Lately I have been meditating on the saying made famous by a Pantene commercial "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful"
The more I reflect on it, the more I like it... I thought I would share my reflections on it since a lot of my inspiration came from Fr. Barron's DVD Untold Blessing: Three Paths to Holiness...
The words hate and beauty to me represent two opposing forces, i.e.: good and evil, night and day, light and darkness, positive and negative, holiness and sinfulness, etc. I enjoy the juxtaposition of these two elements in this statement...
The structure of the statement represents dialogue, relationships. "Don't hate me" represents motivation to change the status quo, reconciliation, a reaching out from one to the other. This could be a (non literal) dialogue in the classic fight between good and evil:
God and satan
Jesus and his accusers
Rosa Parks and her arresting officers
Tutsis and Hutus (during the genocide)
Jews and Nazis
Innocents and terrorists
Martyrs and their persecuters
Women burned at the stakes and their executioners
The voulnerable/the voiceless and their opressors/murderers
The Afghani kids who eloped and their parents who murdered them
A wife and her abusive husband
Then there is the whole question of beauty? What is beautiful?
In Fr. Barron's video he explains:
St. Thomas Aquinas said "Beauty occurs at the intersection of three things... wholeness, harmony, and radiance"
Wholeness is about being physically sound and healthy, mentally or emotionally sound. "A beautiful soul is One... it has integrity", it is undivided and directed to one end....
Harmony is about "symphony, interdependent, mutually supported," balance, coherence, equalization, order, orderliness, unity,
Radiance... "something attractive, compelling", In paintings saints have halos... "holiness is associated with light"...
I think, when defined in this way, beauty is no longer elitist (something one has and another doesn't) or vain (without rhyme or reason).
Ultimately, light engulfs darkness, and disunity,antagonism, antipathy, enmity, hatred, hostility, unfriendliness; alienation, divorce, estrangement, dissidence; disturbance, strife, turmoil, conflict, is transformed into so that all are beautiful.