“You can take no credit for beauty at sixteen. But if you are beautiful at sixty, it will be your soul’s own doing.”
~ Marie Stopes
“Beauty, as well as truth, is eternal; but the beauty of material things passes away, fading and fleeting as mortal belief.
“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.
“The recipe for beauty is to have less illusion and more Soul, to retreat from the belief of pain or pleasure in the body into the unchanging calm and glorious freedom of spiritual harmony.”
~ Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 247
God created all of us beautiful. And that beauty is spiritual, expressed through us in the form of love, inspiration, spiritual mindedness and godliness. It is ageless and timeless.
How wonderful that our true beauty never diminishes, but rather eternally develops and unfolds without limit. We couldn’t stop it if we tried. It is our very nature to express the one self-expression through Love and Beauty. Thank you Evan.
Amazing comment, Trista!
Thank you Evan! When I was in High School I read a Sentinel article that mentioned pages 247-248 as being the “beauty pages” of Science and Health. I read these pages many times during my High School years when I would often struggle with feelings of awkwardness and they were a great help to me in gaining a better understanding that beauty is a standard characteristic of God’s creation…that I and everyone are blessed with.
After reading these pages of S&H so many times, I was surprised to discover something new when reading the citations you shared with us today. For some reason the statement that starts with “Beauty is a thing of life…” gave me pause today. It stuck me odd that Mrs. Eddy called beauty a “thing”. So I looked up the definition of “thing” in the 1828 Webster’s dictionary that was common in Mrs. Eddy’s time and I found “thing” to be defined as “An event or action”. I typically think of “thing” as a noun, but this Webster’s dictionary definition implies beauty is a verb or “action”. That gives me an entirely different perspective of beauty. I think it’s common to think someone or something is either beautiful or not depending on material form, color, or other noun-like qualities. That basis of thinking would lead one to conclude they were either blessed with beauty or not depending on their material body and if they weren’t blessed with beautiful matter there isn’t much they can do about it. But if beauty is a verb, then cultivating the true ideas of God (which must be beautiful) and expressing those ideas would mean anyone can be beautiful since beauty is expressed in our actions. So nobody needs to think they aren’t beautiful or that beauty is not possible for them. Beauty is possible for everyone to express through action!
Wow, Brian!
Love the new perspective!
Thanks Brian, I love thinking of beauty as an action.
I LOVE this, Brian! Thank you for sharing what you have found. It reminds me of something I have read some years ago in the C.S. Sentinel, namely that the original word for God is a verb (see: https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/1afokhoq5su?s=e). Galen Goldsmith says in these “Bible notes”: “The Israelite name for God was a verb that arguably means self-creative, self-existent being, and this verb for what God also indicated that he was the only self-creative, self-existent Being.”
Galen Goldsmith has developed this idea in other ‘Bible notes’ which where published in the C.S. Sentinel during the years 2009 – 2011. I find this so fascinating. You can say that God is action or acting. He is Love loving, Life living… I have tried to make verbs out of other nouns, which is lots of fun, even though grammatically not always possible.
Thank you again for your great comment!
Thank you!
It’s funny, isn’t it? “Being” is obviously a gerund, like “running” or “jumping.” But after years of abstract usage, we’ve turned it into a noun!
Absolutely, Jay! 🙂 And does He not say: I Am that I Am is my name ?
like it, too, though I have to read it oncemore, because it is so interesting .
Thank you for it.
Love this!! Thanks for sharing….
Great insight Brian! Thank you! Yes the “thing” that makes our older (in human years) friends so beautiful is what they do and have done with their lives, what they do for others, their expression of life so yes beauty IS A VERB!
Thank you Brian, for sharing this ! Love thinking along these lines now!
Yes, amazing to consider love as a to do word
Oh, wow! Thanks Brian. Inspired research. I love the idea that Beauty is “An event or action” – I always think of “man” as “man-ifestation” … a verb.
