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There once existed a tribe in South America that received its main nourishment from milk. Yet somehow, as happens in the world, the source of milk one day dried up. The cows, struck by disease, died one by one. The tribe was left parched with thirst, with no way to slake their need. The famine persisted for three weeks. And many meetings of the elders were held, but no one could come up with a way to restore milk to the village. One misty morning, however, after days of intense prayer and fasting, the villagers awoke to see a huge vat of steaming milk in the main clearing of the village. They were overjoyed at this gift of the gods and celebrations ensued. One morning, two mornings, three mornings the vat kept reappearing and with bellies full of the divine drink, the villagers continued life contented.

One young man from the village, around eighteen years old, was unsatisfied simply to receive the mysterious nourishment. As much as he needed the milk, he needed the knowledge of where the milk came from even more. And so, breaking with the village taboo against investigating the miracle, he got up early in the morning and waited. He was not disappointed, for within the purple mists of morning light, he saw the most beautiful maiden his eyes had ever beheld descend from the heavens to place the vat of milk in the middle of the village.

The young man was overcome by her beauty and smitten immediately with love. The next morning he returned to watch her, and the third and the fourth, and by the fifth day, he could endure it no more. He emerged from the bushes, grasped her graceful hand tight and said, "I will not let you go until you agree to marry me."

Such demanding marriage proposals seldom worked in this village or elsewhere in the world, but lo and behold, this divine creature of a woman agreed to marry the young man. That is, with one condition, which, she said, she would stipulate upon her return from one last journey to her home in the heavens.

She returned from the heavens a day later with enough milk to last a lifetime and clutched to her heart was a golden box.

She agreed to marry the bedazzled young man, just as long as he promised never to open the golden box that she mysteriously brought with her. For, she said with a touch of sadness, "If you open this, I will have to leave."

The man agreed and this mixed marriage between heaven and earth proceeded wonderfully. The young man and the maiden had children, built a home, and lived happily as the years sped by.

One afternoon, when his wife was away with the children, something snapped in her husband. Overwhelmed with unquenchable curiousity that had been gradually building for years, he rushed to open the box. He cracked open the creaking lid, slowly, a sliver, a slight bit more until it was fully open. He stared, bewildered, and slammed it shut. The man's wife returned. She immediately understood that he had opened the box. She confronted him. "You opened it, didn't you? Now I have to leave."

"What do you mean you have to leave?" the man cried. "Yes I opened it-of course I opened it-but it was empty!"

Shaking her head the heavenly woman declared, "Don't you see, that is precisely why I must leave. For that box was not empty at all. When I took my final journey to the heavens before our marriage, I gathered all the sights, sounds and smells that were most dear and precious to me from home. I gathered my hopes and my dreams, my fears and my memories, all the special moments of my life and I placed them into that box. And you opened my box and thought it was empty. I cannot stay."

When someone else opens our box and thinks it empty-that is the definition of loneliness. That is what produces the powerful experience of human loneliness, the inability of another to recognize the fullness of our experience, the complexity and diversity of our "stuff," the "things" that fill our box that make it uniquely ours. This gives the evidence to our individual beauty. Your beauty includes everything that is you. It includes your weaknesses, your thoughts, your pathologies, and your dreams!