Gene's Blog

What does beauty really mean?

I’m going to start this with an essay from a wonderful man named Steve Goodier. I have gotten his several times a week newsletter for many years. He allows anyone who blogs to use our favorite articles of his freely. So I am, giggle. I actually send my favorites to others from time to time but this one I want to share here. Then I’ve got a couple things to say. :^)

“BEAUTY SECRET

Comic Phyllis Diller quipped that she once entered a beauty contest.”I not only came in last,” she said, “I was hit in the mouth by Miss Congenial­ity. ”

Ed Feinhandler believes he is the world’s ug­liest man! But others disagree because, the fact is, Ed has dis­covered a universal “beauty secret.”

He has won 15 “Ugly Man” competitions. According to the Daily SparksTribune (Sparks, Nevada USA), Ed drives a minivan with “Mr. Ugly”personalized license plates. Good looks were never important to him. But helping people always has been, and the thousands of dollars he has raised over the years from “Ugly Man” competitions has beendonated to charity. In his spare time, Ed coaches youth sports, teaches tennis to un­derprivileged children and delivers Christmas bas­kets to the elderly. That’s the beauty of it!

To know Ed is to know a beautiful man whose real attractiveness comes from within. His secret is that beauty has little to do with physical looks, and much to do with the heart.

You, too, probably know some exquisitely beautiful people. They are kind and generous. They are happy and contented. And if you look closely inside your own heart, you may discover more beauty there than you imagined possible. As Ed Feinhandler teaches us, beauty has more to do with love than looks.”

Ok, we hear this a lot, don’t we? But here in America, we only talk this talk, we don’t live it. We don’t even come close. Oh, we like to pat ourselves on the back for being not only the world’s largest consumer but also its greatest giver. But we aren’t. Or we aren’t anymore. What we give now are weapons, division, we support people around the world who do horrible things to their own people because it is in “our” interest to do so. I suppose we have always done so, but it seems, for me the real horror of this began with Richard Nixon’s administration and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Cover support for dictators was our policy then. Because we liked right-wing horror’s like the Shah of Iran, more than we liked left-wing horror’s like Mao. It was, it seemed, a matter of choosing which side of atrocity we wanted to be on. The public business was truly conducted anywhere but in public. It seems to me that if you can’t do it in the light of day and in full view, then you really ought, if you have any sort of moral sense (and by moral sense, as I have said, I mean a simple idea of right and wrong, it is right to love people, it is wrong to kill them – it isn’t THAT complicated!) be giving serious though as to whether you should be doing it at all. We have become the country of the superficial. Or maybe just a superficial country. It reminds that Jesus had a way of describing such people that made such an impression me that it has long been among my most treasured of his teachings. He said beware of those who pray loudly in public and like to be seen in the front row in church, but in private take the houses of widows. This is an apt metaphor for what I see in the world around me, especially in this country.

We are a country of “Eds” in truth, there are many here, I believe the majority have Ed’s spirit. But what we see in public are people who talk loudly of the good they wish to do who in private, act very differently. I’ve always thought it no coincidence, giggle, and if you’ve read much on my main site, or CWG, you will no I believe there is no such thing as coincidence, that I was born in Minnesota. I was born here to remember the lessons this state would teach me. This has long been the most progressive of states in our union. That is now called liberal, as if love were a dirty word. Our political parties all cared about people. They disagreed, sometimes, over the best way to get things done, but the things they did, were always, at heart, good things, designed to help those who could not help themselves and to create a standard of living that allowed a chance at bettering individual circumstances for each person fortunate enough to have come to, or been born in, this place. But that has changed over the last two decades primarily. The mantra here has become, as it is everywhere, no taxes, I got mine, you get yours, your own damn self. Education has always been the key to success in America. We have always support free public education for all of our children, without regard to race, gender or parental net worth. The idea, to me, is that we all benefit from a well-educated populace. We, even those who have no children, pay taxes to support education because we are all better off by having a well educated work force. It is those children for whom we pay taxes that they might be educated now, who will take care of us in our senior years, as we take care of those who worked and paid before us. Somehow this idea has changed, and education is only symbolic, this basic idea of taking care of each other, that doing so was a moral obligation has been inbred into the Minnesota culture, through our traditions and our religions. But that has changed. Compassionate conservatism now rules the country, though in this state, it is 50-50. In the same passage I referred to earlier, which is from Luke 20, Jesus says a house divided against itself cannot stand. And I fear that is where we find ourselves now. Divided. We’ve cut taxes, given rebates, ignored long term public needs, in favor of short term gratifications. We do not think beyond the next election. We are unwilling to pay taxes for anything that does not show an immediate result, we are unwilling to invest in infrastructure that won’t pay results for 30 years, like the education of our children.

