Beauty
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.