On Beauty and Becoming
“Beauty isn’t all about just nice loveliness; it is about more rounded, substantial becoming.”
Reflection
I used to think beauty was something you could arrange — a tidy room, a well-phrased sentence, a life that made sense from the outside.
But lately, I’ve been learning it’s something that arranges me.
The older I get, the less interested I am in the kind of beauty that sparkles for a moment and fades.
The beauty O’Donohue writes of is different — the kind that takes time, and even pain, to form.
It’s the beauty of olive trees twisting toward the light.
The beauty that lives in lines and scars, in words that took years to find their voice.
This kind of beauty doesn’t perform; it becomes.
And maybe that’s what we’re doing too — becoming, slowly and steadily, into something more rounded, more whole, more real.
Perhaps that’s the true loveliness he meant:
not perfection, but presence.
Not polish, but the quiet glow of a life still becoming.
If words like this stir something in you, you might enjoy Letters from the Middle — monthly notes of story, prayer, and pause for those becoming in the quiet middle of things.