The Beauty in Every Inch

"Howard looked at Kiki. In her face, his life. Kiki looked up suddenly at Howard - not, he thought, unkindly. Howard said nothing. Another silent minute passed. The audience began to mutter perplexedly. Howard made the picture larger on the wall, as Smith had explained to him how to do. The woman's fleshiness filled the wall. He looked out into the audience once more and saw Kiki only. He smiled at ther. She smiled. She looked away, but she smiled. Howard looked back at the woman on the wal, Rembrandt's lover, Hendrickje. Though her hnds were imprecise blurs, paint heaped on pain and rolled with the brush, the rest of skin had been expertly rendered in all its variety - chalk whites an dlively pinks, the underlying blue of her veins and the ever present human hint of yellow, intimation of what is to come."

Howard made me angry. His infidelity, his obscurity, his precociousness. I saw him as arrogant and undeserving, selfish and chauvinist. Like the rest of his family, I found myself hardened by his transgressions and thought of with him with feelings that could be nicely described as disdain. This last scene, however, made me see Howard as we all are: human. My heart not only softened, but it opened up to the perfect fallibility of Howard. There was something vulnerable, something selfless about this moment. He abandons his art. He abandons his theories. He abandons, in essence, himself. He surrenders to true beauty, the beauty he finds in Kiki. Suddenly, there is little more important than humanity and the greatest gift of humanity: love. The description of Hendrickje is, though short, perhaps one of the most powerful passages in On Beauty. To me, in emphasized the beauty of life, the sheer magnifience of human existence. Love is not perfect. Life is not perfect. Nothing is perfect. But there is undeniable beauty in this imperfection.

I have, for many years, reveled in a particular prayer written by the late Archbishop Oscar Romero. In it, he writes, "We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to di it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest." And while this certainly integrates very explicit Christian ideals, I feel it contains some universal, secular truth. We will, as humans, never be wholly perfect. There will be mistakes, hypocrisy, and pain. Nothing is every entirely good, bad, right or wrong. It is simply impossible. But this means something and it means something very great. It means that we are wonderfully incapable and gloriously vulnerable. It reminds us that our heart will beat strong until one day when it will, inevitably, stop beating. It ensures our humanity, our very life.