Never less than beautiful

Marguerite E. Buttner

When I was a teenager, I worried about being beautiful most of the time. Or should I say that I worried about the feeling that I was not beautiful! I thought I was the only one who had this problem. Other people were either good-looking or didn't care, or so I assumed. Now I know that many people are concerned about their looks. Even older people worry that as the years go by they will be less attractive.

We seem constantly to be comparing ourselves or others to some material standard. In today's multicultural society, the problem often extends to racial differences. Yet can't all people be beautiful in their own way? Well, I learned something about beauty in my teen years that has helped me to like myself and to appreciate other people too.

My help came through my Christian Science Sunday School teacher. She pointed out a different basis for beauty given by Mary Baker Eddy on page 247 of Science and Health. Most of that page is about beauty, including a "recipe for beauty" that doesn't involve cosmetics, clothes, diets, or exercise. I remember especially reading over and over again: "Beauty is a thing of life, which dwells forever in the eternal Mind and reflects the charms of His goodness in expression, form, outline, and color. It is Love which paints the petal with myriad hues, glances in the warm sunbeam, arches the cloud with the bow of beauty, blazons the night with starry gems, and covers earth with loveliness."

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