Remembering Small,Beautiful Things

I heard several people say in online chatter before a meeting that the autumn of 2020 was the most beautiful that they had ever remembered. Several people commented about the colors of the leaves, the extended warm weather, and the beauty of the October light. I could hardly disagree with them; I did wonder, though, if it had, in fact, been an extraordinarily dazzling fall or whether they had just taken time to notice it due to the constraining circumstances of semi-lockdown during the pandemic. I suspect that it was the latter. Though most of us experienced many kinds of loss and grief during the long ordeal, it also had the odd effect of helping us to slow down and pay attention to small and ordinary beauty all around. Almost like van Gogh’s paintings of grass, undergrowth, or a vaseful of flowers, the ordeal through which the world has passed since early 2020 provided occasion to look, listen, and reflect on small, ordinary things. Despite all the losses and the waiting, I now have an appreciation for foxes, foliage, and all manner of flittering things in my neighborhood. I suspect that many around the globe have had a similar awakening to small beauties that in “normal” times would have been ignored or passed by on the way to something deemed to be much more important. As Alexandra Horowitz writes in her fascinating book about learning to attend to the complexity and beauty of her neighborhood in New York City, On Looking: A Walker’s Guide to the Art of Observation, “Sometimes we see least the things we see most.” ¹ Somehow, noticing small, beautiful things afforded moments of respite and poignancy for millions of us in recent months. These moments of attending to taken-for-granted realities did not solve our problems or obliterate our suffering, but they did make such hardships more bearable.

When my father died this past November after a short but intense battle with skin cancer, I was given a small, beautiful gift of grace. The Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis—with whom I was collaborating on a special issue of Theology Today that will examine the new Orthodox social ethics statement—asked if he could include my father’s name in the liturgy. This simple act of remembrance touched me deeply as a poignant act of kindness. It gave me a window into the Orthodox world and helped me to understand and appreciate why they do what they do in worship. The simple act of remembering my father’s name to God in an Orthodox liturgy on a particular day meant more to me than I can say, particularly since I was unable to be there when my father died or to attend a service of witness to the resurrection. My Orthodox colleague and friend gave me a glimpse of grace through a small, beautiful thing.

This now passing pandemic period has given us many opportunities to attend to small, beautiful things. The question in my mind now, as we begin to emerge into a new world on the other side of the pandemic, is “Will our sensitivity to the beauty of small things last?” Honestly, I have my doubts.

The biblical epic that runs from the Exodus through the Babylonian Exile helps me to see that we humans are experts at forgetting. The Israelites had witnessed the magnificent and awesome things God had done in liberating slaves from tyrannical oppression. They had also witnessed many ordinary acts of grace such as God’s provisioning of food and water in a barren land and making a way where there was no way. The Israelites—standing in for all of us—tended to forget signs of grace large and small. Instead, they obsessed repeatedly about what they did not have—often soon after having experienced a manifestation of grace before their very eyes.

The many local stories recounted in Judges underscore this same theme: memories fade and old habits return with disturbing regularity. Terrible suffering, an outbreak of grace, forgetting and returning to old habits—and repeat. That is essentially the plot. Truth be told, it is probably our plot, too.

The larger narrative of the Deutonomic History (Judges through II Kings) helps me to see why the author of Deuteronomy relentlessly returns to the theme of remembering: we are all prone to forget the amazing grace of God in both dramatic and quotidian moments. No less than 15 times does the figure of Moses spiral back to the leitmotif of remembering. Like a liturgical theologian, the author of Deuteronomy wants to help us remember past flashes of divine beauty, often in the midst of the ordinary so that we can be attentive to flickerings of grace in the midst of the present. Maybe the Bible exists in order to help us all collectively to remember not only the really big things, but also the small, beautiful things of grace we have experienced along the difficult journey. Maybe the Bible continues to play a central role in our lives because it is a way to help us to remember and, in so doing, to imagine the future with hope. Maybe it is there to help us continually to attend to grace in small, beautiful things.

The Gospel accounts of Holy Week, Good Friday, and Easter are replete with small, beautiful things that give us glimpses of grace. A poor woman anoints Jesus with costly perfume, the warmth of a fire in a barrel out in the courtyard, a rooster crowing at dawn, an ironic sign tacked up in a highly visible place, a pile of linen cloth neatly folded, an early morning fire on the shore.

It is often the small, beautiful things that give texture and meaning to the story as a whole.

After 11 years of service as Reviews Editor for Theology Today and 29 years on the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary, Rev. Dr. Nancy J. Duff has retired. This is her last issue as part of the editorial team. Her service to the journal is greatly appreciated and she will be sorely missed. At the same time that we celebrate the end of Nancy Duff’s work with the journal, we also welcome Rev. Dr. Sonia E. Waters, Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology at Princeton Seminary, as the new Reviews Editor.