Hollywood Nights: Seduced by Beauty; Enslaved by Desire
I have always considered myself to be a sensitive person. While other boys found pleasure in athletics and action hero’s, I found pleasure in the arts. My youth spent appreciating and learning about all the beauty that other humans have created. A smorgasbord for my senses. Everything from sight (architecture, sculpture, painting and film) to sound (music), to the written word (literature and poetry).
My love of beauty wasn’t just an indoor activity, solely focused on what other humans had crafted and gifted to future generations. My teenage years in scouting and my young adult years as a church camp counselor were spent outdoors immersed in nature. Surrounded by the inherent splendor of God’s good creation. An outdoor exhibition of unparalleled beauty.
Sitting under a bright blue canopy, my spirit was nourished digesting Bible verses or poetic lines from Thoreau, Whitman and Frost. Ingesting and reflecting on these written words of wisdom about our shared human experience. Contemplations on our collective connection with the Divine.
This lure of beauty in sharp contrast to my innate abhorrence of violence. Even now, as well ripened adult, I’m physically and spiritually repulsed by the sight of factual and fabricated violence. Closing my eyes or turning my head away when horribly painful or cruel and sadistic acts are inflicted on other people or animals.
Like everything in God’s good world, Evil seeks to pervert and subvert everything including us and our God given gifts. Especially us. Creatures formed from dust and animated with the breath of Divine life. Crowned with glory and honor because we are unconditionally loved by our Creator.
My gift of sensitivity and my love of beauty would be skillfully manipulated by Evil to lure my heart into a world of deceitful deception. This aesthetic appreciation with the advent of adolescence would ignite my heart’s developing cravings. Ultimately chasing false promises of beauty both sexual and stuff.
A tempting siren song that’s treacherous and deadly for anyone that is drawn to its deceitfulness. Curiosity can kill the cat and us. A meaningful metaphor but a repulsive representation.
Like Eve, there have been and undoubtedly will continue to be many things in this world that I spy that are pleasing to my little eyes. Like Eve, my veneration of beauty would lead to my fall. Innocence lost to death; embalmed in desire.
Like a man who’s always famished, my adult appetite became vociferous. Wanting to “own” everything I viewed as beautiful including people. Objects of desire and conquest that would rival Solomon’s 700 wives and 300 concubines. I worshipped the creature not the Creator.
With my rising wealth came increasing want. Beautiful vacation destinations, gorgeous goods and delicious dinners and drinks. Always first class and five stars. Like Eve, I would pay for what I longed for with my life.
I had become enslaved to my desires. I wanted to possess everything I wanted. Living a life of no longer loving God, my new faith was wrapped up in stuff. Worshipping a golden calf.
Stuck in a sea of stuff, I was spiritually adrift. Wandering further and further into a make-believe and false world created by a deeply anti-human, self-centered and anti-Love culture. Hollywood, then television and eventually the internet, selling and tempting us with glamorous goods and shiny happy people who are all beautiful. A staged and edited reality that doesn’t actually exist in reality .
Stuff and sex sold by a corporate world that seeks to reduce us to consumers. Objects whose only purpose is buy what they are selling. Consuming whatever our little heart’s desire. A brave new world of cunning servitude based on pleasure not pain.
My endless pursuit of chasing all my worldly desires, became not only my blind spot, but my dark night of the soul. In a blink of an eye, I would lose my high paying job that fueled this chase. A Sisyphean race you’ll never win because it’s a meaningless marathon of madness.
I had subscribed to a world view where God is non-existent, banished from my life’s garden. Believing Evil’s lies that I’ll never have enough, and I always need more. That life is a zero-sum game.
Through God’s grace, love and light, I was guided out of the darkness. My heart humbled, my spirit cleansed, and my God given gifts renewed. Rediscovering all the beauty and beautiful people and creatures that surround me absent of want. No payment required; everything and everyone is a gift from God.
Understanding that true beauty isn’t an outward adornment of stuff. Beauty is found in the heart that loves God and loves their neighbor. No longer a slave to my selfish desires, I became a beautiful servant of Love.