The Beauty That Surrounds Us.

If our style of looking becomes beautiful, then beauty will become visible and shine for us. We will be surprised to discover beauty in unexpected places where the ungraceful eye would never linger. The graced eye can glimpse beauty anywhere, for beauty does not reserve itself for special elite moments or instances; it does not wait for perfection but is present already secretly in everything. When we beautify our gaze, the grace of hidden beauty becomes our joy and our sanctuary.

John O’Donohue, 2003, Beauty

Anthony

Anthony is an elegant man. He carries his six-foot-two frame with a dignity echoed in his diction. Despite my many invitations to address me more informally, he has always insisted upon the use of my given name, “Thomas.” In a way, that makes sense to me. If the shoe was on the other foot, I could never think to refer to that man as, “Tony,” any more than I could speak of Sydney Portier, as “Sid.”

Until October 30, 2023, he spent nearly twenty years at the end of a check-out lane bagging groceries for the likes of me. I learned of his retirement last night when I checked my mailbox. The envelope was addressed in that kind of penmanship that a disappointed Sister Mary Leonard had always hoped I would master. The letter thanked me for “always taking an interest” in his art. Indeed, on two occasions, he came to work with a portfolio full of photographs of his paintings and drawings. This man who kept two jobs to pay bills, made the time to create beautiful artwork! I will miss the way Anthony beautified his workplace with an artistic presence, and studied competence. After reading that farewell letter, I held it against my heart, aware of a surge of warmth just below it. I feel it right now as I write these words.

Brenda

Brenda works at the same grocery store. This diminutive woman, carries an outsized quiet warmth. The dimples that form on the wings of her ready smile could house respectably-sized cherry tomatoes. She remembers things about people…more than just their preference for paper over plastic grocery bags. Just the other day she told me that she wouldn’t be working a second job if her husband of twenty-five years hadn’t died four years ago. Apparently, her twenty-something son is the spitting image of the man she misses. Death stole her beloved, but failed to rob her of an infectious joy that hovers in the air around her like some spring-time floral essence on a January afternoon.

Eli

Last Monday, I concluded that a warm latte from The Annex coffee shop could melt away the Winter that had somehow found its way underneath my coat and gloves. I remembered the barista who greeted me that morning from a couple of months ago. Mostly, I recalled those eyes that had an uncanny quality, kind of like an appendage, that could reach out from behind his coffee bar and pull you toward him. His name was almost on the tip of my tongue. “Darn it!” I confessed my lapse in memory. To my surprise, an actual hand reached out from behind the bar! With a firm grip, and a smile that could melt January ice, he introduced himself as, “Eli,” and asked for my name. “Nice to meet you, Tom!”

I sized him up as John-Harry-aged (aka my son), and therefore, proceeded to engage in dad humor, as one does in these circumstances. “Three Dog Night had a song with your name it!” I recalled. “That was a song my dad used to sing to me!” He beamed. “A solid song,” we both agreed. After singing the refrain of it to him, I related how, “back in the day,” I used to wiggle through a hole in the fence at the Illinois State Fair Grandstand. “One time,” I enthused, “I got to hear Three Dog Night at the height of their powers!” The way that he listened, asked questions, and offered his take on things, you would have thought he was waiting on Bruce Springsteen (or maybe John Legend?).

With a practiced flourish, he created a little artwork in my cup, forming a beautiful little milk-froth flower. After thanking me by name, he turned to the next customer. I heard him inquire, “What can I get you, brother?” Just like Anthony, just like Brenda, here was another artist co- creating Beauty in the workplace.

Looking Back

Do you think the world needs more cashiers, baggers, baristas, or for that matter, administrators, physicians, nurses, salespeople, plumbers, or electricians? I think the world has plenty of all of these. What the world can never use enough of is people who sanctify the workplace with their unique investments of personhood, and their focused sense of a shared dignity. The Anthony’s, Brenda’s, and Eli’s of this world co-create Beauty wherever they go. They provide us daily thresholds for encounters with the Holy.

Dialogue

• Do you cultivate eyes to see Beauty In those who serve you?
• Do you have a habit of daily retrospective Beauty Checks? Do your Beauty Checks include moral Beauty? Have you thought to savor the magic in your daily encounters?
• What does “sanctifying the workplace” mean to you? Can you think of a time when you consciously or unconsciously did just that? Tell that story.
• Can you think of a time when someone did that for you? Tell that story.
• Do you think of yourself as an artist creating Beauty by your interactions with people?