So lately I've been thinking a lot about the fascination that America has with youth and beauty, and how we seem to worship youth as the most beautiful, but lately I have been questioning that. Is youth most beautiful? What is beauty anyways? Is it really only flawless skin and tight abs and a noted lack of wrinkles? It seems like true beauty would be what reflects what is truly good. And each and every wrinkle in an old woman's face represents a year that was given to her [or him, but in the poem i wrote i used an old woman and so i shall here] to either seek after God and sanctify her soul and renew her into the image of God or seek after self. If used in the first, how can an elderly woman not be the most beautiful person of all since she is has had the most time to truly shape herself and be shaped by God further and further into His image. Is that not the most beautiful thing? Have you ever met one of those precious elderly women who so touched your heart with God's love that all you wanted to do was stare for hours into her eyes because you were captivated by her beauty? And what could be more tragic and ill-appearing that the old woman who spent her entire life in pursuit of herself and is now decrepit and unkind? And is there any person who you more want to avoid than the cranky, elderly woman who spends all her time complaining about her life and criticizing everyone around her?
I think that age can only make a person more beautiful or more repulsive, depending on how they use their years...and age, like bark, if stripped away will kill what is beneath. And so I wrote this poem:
The Tree and the Fountain of Youth
She calls him deeper
The boy with the dark black curls
To play in the woods
To be lost in her branches
To see her amongst the host of trunks and leaves.
He hears the call and steps in
Tender feet crunch leaves and twigs
And he touches her bark and peers deeply
The mountain calls him higher
The man with the dark black curls, now masked with grey
His weary eyes peer down at the old parchment
They said he’d never find it
But now he must, else she dies.
The boy reaches his hand out
Peels back the bark from her branch
Reluctantly it lets go and her pure, smooth bark shines
His breath quickens, heart pounds
Twigs crack at slow, retreating footsteps
He cannot read the map for the shaking of his weathered hands
As hers so often do
No longer does she embroider, her hand too unsteady to thread a needle
Her face weathered, her body weary
Yet her face smiles with deep beauty and her clouded eyes blanket her dear ones
But he cannot see it.
Her brilliance pulls the boy back and he is drawn
The bark tears more easily now
Turning it over and over in his hand
Brushing the soft wood with his young fingers.
She pleads with him to stop,
The layers protect what is precious within
But he cannot hear it.
The crest of the mountain disappears behind in the mist
The mist that flows down the crevices and valleys
Down to the lake.
It’s surface smooth, perfectly reflecting the barkless trees that surround
Flawless.
She had asked him to stay…not to go on this journey
But he didn’t hear her.
The man approaches the water,
Dips his hand cautiously and rejoices.
The boy drops the bark and walks towards her
His lust for the smoothness blinds him
He rips the bark away, strips her
Poping and cracking
Insects that took refuge within her flee
New twigs are ripped off, cut short by the violence
He peels her layers away, driven by the trunk beneath.
She pleads with him to stop, but he cannot hear
He is fixed upon her.
The man stumbles through the door and offers her the water
She reaches her hand out to him and accepts it.
Poping and cracking echoes through the house
Wrinkles that took refuge within her flee
Her face pulled taut, the skin flat across her face
The bark is completely stripped away,
He steps back and sees the smooth wood beneath.
He steps back and looks at her face
Weariness has gone and youth has returned
She lowers her eyes, ashamed, exposed
As her wisdom turns brown and falls to the ground
Her eyes harden, the compassion given from years of life has fled.
The gentle touch and knowing caress leave her now supple hands
The gentle tremor in her voice vanishes
And her youth shines forth.
The tree shivers and wind blows against it
The boy is gone and she is
Dead.
The man steps back and walks away
Her husband is gone and she is
Dead.
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Very beautiful (pun intended), though if you don't mind my playing devil's advocate, I would like to bring up a contrary, though not necessarily opposing thought:
ReplyDeleteI think that there is merit in finding the physical appearance of the young more beautiful than that of the old. The reason for this is because, in a perfect world, I do not believe bodies would age or wear out. Like Celeborn and Galadriel, they would live out the long years and gain wisdom and grace through their service to the Good, "and yet no sign of age would be upon their faces, save in the depths of their eyes." I completely agree that our modern culture has become so obsessed with outward appearance that the inner beauty of a heart that has long lived in service to God is often overlooked. And I agree that if a clumsy mortal such as myself were to try to peel away the age, the beauty would die with it. However, that is not to say that the gnarled and wrinkled bark of age shall not be peeled away in the end; but it takes the strong, gentle and innfalible hands of a Carpenter from Nazareth to peel away the bark of age and leave the beauty of long service unspoiled.
That's my 2 cents worth. Feel free to disagree.
Responding to Kevin, it's worth noting that aging isn't necessarily synonymous with decay. If it were, our ideal state of existence would be as a fetus! It's a personal theory of mine that, in our ideal state, rather than ceasing to age physically at all, we would simply continue to age in a manner that could be comparable to a child aging into an adult, rather than an adult aging into physical defects.
ReplyDeleteGranted, I have no real evidence to base this on, but it would seem to be keeping more with the way in which God designed the process of growth. It seems a bit inconsistent for God to create us in such a way that would make physical change so prevalent in the first 20-30 years in our life, and then stop abruptly for the rest of eternity.
So, I guess I'm putting forward the idea that aging, rather than being brought about by sin, was actually only corrupted by sin. Of course, I haven't put this idea under any kind of scrutiny, so it could easily be theologically incorrect.
Plus, I'm not sure if we can say that any age of our physical state is the ideal state of beauty when beauty is such a subjective concept in the first place. I mean, aren't we just assuming that because most people find smooth skin more attractive than wrinkled, it is therefore the ideal?
Just the ramblings of a sleep deprived mind.
hey guys, sorry i didn't respond sooner...somehow i missed seeing the comments.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Kevin, I would say that it's true that in eternity we will not age to physical defection and I think that, as you said well, is the beauty of heaven and our restoration! I can't wait for the carpenter to peel away my bark.
Still, though, on earth we cannot escape the fact that we must age and get old and that our bodies here wear out [which is what i wrote this poem about specifically]...and yet, even as the beauty of our bodies fade [and David, I did like what you had to say about questioning the ideal of beauty, however, since wrinkles are brought about by the decay of our skin, I would say that smoothness, since it has the quality of non-decay {yes, I just made up that word} would be less corrupted...in a sense], the beauty of our hearts must increase and visibly show. Here on earth, that can only happen within the process of decay since sanctification must take place over time, so here wrinkles [when gained properly] represent a love of God and a closeness to Him.
Have either of you read the Golden Key by George MacDonald?? It's a great book that talks a lot about time and age and one of the characters [a 13-year-old girl] asks this woman in an old hut,
"How old are you?"
"Oh, I'm hundreds of years old"
"Really, you don't look it."
"Don't I? Can't you see how beautiful I am?"
I think this dialogue [some of my favorite from the story] perfectly captures what eternity should be like. No decay, perfectly increasing beauty. :)
I haven't yet read the Golden Key for 2 reasons:
ReplyDelete1. I haven't had time to read
2. The Library doesn't have the audio version.
That said, I really want to!