Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Small piercings of beauty

Artist: John William Godward

I think when I was a little girl I kind of saw the soul like the pilot light mentioned here. Somewhere along the way I think I came to favor seeing it as "all the small piercings of beauty". What about it, dear people? How do you view the soul?

Soul. The word rebounded to me, and I wondered, as I often had, what it was exactly. People talked about it all the time, but did anybody actually know? Sometimes I'd pictured it like a pilot light burning inside a person--a drop of fire from the invisible inferno people called God. Or a squashy substance, like a piece of clay or dental mold, which collected the sum of a person's experiences--a million indentations of happiness, desperation, fear, all the small piercings of beauty we've ever known.

-- Sue Monk Kidd, The Mermaid Chair

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