Rarest and purest

Out of the thrilling morning light into the the gloom of the tunnel under the Longfellow Bridge, Back Bay distantly visible through the limbs overhanging the egress. Shiny new replacement steel beams in place above. Two men on step ladders working to the right. Whoops! A hand saw?  Yes, for cutting a piece of closed cell foam insulation to size. 'On a job this big, a saw?' "It's the only thing for this kind of work."

Simone Weil once wrote, 'Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,' attention, that is, to those who suffer.She called such attention 'almost a miracle; it is a miracle.' She meant, I think, a unflinching, undaunted, yet compassionate presence in the presence of pain.

Let me lower the bar, generalize the bare assertion, and ask: Was my notice of the workmen a generous attention?

First of all, it was mere noticing, not gazing; second, the encounter was momentary, not extended; third, no moral challenge was involved. Certainly, no miracle; likely not rare or pure; maybe not even generous.

Yet, I saw what I saw, and the men knew they'd been seen: the loop of encounter was complete. However small the occasion, the encounter was launched, a mote had been kicked up by my on-the-go attention to be carried wherever.

But what if what we both experienced, what I saw and they saw, God-in-love also had as experience, and treasured it? What if that moment is one of many orbiting the caritas-o-sphere, fuller and denser all the time? What if any such encounter has a partner and perceptor of grand scale and long ambition.?

Weil's extraordinary empathy is missing from these musings, but workmen know that any acknowledgement of their labor is no small blessing. We can't always be like Meja turning around to make sure we, his audience, see what he is doing. Indeed branches leaf, the Charles rivers, squirrels spiral up and down tree trunks just being themselves, activities often unnoticed and unappreciated. Well, here's to you all. Carry on.