Isn't love enough? Why must I have beauty?
I love that quote but it's one of the few quotes whose author I can't remember. Weird too, because this is such an important question in my life. I have a very bad case of loving the creature more than the Creator. I am absolutely enthralled to male beauty. Oh my gosh! Now I'm in love with the Korean actor Kim Hyun Joong. And what makes it really bad is that he really seems like a perfect guy to have a crush on. Yep, the whole package: beauty, humor, kindness, compassion, and that "eternal youth" je-ne-sais-quoi. Now, whence this problem?
But before I attempt to answer that, let me digress for a moment.
One of my female feminist writer friends and (come to think of it) one of my male Black writer friends...okay, okay... they BOTH get irked at my female characters. In the great divide of whether a writer should about what is or what should be, I fall squarely into the camp of writing what IS. (At least where my female characters are concerned.)
No super-human women characters for me. I want to write about women's life as I see it. The sorrow of it, the being dragged into situations because they are poor or married to the wrong guy or ugly or fat or emotionally off. I cannot write about female warriors conquering the world. It is important to me to talk about female sorrow. Not that my characters are all victims but they certainly have endurance down. I'm not going to be ashamed of showing their pain. People still need to see the pain of women.
So then -- returning to my original question-- why, then, do I totally write about idealized male characters? (Of course all these idealized male characters help the woman characters. Sometimes they also hinder them but the woman's there through thick or thin, because in her position in society she has no choice but to rely on the guy....which is what most of the married women in normal life on earth do.
But why must these characters be so beautiful? If I ponder and ponder this, I think there are a multitude of causes. First, I grew up with American TV...and I think that makes one love beauty. Perhaps a bit too much. (I don't know why specifically, the kind of male handsomeness I like is the very pretty kind but I'll have to sort that out.)
Secondly, Beauty is an ideal. Beauty IS probably truth. In heaven, all things are beautiful. When one thinks about it, how can God not make anything beautiful? But earth is fallen and so what is common in heaven is the exception on earth (something like beauty, for instance.) Oscar Wilde said something about the mystery of beauty once. (A quote I've forgotten but whose author I remember.) To love the beautiful is to love God's perfection but...being on earth it becomes worship, I think. And that is why I must work against it.
Thirdly, I like resting in beauty. When life becomes hard I daydream about another life with a rich wonderful carefree hottie. It's a false comfort and a habitual one.
We are to yield the members of our body to God. Our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hearts. We are to let go of the worldly spiritual senses and to keep our eyes focused on heaven. All this is of course a problem for me emotionally and also spiritually. Because my heart tends to rest in these earthly beauties. I am to rest in God's beauty...as yet unseen. God's beauty, which is so much more lovely than some Korean hottie. Oh Lord, fee my soul. Set it free to praise you and to admire and adore only you! What to do? God, free my soul. Let me worship you alone.
Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.
Take my eyes, Lord, and let them be consecrated, Lord, to thee. PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Help me to take every thought captive and to push away vain imaginings. Let me love YOU, Lord. Let me develop a deep crush on YOU! Let your wit satisfy me! Let your beauty and intelligence and compassion satisfy me! Let me consider YOU worthy of my deep adoring crush! Let your own self be considered worthy in my heart of daydreams. Let me only consider YOUR wonderfulness, O Lord! Amen.
I love that quote but it's one of the few quotes whose author I can't remember. Weird too, because this is such an important question in my life. I have a very bad case of loving the creature more than the Creator. I am absolutely enthralled to male beauty. Oh my gosh! Now I'm in love with the Korean actor Kim Hyun Joong. And what makes it really bad is that he really seems like a perfect guy to have a crush on. Yep, the whole package: beauty, humor, kindness, compassion, and that "eternal youth" je-ne-sais-quoi. Now, whence this problem?
But before I attempt to answer that, let me digress for a moment.
One of my female feminist writer friends and (come to think of it) one of my male Black writer friends...okay, okay... they BOTH get irked at my female characters. In the great divide of whether a writer should about what is or what should be, I fall squarely into the camp of writing what IS. (At least where my female characters are concerned.)
No super-human women characters for me. I want to write about women's life as I see it. The sorrow of it, the being dragged into situations because they are poor or married to the wrong guy or ugly or fat or emotionally off. I cannot write about female warriors conquering the world. It is important to me to talk about female sorrow. Not that my characters are all victims but they certainly have endurance down. I'm not going to be ashamed of showing their pain. People still need to see the pain of women.
So then -- returning to my original question-- why, then, do I totally write about idealized male characters? (Of course all these idealized male characters help the woman characters. Sometimes they also hinder them but the woman's there through thick or thin, because in her position in society she has no choice but to rely on the guy....which is what most of the married women in normal life on earth do.
But why must these characters be so beautiful? If I ponder and ponder this, I think there are a multitude of causes. First, I grew up with American TV...and I think that makes one love beauty. Perhaps a bit too much. (I don't know why specifically, the kind of male handsomeness I like is the very pretty kind but I'll have to sort that out.)
Secondly, Beauty is an ideal. Beauty IS probably truth. In heaven, all things are beautiful. When one thinks about it, how can God not make anything beautiful? But earth is fallen and so what is common in heaven is the exception on earth (something like beauty, for instance.) Oscar Wilde said something about the mystery of beauty once. (A quote I've forgotten but whose author I remember.) To love the beautiful is to love God's perfection but...being on earth it becomes worship, I think. And that is why I must work against it.
Thirdly, I like resting in beauty. When life becomes hard I daydream about another life with a rich wonderful carefree hottie. It's a false comfort and a habitual one.
We are to yield the members of our body to God. Our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hearts. We are to let go of the worldly spiritual senses and to keep our eyes focused on heaven. All this is of course a problem for me emotionally and also spiritually. Because my heart tends to rest in these earthly beauties. I am to rest in God's beauty...as yet unseen. God's beauty, which is so much more lovely than some Korean hottie. Oh Lord, fee my soul. Set it free to praise you and to admire and adore only you! What to do? God, free my soul. Let me worship you alone.
Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.
Take my eyes, Lord, and let them be consecrated, Lord, to thee. PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Help me to take every thought captive and to push away vain imaginings. Let me love YOU, Lord. Let me develop a deep crush on YOU! Let your wit satisfy me! Let your beauty and intelligence and compassion satisfy me! Let me consider YOU worthy of my deep adoring crush! Let your own self be considered worthy in my heart of daydreams. Let me only consider YOUR wonderfulness, O Lord! Amen.
2 comments:
I have a very similar approach to writing. Honestly, I think I want to see myself or someone I know in the women I write while I want to fall in love with the men I write. And if I want an ideal man to fall in love with a flawed leading lady, well... well... only an ideal man would, lol. Because he has to be perceptive enough to understand that whatever abuse he suffers at the hand of my heroine, it's because she's at war with herself, her environment, and even him, on her road to happiness and spiritual enlightenment. Uhh... and my love is Byun-Hun Lee.
Went googling Byun-Hun. Way hot. I've seen him in a few movies. Now I'll remember his name. -C
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