Beautiful Curbs and Excellent Work
As we were walking to school yesterday, my youngest son shouted to his brother as we turned the corner, “Look that’s so BEAUTIFUL!” He pointed to the area of curb that was newly laid by the public works guys who’ve been our neighborhood this week.
When he saw the men were still standing there, he tucked his head and got really quiet, embarrassed they had heard. He said more quietly to his brother, “Isn’t that so beautiful?”
The moment stuck with me all day. The loud dump trucks and the road signs and the men stomping around all afternoon with tools had not struck me as particularly poetic. But, like God at the dawn of creation, my son looked over what they had made and called it VERY GOOD.
A friend of mine who creates life-sized portraits of her children that grace her stairway and creates collages of the Shenandoah Valley out of fabric was told by an fine artist friend that she wouldn’t understand something because she was “just a hobbyist.” Growing up, folks would attribute my artistic talents to my mom and grandmother who painted. Undoubtedly, their craft inspired my own creativity, but what about my dad who would frame drywall so precisely it made your eyes settle, who would advise clients on which paint would complement mahogany wood?
Children and poets seem to still understand the importance of naming as valuable what others might call common place, utilitarian, “low,” or basic.
One of my most favorite poets, Ada Limon, writes in her poem, “The Last Thing,”
“…I know// you don’t always understand,// but let me point to the first// wet drops landing on the stones,// the noise like fingers drumming //the skin. I can’t help it. I will //never get over making everything// such a big deal.”
My kids declare random Tuesdays “the best day of our lives!” and hobbled together meals “the most delicious thing they’ve ever tasted.” One wrote an essay about a teacher that would likely be considered ordinary by outside observers, and boasted that she’d even educate Jurassic-age dinosaurs with grace.
It’s when we’re uninspired adults that we relegate things to either beautiful or base, to low or high art, to sacred or secular work. It’s revealing when we find ourselves surprised that a well-laid curb is worthy of exclamation.
In his book, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work, the late Timothy Keller, shares how work can a signpost for a coming world:
“There is a God, there is a future healed world that he will bring about, and your work is showing it (in part) to others. Your work will be only partially successful, on your best days, in bringing that world about. But inevitably the whole tree that you seek—the beauty, harmony, justice, comfort, joy, and community—will come to fruition. If you know all this, you won’t be despondent because you can get only a leaf or two out in this life.”
And this work (and workers) can be diverse in the expression of God’s character and dream for the world:
“God shows the diversity of the people he uses by giving us three different books in the Bible describing how he restores the nation of Israel back to its homeland. First, the book of Ezra is about a minister, a teacher of the word. The Jews needed to be reacquainted with the Bible so their lives could be shaped by what God said. Second, the book of Nehemiah is about an urban planner and developer who used his management skills to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem and reinstate stability so that economic and civic life could begin to flourish again. Last, the book of Esther is about a woman with power in the civil government working against racial injustice. Here you have male and female, lay and clergy.”
Isn’t that so beautiful?
Educator and “beautiful work” activist Ron Berger sat down for an interview on Edutopia that stirred me. The part that stood out the most was this exchange:
Interviewer: At the center of all this is this idea of beautiful, rigorous work. It’s a particular passion of yours. What does it mean, and why is it important?
Berger: When I say “beautiful work,” people think aesthetically beautiful work. But I also think scientifically beautiful work, mathematically beautiful work—it can be in any field. Sometimes beautiful work is acts of courage and kindness and contribution to the world. Civic action can be beautiful work, artistic expression can be beautiful work, scientific ideas can be beautiful work.
Interviewer: You say it can be a powerful motivator. What do you mean by that?
Berger: …When you’re proud of your work, when it’s beautiful, you’re motivated to work harder…
And I feel like that’s what school should be about. It should be inspiring kids to want to be great, to do beautiful writing, beautiful reading, beautiful mathematics. So when someone posts her mathematical solution on the whiteboard in ninth grade and the other kids are like, “Oh my God, what a solution!”— that’s what I want. And when I see it in schools, I know why I’m in education. Seeing kids do beautiful work and recognize beautiful work in each other.
Then,
Interviewer: A focus on high-quality work sounds really time-consuming…teachers are prioritizing what they need kids to learn… There’s pressure to move quickly and cover lots of content. When and why devote precious hours to this kind of work?
Berger: That’s the hardest question because teachers feel the pressure for coverage and I understand that. But if you never go deep and long to produce high-quality work during the school year, kids never understand what they’re capable of doing, and they never develop the passion…
So my thought is: Figure out at what points during the year you can go deep and produce something great. If you want kids to care about chemistry or literature or writing—instead of just being obedient or disobedient—you’ve got to take a break periodically and focus on doing something great."
How much more should these ideas resonate with the family of God who believe that God instituted a good and beautiful world and invited us to steward from the very beginning? Who are admonished by Scripture (Phill. 4:8), “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things?” (Especially when early Christians would not have imagined you could think about things without first embodying them with actions).
What would the world look like if we did beautiful work and recognized beautiful work in others? If we looked them in the eyes and said what you made matters and you did it in such a dignified and detailed way?
What would the world look like if our diversity of skills were deepened by time, patience, and practice for God’s glory and the good of those around us?
What would it look like if we moved beyond just being, praising or raising folks who are obedient to make a “big deal” out of excellent, beautiful glimpses of “a future healed world?”
