No one can see that the two children decorated by the gorgeous strips of light are profoundly poor. My daughter photographed them as part of a story on poverty in The Hartford Courant. 

Amid all the suffering on our earth, & sometimes even in the middle of it, Beauty’s face shines.

Beauty resided in the eyes of your mother as she labored to birth you, in the heart of Joan of Arc as the fires rose around her, in the sigh from your coworker who continued giving loving care to a patient who shouted at her, in the arthritic hands of Monet as he fought to make one last painting of those lilies floating on the ponds at Giverny.

Beauty rises not just from looking at the baby born but in noticing the skills of the caregiver who has seen all this before & is still thrilled to show an anxious new mother how to nurse her newborn.

Beauty glowed not only in the face of a dying Joan of Arc but in the eyes of onlookers who recognized God’s presence in the girl engulfed in flames.

At this moment, Beauty gleams from the sweat of a child who manages to laugh while laboring in diamond mines for riches he will never enjoy.

She is heard in the song hummed by a housekeeper mopping the operating room after the nurses & doctors have finished their work.

It lives in the sighs of the home care social worker in Anaheim who has departed the house of a patient whose memory was stolen by dementia & will not recall the caregiver who brought her moments of joy before heading home to care for her own disabled mother.

Beauty resides everywhere & often shines most powerfully in the places least noticed & most unexpected.

Beauty, although evanescent, is the gift Love gives all who pause to see her face & allow their souls to smile back in gratitude.

-Erie Chapman

Photograph by Tia Ann Chapman