20090718

Dear darlingest Annelies Marie,

Beauty

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is true in so many levels for all living and breathing things - above all, human beings - are beautiful for being beheld by Beauty Itself.

Therefore, for human beings such as you and I, beauty - to be true - must be more than just physical attraction. It must consist of the attraction of one's whole being to another - both body and soul.

As I learned to view beauty from this perspective, I learned to appreciate the beautiful in the littlest of things. It is why I am so enamored with you, my loveliest love, because to know beauty, one must learn to trust that it is, beautiful. It is really a very difficult thing to explain indeed because I am talking here now of a purely spiritual attraction. It is of a realm where no human words, I find, are adequate so I use the word, "friend".

But before I fly off on a tangent with you, my loveliest love, what I really wanted to pursue in this line of thinking is physical attraction or to be more precise, sexual attraction.

First of all, I should want to talk a little about our human sexuality because above all, I do not want the feminine of our Starshine to ever think they are not beautiful.

Our young Starshine, most especially our young girls, seek beauty but they should know first of all that beauty is found not on the outside - as in vanity - but in the inside - as in virtue - that they may have a place to anchor their hopes of growing up gracefully.

Precious Starshine, beauty is in thy soul because that is where the seat of Beauty is found. Just as youth is in the spirit that strives, beauty is in the soul that being alive to the longing within itself, rests at peace with itself.

External appearance is important but if it is without timeless foundation, time itself shall eventually prevail over it.

Girls and Boys

Our precious Starshine, my darlingest dear, most especially our girls, never need anyone's permission to feel beautiful nor must they feel they need to sacrifice any of their own integrity of self and/or surrender parts of their own hearts to be appreciated or to be accepted by anyone.

For our boys have their own path - the path of strength - and our girls have theirs - the path of beauty. And these two paths in life are but one path but to get to an understanding of that, one must first get to know one from the other and so girls grow up differently from boys - that is the natural course - because that is the way it should be. However much our dreams and our hopes, however unique and diverse our individual potentials for good, girls will be girls and boys will be boys. And I am not so worried about our boys growing up as much as I am of our girls for it is upon the feminine that so much of our authentic human freedoms are predicated upon.

My personal word of caution, most especially to all our dear Starshine, both boys and girls, as regards to our human sexuality is this - to view human sexuality from a purely physical perspective, without any consideration for the spiritual dimension that all human beings undeniably possess, will most certainly lead to calamity.

We can never make an object out of beauty because the Source of all that is beautiful is not an object. We are only made beautiful because we are subject to an unchanging will, eternal and divine, that makes out of nothing, something and not just something, my loveliest love, but something that is beautiful and therefore, good - even very good. This Beauty, viewed from a standpoint of time, is always in motion.

Sexual Attraction

A man is attracted to a woman not because he is a man but because she is a woman and a woman is attracted to a man not because she is a woman but because he is a man. This is the basic rule of human sexual attraction. It is considerate of the other person as a person of beauty, unique and irreplaceable, and not as an object of sin, faceless and disposable.

For our sexuality may only be human to the degree that we freely and humanly choose to own the responsibility that is distinct to our calling as human beings - this means employing reason and understanding so as not just to transmit life but to do so from the freedom and the unity of our love.

Consider the opposite to our rule: A man is attracted to a woman because he is a man and nothing else will follow. For when the original estate of Man is violated by sin, nature itself becomes corrupted, beauty is grieved, our humanity is denied, our LORD is offended and all that is sacred in life is profaned.

"In this way does pornography and the pornographic nature of our times thrive and it constantly reinforces this same mindset, a poisonous and inhuman mindset that reduces the dignity of the human person into the play thing of the sins that victimize with such scandal and severity the nobility of Man."

- Excerpted from "On Homophobia"

Personally, from my own experience, there must be physical attraction first to open the heart to each other (falling in love) but to keep it open (falling out of love), there must follow (oftentimes as a choice to trust in the love itself), the work of finding and defining for each other a deeper, more permanent sense of spiritual attraction (the outset of mature love). This is the ordinary path that leads to union with the beloved and it leads to the married state of life.

Admittedly, this is not a path that I have had much personal experience in my own life but too, this path being the most common of all is one that can not escape my observation.

There are other paths, to be sure, and we shall take them up as we go along here on our Planet Annelies.

There are also distinct challenges to human sexuality e.g. homosexuality, contraception, etc. which we have already treated in the past but shall also review along the way that we may add to the growing understanding of our shared humanity.

Let me just reiterate here that we shall not be digressing from the doctrinal standpoint of my Holy Mother Church as regards to all of this in that if there is anything that is perceived to be new to our understanding, it is only new not because it wasn't there before but because it has only become clearer to us now and therefore, necessary to understanding these present times.
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I love you.

Always to always,

Pusing