…sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness…
-Galway Kinnell (left, 1927- )
You were beautiful at your birth. And you are beautiful still. Yet, there is a good chance you have forgotten how lovely you are.
It is society that makes you forget. I see it already in the life of my little grandson. Perfect as a rose at his birth, his three-year-old body has already begun to accumulate scars. The petals of his heart have already been stained by fear and hurt. As he lives his way toward four, more wounds will come. Hopefully, inner strength will arrive as well…
It is endlessly fascinating to me to know that almost all of us are geniuses up until the age of four or 
five. Up until then, if we are loved, we will be able to imagine like angels, create precociously, and think with the clarity of sages.
What blows stunt the growth of our genius? Most likely, it is the judgment of others that prunes back our confidence and obscures from us our own loveliness. Now matter how kind our parents and other loved ones may be to us as children, we are sure to experience the verdicts of others that we are not lovely enough, smart enough, strong enough, or fast enough. The world sends us signals that perhaps we aren’t geniuses after all.
But isn’t this just life? There’s no avoiding the slings and arrows, is there?
In one way, this is true. No matter how loving we are, we cannot protect our children from life’s pain and sorrow. What we can do is to help each other rediscover the quality of Love which has always lived within. Beauty, it turns out, is not some object that is better than any of us. Instead, loveliness lives beneath in our layers of life and behind our scars. Sometimes, the scars themselves are part of our gift.
Beauty arrives for us when we accept Love’s blessing.
There are few teachings in life more important than an understanding that Love lives in all of us. Our spiritual opportunity is two-fold. First, we need to accept the blessing of Love. Second, we are to pass this blessing along to all others – especially to those who may not seem to fit the world’s definition of "pretty." Some of the most beautiful people I’ve seen have Down Syndrome, are crippled, are suffering in poverty, are dying of cancer. Can we help each other relearn their own Loveliness?
I invite you to drink further from the lovely well of the first half of Kinnell’s poem, called "St. Francis and the Sow." As you may know, one of the gifts of St. Francis, (painting, left, by El Greco) jumping seven centuries from him to us, was his message about the beauty of all animals including, of course, pigs.
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessings;…
Drink, now, of the beauty around and within you.
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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