I want to talk about beauty. To do that, I have to talk about beans.
Good friends sent us a box of heirloom dried beans from Rancho Gordo. These beans are, in her own words, “simply the best you can buy”. Given her impeccable taste, culinary mastery, and Mexican roots, I believe her. A pot of the Frijol Negro de Vara are simmering away on the stove as I write this.
The Rancho Gordo story is a cool one. Its founder has a love for cooking, and is passionate about using good ingredients. Especially ingredients that are native to The Americas. The heirloom beans, like those in the pot on my stove, are part of the Rancho Gordo-Xoxoc Project, a collaborative effort supporting small farmers “…continue to grow their indigenous products in Mexico, despite international trade policies that seem to discourage genetic diversity and local food traditions”. What could be more beautiful than the cultivation and preservation of diversity and local traditions?
Rinsing them off before putting them in the pot, those beans almost took my breath away. It was their simple beauty that got me thinking about all the places that beauty can be found, starting with a simple colander filled with shimmering, dazzling black heirloom beans. That got me thinking about how beauty can call out the best in us if we train our eye to find the beauty present in the most ordinary of our days. Beauty that can transcend even the worst that life can throw at us, and that can shine a light into the darkest of times. Beauty inspires writers to write, poets to pen poems, painters to paint, dancers to dance, photographers to behold, potters to make magic with clay, scientists to question, musicians to sing, and humans to gasp. Beauty causes us to stop and be reminded that there is so much goodness in the world. If we let it, beauty will accompany us in our grief, bear witness to our pain, and make the hard going just the tiniest bit easier.
The beauty of the beans in the pot on my stove started as a gift. An act of generosity. A tribute to the beauty of human connection. Beauty is a gift that asks nothing in return other than to be noticed and shared and passed on. And if that’s not a beautiful thing, I don’t know what is.