Forgetting Beauty

As lay there, listening to the earliest sounds of ocean waves, I began to let my weary eyes open. My entire tent was filled with the color lavender; flashes of pink and crimson splashed across the ceiling, bathing us in soft warmth. I leaned up out of my sleeping bag, and slowly unzipped the tent door. I love that perfect "whirring" sound that zippers make - you know that you are about to step into a wonderful place! I pulled on my dirty denim jeans, and crawled outside. The feeling of a cool, crisp ocean breeze met me, gently blowing my hair across my sunburned face.
Our tent was only a few yards from the ocean; despite the patrolling police, we risked a night's stay right on the warm summer sand. I don't know why, but anytime there is risk involved, it makes the experience all the more adventurous. As I stepped onto the beach, I rubbed my eyes and stretched my arms above my head. I could feel the sunrise even before I saw it. It felt incredible. Like the most intimate touch of soft hands across your body; like a mother's embrace; like a good word. I took a deep breathe and turned to face the rising sun. Slicing its way across the horizon, there were beams of light streaming onto the ocean's dark surface. The glow was immense! A frenzy of yellows and reds, and purples, and whites, and blues. As I watched, it grew - a silent shining apocalypse of the night. I listened to my own heart beat, I listened to the clouds and to the color - it spoke of calmness and of peace, and of incomprehensible power. God's work: a brilliant testament to the subtlety of awesome, and the necessity of awareness. There is nothing that quite compares to experiencing a sunrise by yourself, on the edge of a deep ocean. There is something personal between the entire universe and every breathe you take.
I didn't move for a long time.

That morning was beauty. That morning was sensuality. That morning was passion; it was birth and truth and loveliness.
I didn't realize it then, but I was witness to everything beautiful that ever existed - it has never left, it has always been, moving throughout the sky and across the heavens through our bodies, and into the words we speak and to our smiles, and into the way we touch.
It is the hands of father building a home for his family.
It is the breast of a mother given to feed her children.
It is the sweat on the skin of lovers.
It is the first scream of an infant.
It is the music that fills our ears and our minds.
It is the scars on our faces.
It is the softness of grass.

Beautiful is not real unless you know why it is real. For everything that I know, I am most ignorant of real beauty.
Somehow I have separated the joy of a sunrise from the purity of my own bare body. They are equally fleeting, equally marvelous, and yet I embrace one and conceal the other.
Do I become aroused when I see a woman's breasts? Why? Because of the truth behind it, or because I am foolish?
I wish to know and become aroused by the beauty of truth. To become aroused by a sunset because of the warmth that is pours onto my skin. To become aroused by a forest because of the depth and mystery that dwells there. To become aroused by a breast, because I know it is for feeding my children - that it gives life! How beautiful is finding a true reason to adore! How sensual! Knowing that it is pure and raw - only twisted in our minds.
Untwist those beautiful things. Let them be as they are truly - savor the greatness, the sensuality, the feeling. It is a gift of God. They are all gifts of God.




(Andrew Tipton)