAUTIFUL IN

Y

OUR HEART

’

THERE ARE TIMES WHEN LIFE SEEMS LITTLE MORE THAN A MATTER of struggle and endurance, when difficulty and disappointment form a crust around the heart. Because it can be deeply hurt, the heart hardens. There are corners in every heart which are utterly devoid of illusion, places where we know and remember the nature of devastation. Yet though the music of the heart may grow faint, there is in each of us an unprotected place that beauty can always reach out and touch. It was Blaise Pascal who said: In difficult times you should always carry something beautiful in your mind.