Beauty and the beast

Bedridden as I am by my tonsillectomy, and unable to speak, I have had the wonderful (though pain-laden) opportunity to read all sorts of things I’ve been eyeing for ages. While wading through Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, aided to no small degree by Vicodin, I came across the following on page forty-seven:

There is the great lesson of ‘Beauty and the Beast’; that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.

This is an illustrative point quite unrelated to the book’s thesis. However, I was captured by the beauty of this lesson and its implications. I could read no further for some time.

The idea is that being loved is what makes something loveable – what transforms it. The Beast became beautiful only because Belle first loved him. I suppose she saw some goodness hiding within and wanted to be the one to bring it out. (How the actual story goes, I do not know; I have only seen the Disney film.) It took an act of faith. Faith in the existence of the goodness; faith that it could be salvaged; faith that it would grow if nurtured.

How different our lives would be if we adopted this sacrificial (to me, Christian) love. We should not wait for others to be become more loveable and then reward them! They will become more loveable only after we first give them the foundation of our love. Let us not become lost in our foggy garden, itself rich with the weeds of poor examples. We frankly wait to be loved first. We withhold our hearts to protect our pride. When will we accept that inciting event, the one in which love died to make us beautiful and able, ourselves, to love others? We have the power to plant seeds of life in others. We have been called the Beloved. Begin today to love those around you back into life! It’s got to start somewhere.