Vanity

Today's reading for Mass is just to beautiful not to post. I had to share it here. While reading it this morning, I wondered why this book was left out of the Protestant Bible. It is so very true and sums up so well the truth of friendship.

 

Sirach 6:5-17:

A kind mouth multiplies friends, and gracious lips prompt friendly greetings.

Let your acquaintances be many, but one in a thousand your confidant.

When you gain a friend, first test him, and be not too ready to trust him

For one sort of friend is a friend when it suits him, but he will not be with you in time of distress Another is a friend who becomes an enemy, and tells of the quarrel to your shame.Another is a friend, a boon companion, who will not be with you when sorrow comes.When things go well, he is your other self, and lords it over your servants; But if you are brought low, he turns against you and avoids meeting you.Keep away from your enemies; be on your guard with your friends.

A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter; he who finds one finds a treasure

A faithful friend is beyond price, no sum can balance his worth.

A faithful friend is a life-saving remedy, such as he who fears God finds;

For he who fears God behaves accordingly, and his friend will be like himself.

 

I've tried to be a good friend. I really think though, that the friends I have are better friends to me than I are to them. Many times I feel so selfish when I am with them.  Most of them are introverts and I am the extrovert. I am constantly down-shifting into high speed while they are often just rolling along...or sometimes holding on for dear life. I recall one of my best friends in high school, Sam...how he would listen generously to my verbosity and then he would give me 'the look,' he would raise one eyebrow and look like Mr. Spock telling Capt. Kirk, without using words, "I think you went over the edge with that one, Jim." And I can remember thinking, "oh my Lord, is he actually LISTENING to me?"  And of course, he stole my heart in those moments because listening is probably the greatest gift we can give to each other. 

I cherish these wonderful people. Perhaps because at home, no one was listening. No one cared, wondered about me much at all. So how interesting that my greatest work, my greatest gift...is listening to others. Yet, with my friends...was I there for them...ever?  I have been told that I was. I accept that, but inside I feel I have always let them down.  I guess God fills in the holes. 

Vanity.  My body is growing older...I guess I should say I am aware that my body is growing older. I spend so much time with older people, and they speak often about the 'new thing' that they cannot do and about how it makes them sad. So I think about that when I leave. I got hit as a child and needed stitches over one eye. Now, as I age, that lid continues to droop more...and lately, it is the only thing I can feel. I think about plastic surgery...and think, what vanity!  I try to look plain and uninteresting, because I want people to notice my soul, not the body that carries it...but now and then, I find myself playing games in the mirror: Who is that woman and what happened to Cindy?  Of course, since I am looking into a mirror...at the very best, all I can see is a reflection...all any of us can see of ourselves is a reflection...we never get to see ourselves as we truly are...we are pretty or ugly or young or old...only by the standards the world chooses for us...and we internalize the judgments of others and start to believe that of ourselves...what they say suddenly matters and we forget to remember how God sees us. 

Yesterday, while leaving a room, I glanced at the woman's roommate, a new one. I stood there admiring her and then reached out and touched her hand, "Are you alright?" I asked. "You are so beautiful," she said. I blinked. Then I smiled. "So are you." I asked the woman I visited, "do you like your new roommate?" She said, "She never says anything. Doesn't talk to her husband. She's Jewish." I said, "talk to her, I think she'll hear you." 

I try to tell myself that others will see what they want to see, what they need to see and just give it to God. But all too often, vanity steps in. 

Sweet precious Lucy, in the Chronicles of Narnia (Voyage of the Dawn Treader) is tempted by a spell in the magician's book that will make her beautiful. She feels the pain of entering into that spell and I think that her choice of doing that was Aslan's reason for telling her that she was too old to return to Narnia again. It's the old Adam and Eve sin: 'they knew they were naked.'  The innocence was gone forever. You can't really undo a knowing. 

That's the great sin...and the blessing. The same knowing that allows us to 'know God,' also allows us to 'know sin' and free will takes us into the extremes of perfect love or perfect hate.

[it just happened again. decided to get breakfast now. a stranger turns around and looks at me and says, 'my goodness, you have the bluest eyes!'  I say 'thank you, I cannot see them, but I am told that often.' and I meet Stan.]

How much I wish that we could always find the beauty in each other and tell each other every day that we see it!  I wish that we would tell each other that we are beautiful every day.  

 

Just started reading C.S. Lewis' "Till We Have Faces." "The timeless tale of two princesses, one beautiful, and one unattractive, and of the struggle between sacred and profane love is C.S. Lewis's reworking of the classical myth of Cupid and Psyche and one of his most enduring pieces of fiction." (written the year I was born).

Read it with me. Let's see what we learn.

We are, you know...beautiful...we are created in God's image...and God is beautiful.

"A friend is someone who knows all about you...and likes you anyway." 

Here's a hug of love for my friends...

Love, Cindy