There were a sensitivity and a beauty to her that have nothing to do with
looks. She was one to be listened to, whose words were so easy to take
to heart. It is said that the true nature of being is veiled. The labor
of words, the expression of art, the seemingly ceaseless buzz that is
human thought all have in common the need to get at what really is so
. The hope to draw close to and possess the truth of being can be a feverish
one. In some cases it can even be fatal, if pleasure is one's truth and
its attainment more important than life itself. In other lives, though
, the search for what is truthful gives life. I used to find notes left
in the collection basket, beautiful notes about my homilies and about
the writer's thoughts on the daily scriptural readings. The person who
penned the notes would add reflections to my thoughts and would always
include some quotes from poets and mystics he or she had read and remembered
and loved. The notes fascinated me. Here was someone immersed in a search
for truth and beauty. Words had been treasured, words that were beautiful
. And I felt as if the words somehow delighted in being discovered, for
they were obviously very generous to the as yet anonymous writer of the
notes. And now this person was in turn learning the secret of sharing
them. Beauty so shines when given away. The only truth that exists is
, in that sense, free. It was a long time before I met the author of the
notes. One Sunday morning, I was told that someone was waiting for me
in the office. The young person who answered the rectory door said that
it was "the woman who said she left all the notes." When I saw her I was
shocked, since I immediately recognized her from church but had no idea
that it was she who wrote the notes. She was sitting in a chair in the
office with her hands folded in her lap. Her head was bowed and when she
raised it to look at me, she could barely smile without pain. Her face
was disfigured, and the skin so tight from surgical procedures that smiling
or laughing was very difficult for her. She had suffered terribly from
treatment to remove the growths that had so marred her face. We chatted
for a while that Sunday morning and agreed to meet for lunch later that
week. As it turned out we went to lunch several times, and she always
wore a hat during the meal. I think that treatments of some sort had caused
a lot of her hair to fall out. We shared things about our lives. I told
her about my schooling and growing up. She told me that she had worked
for years for an insurance company. She never mentioned family, and I
did not ask. We spoke of authors we both had read, and it was easy to
tell that books are a great love of hers. I have thought about her often
over the years and how she struggled in a society that places an incredible
premium on looks, class, wealth and all the other fineries of life. She
suffered from a disfigurement that cannot be made to look attractive. I
know that her condition hurt her deeply. Would her life have been different
had she been pretty? Chances are it would have. And yet there were a sensitivity
and a beauty to her that had nothing to do with looks. She was one to
be listened to, whose words were so easy to take to heart. Her words came
from a wounded but loving heart, very much like all hearts, but she had
more of a need to be aware of it, to live with it and learn from it. She
possessed a fine-tuned sense of beauty. Her only fear in life was the
loss of a friend. How long does it take most of us to reach that level
of human growth, if we ever get there? We get so consumed and diminished
, worrying about all the things that need improving, we can easily forget
to cherish those things that last. Friendship, so rare and so good, just
needs our care-maybe even the simple gesture of writing a little note
now and then, or the dropping of some beautiful words in a basket, in
the hope that such beauty will be shared and taken to heart. The truth
of her life was a desire to see beyond the surface for a glimpse of what
it is that matters. She found beauty and grace and they befriended her
, and showed her what is real.