Oprah’s O Magazine got Anne Lamott to write about aging, radiance, and beauty for the April issue (which was just squeezed through my mail slot). Here’s an excerpt, but get your hands on the whole thing. It’s a fabulous essay.

“When Jesus was asked about beauty, he pointed to nature, to the lilies of the field. Behold them, he said, and behold is a special word: It means to look upon something amazing or unexpected. Behold! It is an exhortation…He’s saying, You are freely given each moment the opportunity to see through a different pair of glasses. “Behold the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin.”

But that’s only the minor chord. The major one follows, in his antianxiety discourse–which is the soul of this passage: that all striving after greater beauty and importance and greater greatness is foolishness. He’s saying we have much to learn from lilies about giving up striving. He’s saying that we could be aware of, filled with, and saved by the presence of holy beauty, rather than worshipping golden calves.”