What brings this to mind for me, is personal, my granddaughter begins kindergarten this year. It once was, not so very long ago, that every day kindergarten was just a given, deemed an important part of a child’s education and worthy of public support. That has changed. A child may now go to all day kindergarten, free public education, two days one week, and three the next. Anything above that must be paid for by parents directly. It will cost my granddaughter’s parents, $822 per month to send her to kindergarten every day, which includes the cost of after school care for a bit. I think that borders on insanity. Where does that leave children whose parents can’t afford that sort of cost? I am not saying this is pocket money for my son’s family either, it is an enormous strain on a young family. But there are SO many single parent households living paycheck to paycheck who simply can’t afford that cost. So what happens if the one who can devise a cure for cancer is in that group? And never gets a chance to catch up, gets discouraged, and gives up. We will spend $500 million dollars to build a billionaire a new baseball field in Minneapolis, which will be used 82 times a year. But we won’t pay for all day kindergarten for five year olds. We, this country, will have spent in a week or two, $450 billion dollars on the “war” in Iraq, this does not count what we have spent in Afghanistan. But all we care about in education are simplistic tests that prove nothing, that do not demonstrate mastery of material nor understanding of the philosophical and historical realities of our world, but do let us cut taxes, again, and again, for people who already have piled up more money than they could use in 10 lifetimes.

The question we should be asking is not that on the bumper stickers, “what would Jesus do”, because those vehicles contain people who insist Jesus would be carrying an M16 and leading the charge in Iraq, and they are wrong, He taught love, we export death. How the teachings of the most loving person to ever walk the face of this earth have been so corrupted that we have preachers on television on Sunday morning teaching us “the winning way” and assuring us that what Jesus would have us do is become wealthy and give a tithe to that brilliant preacher. And consider that a job well done.

No. The question we should be asking is what would love do now? I mean LOVE, if we stopped thinking in terms of us and them and thought only in terms in what is good for ALL of us, not just some of us, not just those who look like us and act like us, but what is good for ALL of us regardless creed, color or country of origin, well then, I think our priorities we would change. We could stop building better bombs and begin building better health care systems, better educational systems, better affordable housing systems, and feeding those children of Darfur, finding a workable system to give Somalia back to Somalians, in peace. We’d stop arming insurgent groups around the world with guns and ammunition and begin arming them with baskets of fish and bread, and teaching them that the way to peace, is to share what they have, to love each other without condition, to see all people as their immediate family and to love and care for each from birth to death. We’d stop the processes killing our environment and work hard at healing the damage we have done to this beautiful blue oasis in space. We’d begin see the beauty inside us, begin recognizing that each of us is a sentient child of our creator and worthy of love whether we look good enough to walk down a runway with a perpetual pout on our faces or instead look the guy next door. Love is the answer to every question. This is not going to be a safe place, a nice place, a civilization, until we understand and accept this most simple of concepts. See beauty in every soul you meet, look for the loving intention, don’t view each other with suspicion, see in each person you meet another potential friend. Do THIS, teach THIS to our children, and in two generations our world will be changed forever. Can we start now? Please? much love, :^) gene