What Is Beauty?

                                                 What is beauty? What is justice? What is kindness?

Is beauty a red ballon -- or is beauty the one who holds it? Is beauty, justice, and kindness evidence of a child-mind? With the lurking specter of atomic war on the Korean Peninsula what does it matter? So, looking at the above photo, one sees "cute kids", probably they are poor kids, and probably too, given the realities of the world they appear to be growing up in, both will quite likely be raped a few years down the road. Maybe one or both will be pregnant at a very young age... and probably they will live and die without leaving much of a mark upon this precious blue Planet... and probably, within a short time of their passing, no one will remember that they walked this earth and breathed the same air as us...

​Neither red balloons nor atomic war offer a shift from our continuing crisis of heart...

Meanwhile, the cultural critiques offered by the poets and sages presents us with an entirely different view of reality: in their critique, red balloons and the peace of human wholeness are that which truly matters. Consider the rEvolutionary words of Yeshua the Poet: "Blessed are you poor" and "Woe to you rich": right here, right in the Christian Gospel we are presented with  a radical summary of our human condition, along with a vitalized call to live beautifully in justice and kindness (a concept completely foreign to the male addiction to violence, privilege, and profits).

Yeshua presents us with the possibility of freedom from all of our pathologies and a corresponding entrance into spiritual wholeness, free of both oppression and repression. This sublime wholeness, only hinted at in the wisdom teachings of the world, is meant for our personal exploration: the hippies of my younger years were, at least for awhile, serious about cultivating an integral vision with practical applications: war, sexism, racism, and environmental degradation were evidence of the cultural killing machine, so "dropping out" for communal lives, artistic creativity, organic gardening, meditation, playfulness, and sexual / sacred pleasure was only too obvious as a viable means to living "lives with meaning"...

As Dostoevsky wrote, "The world will be saved by beauty", so too, we are called to write those exact same words through the building of our lives in a deeply rooted spiritual harmony: listen! There is a cosmic harmonic convergence that is evident in the songs of rivers, birds, and crickets: and in our own minds and hearts: perhaps, like me, you might need years of work in a Soup Kitchen for your heart to break open -- so you can leak out all over the place: that "leaking" is of great importance: emptied of our pathologies, we can be filled with all sorts of good stuff! Perhaps you might need monastic discipline or the humiliation of marriage and divorce... Many are the roads we might walk in life: but we can, at least, be tending towards that same "harmonic convergence" that lurks in our hearts, just on the other side of our fears...

What is beauty? Beauty is the activated will to the good, the kind, and the just... beauty is the adoration of free food for the hungry and the silent emptiness of prayer in the night... beauty is the freedom of dreadlocks trailing down one's back and the sweat poured out upon the ground in cultivating the earth... beauty is the demonstration in the street for a new culture of nonviolence and justice for all and beauty is the the early morning rising to ready oneself for another day of work... Beauty is our normal human condition, available for all, with a smile, with open hands, and welcoming hearts... And more, beauty, the real beauty of harmonic convergence, is only of marginal importance in regards to the shaping of our skin: it is soul that matters, it is soul that liberates and awakens... Skin is an aspect of soul, but very temporary!

​Finally, both red balloons and the daily practice of a gentle kindness do, in fact, offer us a shift from crisis to re-creation...