“One morning I was sitting at my kitchen table, staring into space. It was one of those windy days when the sun keeps coming out and going in. All of a sudden, a sunbeam crossed my kitchen table and lit up my crystal saltshaker. There were all kinds of colors and sparkles. It was one of the most beautiful sights I’d ever seen.

“But, you know, that very same saltshaker had been on that kitchen table for over fifty years. Surely there must have been other mornings when the sun crossed the table like that, but I was just too busy getting things done. I wondered what else I’d missed. I realized this was it, this was grace.”

These words were spoken by an 86-year old woman named Martha McCallum to Wendy Lustbader, a Seattle-based geriatric social worker and writer. Ms. Lustbader includes this quotation among many others in her new book “What’s Worth Knowing.” This small volume comes filled with meaningful encounters between the author and the older people she meets along her path.

At a recent national conference on aging, I heard Wendy Lustbader talk about her work with elders and her discoveries about their spirituality. The author’s skill in presentation dazzled me and others at the conference. There were times during one talk when tears came to the eyes of many who listened to Ms. Lustbader’s accounts of her discoveries about her clients and other people.

The revelation described by the woman quoted above happens in the midst of routine domestic life. As she herself notes, the same physical scene must have confronted her many times previously, but this occasion was different. Somehow she became aware of a reality that had escaped her notice previously. That reality was the beauty of the light.

What might have made the difference this time was not a change in the scenery but rather something inside the woman. The author describes the effect that a chronic illness had on her: “Once arthritis slowed her down, Martha McCallum would spend a lot of time sitting at her kitchen table. She had such a fully alive presence that to those who joined her at the table she herself seemed to gleam as much as her crystal saltshaker.”

Being forced to slow down, doing more sitting than she had done before, disposed the woman to be more receptive than she had been when busier. Her soul had become more sensitive to a scene that had not previously revealed its full beauty. For the moment she became like the 17th century Dutchman Jan Vermeer whose much-prized paintings display light that transforms scenes of daily life.

Or going back further, the woman had become like Mary in the Gospel of Luke. Her sister Martha was doing the household work to provide hospitality to Jesus when he came to visit. Jesus surprises his listeners by praising Mary for “having chosen the better part.” The contemplative role of listening is the one that opens the soul to the revelation of beauty all around.

Pay attention to what Martha McCallum calls the special moment when she noticed the colors in her saltshaker – – she calls it  “grace.” This makes it a divine gift freely given to open human awareness to the beauty that lies all around. It disposes the soul to become conscious that this world contains more power than we knew.

Ms. McCallum’s statement “I wondered what else I’d missed” also suggests on her part a new awareness that, as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins says, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”

This grandeur is missed most of the time even by people who are convinced of its presence. “Human kind cannot bear very much reality,” says T. S. Eliot in his play “Murder in the Cathedral.” But, as this incident shows, at rare moments we can be struck by sudden spiritual awareness that makes life precious.

In this instance the person receiving the sudden illumination was 86 years old. To those who may think that later life does not hold much value, this event is a forceful refutation of such a view. It is never too late for moments of revelation that suddenly provide insight into the beauty of things. No one can predict when those moments might come.    

Richard Griffin