“This is a funny question to ask me!”

“Yes, it is! But, what is your religion?”

“My religion is Beauty. Have you heard them all say that their religion is kindness? Well, my religion is Beauty.”

“What does that mean? What does it mean when one says that her religion is Beauty?”

“When I say my religion is Beauty, I am saying that I am an advocate of the process of things becoming beautiful, becoming more; of things and of people that add joyful, pleasing, peaceful, gentle, harmless, worthwhile objects, creeds, and experiences, to their communities, and collectively to the rest of the world. I am faithful to the beautiful roses, I am faithful to the beautiful wildflowers in the fields, I am faithful to the Dawn and to the Dusk. I am faithful to the harp, to the music that it brings to my ears, I am faithful to joyous laughter and I am faithful to good and pleasing food! I am faithful to the faithful lover, to the lover who makes a house into a home; I’m faithful to the innocent child, to the child who makes a home into a sanctuary; I am faithful to the trees that give us homes to live in and bridges to cross. I am faithful to happy memories and to gentleness. I am faithful to the absence of hostility, to the absence of death. I am faithful to bliss.

“I am a believer in sublimity; in paintings and in sculptures. I am a believer in marble angels and in stone gargoyles. I am a believer in the strokes of the paintbrush that can be found nestled on the surface of oil paintings, I am a believer in the freedom of the flowers, the way that colors roam our Earth, I am a believer in form and in flow. I believe in the way the Moonlight makes me feel and I believe in the way that the Sunlight can soothe my Soul. I believe in the soft breaths that escape my lips during intimate moments, the touch of another’s skin on my skin, the rubbing of another’s Soul upon the membranes of my own Soul! I believe in the movement of dance and in the music that makes us want to do it. I believe in the sanctity of intimacy and in the songs that we sing. I put my faith in myths, legends and forgotten writings. I put my faith in the consciousness of stones and in the tales of the waters. I trust in the small animals that I feed, and in the people who understand them. I trust in metamorphosis, in growth, in the way that the seed turns into a fruit tree! I trust in my dreams at night, they are more than just dreams. I am a friend to bliss, to delight, and to those who make things beautiful and who create beautiful things. Michelangelo is my Priest. Donatello is my Saint. I worship those who can take a stone and turn that stone into a chapel.

“I am the enemy of things and of people that would deceive and divide, I am enemy of corrosion and erosion, I am enemy of disease and malfunction, I am enemy of lies and of manipulations, I am the enemy of lack, of want, of need and of envy. I am the enemy of the carcass, of the rot, and of loss. I am enemy to all things that would cause ugliness and struggle in a life and in a world. I cannot be friends with those who are the cause of decay in others. Don’t make me dance with someone that is envious, don’t make me sit and eat with someone who stabs another in the back. This is my Creed, this is my Religion.”

~C Joybell C, an excerpt from her upcoming book, entitled,  The Conversation of Venusta (a sequel to The Conversation of Merachefet)