A few years ago, our associate director, Laura Weber, wandered out to the garden here at Prairiewoods and took a photograph of the compost pile. Thus began one of the all-time great ongoing arguments (alright, more a good-natured verbal sparring than an actual argument).
Laura saw the image as deeply beautiful, indicative of the work we do at Prairiewoods both in the literal sense of Earth care and in the figurative sense of “composting ourselves”—using the scraps of our past lives and old paradigms to create a rich, loamy soil from which new growth, abundance and new ways of understanding and be-ing with Earth would flourish.
I understood Laura’s perspective. I could even see the beauty of the photo as an abstract composition. I understood the many deeper meanings of compost—Laura is an articulate and convincing speaker when she feels passionate about her subject. However, I could not get past what my eyes told me I was looking at, and I definitely could not imagine using the image as the front cover photo for our bi-monthly newsletter. After all, it was a photo of rotting food scraps. Blown up to cover photo size, I reasoned, that is all anyone would see.
If you know Prairiewoods, you’ll recognize this photo. You’ll know that we’ve come to use it numerous times in publications. Once, it even led to the Board of Directors making a special stop at the compost pile while touring the Green Prairie Garden at the height of the summer growing season. I may tease Laura that her tenacity wore me down and I just stopped fighting. But the truth is, what changed were the eyes with which I viewed the photo.
In his wonderful book Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, John O’Donohue says:
“We have often heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is usually taken to mean that the sense of beauty is utterly subjective; there is no accounting for taste because each person’s taste is different. The statement has another, more subtle meaning: if our style of looking becomes beautiful, then beauty will become visible and shine forth for us. We will be surprised to discover beauty in unexpected places where the ungraceful eye would never linger. The graced eye can glimpse beauty anywhere, for beauty does not reserve itself for special elite moments or instances; it does not wait for perfection but is present already secretly in everything. When we beautify our gaze, the grace of hidden beauty becomes our joy and our sanctuary.”
How beautiful is that?
And so I invite you to join me in contemplating this photo of compost. What beauty do you find if gazing with a “graced eye”?
What subtle meanings make themselves known as you really look at this image?
What wisdom might you offer to the ongoing dialogue about the deep, layered beauty of compost?
—Jenifer Hanson, Prairiewoods director