True Beauty

Bright news this week for every tomato, strawberry or plum in the land which hasn't quite made it in the supermarkets' perfection stakes. One chain has decided to give them a break, the chance to parade on those illuminated air-conditioned shelves along with the scrubbed and polished delicacies which are correct to the nearest millimetre. The visually flawed or oddly shaped, as they're termed, are being offered at a discount, as a service to cooks and jam makers, and to help cut waste.

It's the same spirit in which the National Trust has been running a year-long Ugly Veg Competition, offering prizes for such one-time rejects as two-headed carrots and corkscrew runner beans. And very welcome this all is - it's long been a scandal that so much good food has landed in the swill bin simply because it has the odd blemish, judged not beautiful enough.

Tastes in beauty vary widely, of course - one man's musical bliss is another's hell, a painting which warms one heart leaves another chilled, and (especially at a time of wall-to-wall exposure) not everyone will be convinced by talk of the Beautiful Game. And a remarkably large number of mothers give birth to the most beautiful baby in the world.

But we need beauty: the stunning sunset, the great building which sets our spirits soaring, maybe just the few roses outside the kitchen window.
All true beauty, like all love, reflects something of the God who is perfect beauty, perfect love. And that fact should temper how we react both to beauty and to ugliness - and especially in people.

What is most beautiful or most ugly about any human being is not the physical features they've been given, but what's expressed through them... pride or humility, selfishness or generosity, vengefulness or forgiveness. 'She's beautiful,' might be spoken of a strikingly attractive girl who sets heads turning and breaks a dozen youthful hearts a month. It might also describe an old woman, crippled, bed-bound, her face distorted, ravaged by illness and a thousand cares, but from whose eyes shine the unmistakable marks of a life of love.

By that measure, what we do about the despised and rejected of our own society offers the truest assessment of its beauty or ugliness... even more surely than what happens to the ugly fruit and veg.