“Seven times I have counted scripture saying you saw that what you made was good. But on the eighth occasion when you saw all that you had made, it says they were not merely good but ‘very good’—as if taking everything at once into account. For individual items were only ‘good’, but everything taken together was both ‘good’ and ‘very good.’ This truth is also declared by the beauty of bodies. A body composed of its constituent parts, all of which are beautiful, is far more beautiful as a whole than those parts taken separately; the whole is made of their well-ordered harmony, though individually the constituent parts are also beautiful.”—Saint Augustine, Confessions XIII xxix (43)
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In fall of her hair and expression in eyes with way that both asked and told: she was beautiful. In rest of her body in upward sit, reclining, slight, on arms braced behind, legs folded and covering before, right leg folded vertical and high before her body with knee and foot directing forward onto him and her left flat in bend across bed’s surface, tucked aft of her right foot pointing and leading forward: she was beautiful. In the way of her smile and show of her skin, fair, freckled, and wonder cast—light, smooth, and serene: she was beautiful. In the way of her movement, slow fall and settle into rest on back as he approached, shift of welcome and wait: she was beautiful. In taste and warmth and supple meet and press of accepting lips, then part and flicker of tongue that encouraged on as she drew in guide of him above: she was beautiful. The feel of beginning; hold of her arms and body-whole embrace through breaths of matched percussion as bodies created soft the same: she was beautiful. The change of her way, and he in his, the build of crescendo in body-song then risen into spirit, speed and strength of harmonic cry in an energy sound in and through and surrounding all around: she was beautiful.
In all her ways, she was beautiful, but composed—to see and know, to sense and revere in completeness of her whole—she was beyond a beauty. Composed, she was embodied truth of the feminine ideal, medium of man into supranatural of both transcendence and creation; and from the last, hope for an eternal human line.
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God held in her eyes, love in her heart, Life within her womb; and by the wonder, mystery, and awe for the witnessed and undeniable truth of she as embodied and living ideal, by imparted effect and movement within an action-soul: Creation made.
Existence continued. The human condition sustained with its love and joy, wonder and awe, and too the terror, trials, and tears; its rivalry of good and evil, blindness and revelations, despair and emancipating mercies.
The miracle of it all, the story of man—as was, is, and shall forever be—prophesied in after-eyes’ glow.