When the Homily is about Immunology

Beauty

For some reason I find myself contemplating beauty this morning, and so as my plastic plates filled with digesting human body fluids is incubating as apart of my ever present laboratory quest for viral genomic material, I thought I might type out a few of my thoughts.

What is beauty?

I frequently think I perceive (see) it, usually in the face or body of a woman - but I have noticed that the recognition of this sort of "beauty" illicits an altogether different response in me than the more nobler sense of beauty which I am thinking of. The former beauty illicits desire, while the latter typically doesn't...it tends to illicit "connection." As best as I am presently able to describe it: perhaps communion?

Feelings? The former almost always a smile and a burning, the latter often yields a welling up unto tears. Real beauty, as I am thinking of it, always calls me outside of myself - either to something bigger and greater, or to another human being. That great grand thing of which I so often speak...the Trinity so perfectly illustrates the perfection of beauty - perhaps in no small way it is itself the model of all that we perceive to be beautiful?

Practically speaking, beauty is everywhere...I miss it so often. Today while I work I will keep my eyes open. And Today as I go home I will embrace it lustfully. I will relish it. May it save me...along with the world.