Once there was a Queen who loved beautiful things, so much so that she hated marred or broken things to be in her sight. If it was broken it had to be chucked out straightaway and replaced with something new and whole.
One day she fell in love and of course she fell in love with the most handsome man in the land, nothing less would do for her. She loved the chiseled line of his jaw and his almond shaped eyes. She loved his dark brown slightly wavy hair, especially the way little curls sprang up when the weather was humid. His sense of humour pleased her as did his discerning eye for all things beautiful, the well-tailored clothes worn with just the right touch of panache, the perfect accessories, the smart man of the world look he wore daily on his face. She adored everything about him; he was perfect in her eyes. So they married and life went well for them.
They lived happily if shallowly, but they of course, didn’t realize how shallow their lives were as they lived surrounded only by beauty and perfection. Day by day the Queen fell more and more in love with her husband not noticing the little foibles and quirks that were the real things that won her heart, like the way he chewed his lip when thinking about something and the way he scuffed the toes of his shoes so that they looked lived in and worn. She loved the way he ruffled her hair even though it messed up her hard work (of course she always put it right before anyone else saw her). So many little things won her heart and over time she found that it was not his beauty after all that she loved but him. It took her a while to see this but little by little she began to see how shallow her life had been and how ruled by an unreal sense of beauty she had been.
One day she sat thinking about her life and her kingdom and what she would like to be remembered for. She thought of the works of art she had installed in the parks and public spaces in her nation, she thought of the museums and art galleries she was patron of but strangely none of them captured her heart now the way they used to. She had changed, little but little the changes had crept up on her, working away unseen by human eyes and largely unnoticed even by herself. But they had happened, she was becoming less and less shallow and sophisticated and more and more human and accessible.
As she sat there thinking news came, bad news, the kind that changes everything in an instant. Her husband had been in an accident, somehow the car he was travelling in had lost control and hit a side wall on the motorway causing it to roll many times and ending up going over the wall and down a bank where it slammed into a tree. Her husband was badly hurt and would take many months to recover. Never again would he be the same; bones broken on many places, deep cuts and lacerations scarred his body and his face, his beauty was destroyed in a second.
As the Queen looked at him laying there broken and scarred in the hospital bed at first she was horrified and felt she couldn’t look at him – her precious beautiful husband was marred for life. To one such as her to whom beauty had been everything it was a shock and left her feeling repulsed; yet at the same time her love for him rose within her and warred against the repulsion. Which would win – love or repulsion? She knew that only she could choose and also knew that the choosing would set the course of her future – to live with love and brokenness or to spurn love and choose beauty. As she sat there her old and new natures fought within her, one calling her back to her previous life and the other to an even greater love of more depth and sacrifice. She knew she had to choose and eventually she did.
Day by day she sat with her husband willing him back to life, feeding him a taste of this and a sip of that, watching in pain herself as his lips puckered and twisted in order to sip from the straw. Lips that had once smiled those smiles that melted her heart now grimaced in pain and scarring. Eyes that had looked with such love now were half closed with pain and etched deeply with lines from that pain. Hair that she loved to see curl, now was close shaven and the scalp cut so cruelly where the windshield had sliced it open. His beauty was gone forever yet still she loved him and it changed her deeper still.
Gone was the shallow heart that only loved what she had thought was beauty and what replaced it was a true love that saw beyond brokenness to the real beauty of a persons spirit.
One day the Queen called for the artists of the land to come before her. “I want a new work of art” she said, “something that will show the world the reality of true beauty, something full of rich meaning and symbolism that will shape peoples ideas of true beauty the way my old gifts of public art shaped their perceptions of beauty. I want something broken yet beautiful, marred yet full of promise. I want a work that will show people that preciousness and beauty does not consists of wholeness and unmarred magnificence but of a beauty that is seen beyond the brokenness”.
And that’s how the Queen’s public garden ended up with the very large and bold sculpture of a swan with one wing outstretched as if to fly and the other broken and held in a splint. Some people hated it but others got it, they saw the regal splendor and beauty that the swan portrayed, they saw the broken wing and the splint that held it in place and they knew true beauty comes not from unmarred magnificence or from what appears to be unbroken wholeness. They recognized that true beauty comes from brokenness carried unhidden and worn as a sign of the promise of healing and restoration and they smiled as they recognized themselves and those they knew in the swan that stood before them.
By the way, the queen and her husband lived a long and happy life together and brought to their kingdom much love and an outworking of all they learnt as a result of his accident. Their kingdom and the surrounding ones became all the richer for it too, not necessarily richer in things of great beauty but certainly richer in love and good works, Love had done it’s work once again and the world was a better place for it having done so.
The end, or…the beginning of a new end.
crown lynn swan
The inspiration for this story came from a picture of a ceramic swan that had a hole cut in it to turn it into a lamp – funny the things that spark inspiration, isn’t it?
mycreativefire 