Love this concept. A real eye opener! Thanks
Thank you, Evan!! I’ll bet you enjoyed selecting the beautiful pic. I think we love blowing dandelion seeds because this represents who we are, in truth!
Thank you Evan, and thank you for all the really interesting and inspiring comments from all. I love just about all the pictures at the top, and I loved yesterday’s poppies, such a beautiful picture also with those lovely poppies and the buds ready to “pop” open to reveal their beauty. Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder, so we need to have that spiritual view of everyone and everything to see and experience all of God’s beautiful creation from within us and reflected all around us.
Mary Stopes (who is she? ) writes: if you are beautiful at sixty, it will be your soul’s own doing. As we learned to know, God is Soul, yes our Soul. So it would mean to me as a Christian Scientist, that it is ”Soul’s own doing” and not mine own. That means, if we reflect divine qualities as God’s, Soul’s child amongst which is also “Beauty ” , we can not else but express God’s ageless Beauty in time and eternity! Of course we must and can demonstrate this, God is with us!
This is really a very blessing SpiritView blog, for if you would not bring up this topic, I probably would not dig deeper into this matter, dear Evan – thank you very very much indeed , it is so helpful and I love it very much including always the very lovely and suitable pictures!
Thank you a l l so much for your inspired and interesting comments dear SpiritView friends!
A member of our church lived to the ….activity (!)
of 103 … and of course lives on, enjoying her sweet relationship with Soul! It was a joy to visit her, as she was so joyfully full and expressive of Life and Love and Spirit!!
I sure learned a lot about beauty from this beautiful being!!
So, there, mm: you cannot impress us with your limiting suggestions!! Take that!!
So lovely, thank you SpiritViewFan
As we see beauty, it is Mind seeing beauty through us. Mind only see it’s own beautiful image and likeness.. so we can only have beauty infinitely expressed in perfect limitless views, forms, outline and colours. Since vision and sight belongs to God, we can have beautiful imageries to see of ourselves, others and everything around us. Of course it is richer when we know it’s qualities expressed. Like seeing more vivid colours at sunrise and sunset as well as naturally drawn to whatever objects of beauty surrounding our presence. Best benefit, no thoughts in our mind for annoyance, always peaceful and harmonious and living life like a poetry in motion with perfect grace.
One of our NEW members at church (only joined last year) is 98! She is a vibrantly happy cheerful lady who stands so straight and is always smiling. She said that when she joined our church she felt full of joy and life and felt 21 again! We love having her as a member too!
awesome and utmost lovely, thank you Diane. 🙂
I started a reading,socializing group for adults 21 and up with mental and physical challenges. It began as a request from a patron for her daughter. We are entering our 4th year.. It is a challenge to get past the physical and see the beauty and intelligence despite the physical appearance. I have one member who can read but has difficulty speaking.But you look into his eyes and the lights are clearly on. He is a treasure.
Thank you Evan and Spiritview community for these inspiring messages! I love thinking of beauty as a verb rather than a noun. The fact that God is necessarily beautiful as so often seen reflected in the natural world as glorious sunsets and flowers, color and patterns in animals and birds – means that we, as the highest ideas of God, must be beautiful in outline, form and color. Just like health- it is an attribute of God which we reflect from our creator! This beauty cannot be dependent on matter and the human concept of it is very changeable as over the centuries the ideas of what is considered humanly beautiful changes with the opinion and fashion of the day. God’s beauty is based on goodness, love, compassion, health peace, it cannot be based on physicality! It is ours to express! Spirt forms it and the spiritual reflection, man, sees it everywhere!
Thanks everyone and especially Evan for this wonderful new view to my thought of God and his ideas as actively beautiful.
Loved all the comments today. I’m coming late to the party but wanted to share some of the definitions of beauty I have gathered over the years: kindness, that which is agreeable, pleasant or dear, goodness, sweetness, loveliness, graciousness. And a quote from a Cedars Metaphysical article 5/14/2012 “our continual spiritual insights make us radiant.” (=