In her hauntingly interesting book about “being lost,” Rebecca Solnit (A Field Guide to Getting Lost) makes a profound observation about beauty.

“Beauty is often spoken of as though it only stirs lust or admiration, but the most beautiful people are so in a way that makes them look like a destiny or fate or meaning, the heroes of a remarkable story…. Exceptional beauty and charm [back to the admiration kind of beauty] … keep them [those kinds of beautiful people] so busy being a sort of siren on the rocks where others shipwreck that they forget that they themselves need to figure out where they are going.”

The beauty of destiny and fate and meaning is what makes us see beauty in Mother Theresa or Billy Graham, or our parents, or an old friend whom time has both weathered and given to that person a presence that makes the relationship a story that gives us meaning.