Joy is the best make-up.

Anne Lamott

I write something about the body on Thursdays in an effort to reflect on – and in some sense celebrate – my marathon training the last few months. It is my attempt to signal (mostly to myself) that though it might be terribly hot, and progress might be happening very slowly, I am in the game. “Bodies,” the second section in Anne Lamott’s book, Grace (Eventually): thoughts on faith, includes an essay entitled, “A Field Theory of Beauty.” This essay gently chronicles Lamott’s thoughts about her body and aging. She describes beautiful women of all shapes, sizes, ages, and attitudes. She details parts of her body that tell her story, and how she has made peace with each part. She reminds us that beauty is more accurately understood, not in years and pounds, but in intangible attributes.

In talking about a particularly beautiful friend, Lamott explains,

“I have a friend who has a big pancake face and feathery brown hair, with patches of scalp showing. She has peasanty potato features, and she’s too tall, and totally inelegant. But she loves her life. She has chosen a life of prayer, service, and travel. She’s always in a sort of infuriating state of wonder, of appreciating what is, instead of fretting about what she wishes was. But she’s great-looking – everyone thinks so – because of the expressions on her face and the way she looks at you. … She is radiant with spirituality and humor; …”

This story speaks to me in several ways. It begs me to ask the question, “Do I appreciate what is rather that fret what is not?” It requires me to look beneath my surface and consider if I really ever experience wonder? It also makes me think about laughter. Do I laugh enough? Importantly, if appreciation and wonder and laughter make us beautiful, how do I do more of all that? How does my day-to-day fit in to all that?

Lamott’s field theory of beauty goes like this,

“I am all the ages I have ever been … We’re like Magic 8-Balls. After you ask your question and shake the 8-Ball, you read the answer in the little window. … My theory is that, as with our children, as with every surface of that geodesic dome in the 8-Ball, every age we’ve ever been is who we are. So how can I be represented by a snapshot, or any one specific aging age? Isn’t the truth that this me is subsumed into all the me’s I already have been, and will be?”

From this perspective, beauty is the cumulative effect of every age. Beauty is not self-conscious. Beauty can be plainness, holiness, a sense of enough, and modesty – one ordinary flower in a vase. Beauty frolics joyously. Beauty serves. Beauty travels. Beauty experiences wonder. A field theory of beauty looks like that.