Notice the Unsung Artisans

All day long I've been treated to an orchestra of bizarre and very loud special effects sounds outside my window. A team of three artisans is hand-crafting new gutters for my home. Their craft is completely alien to me and mundane as you might think it right now - watching people build gutters and fit them to your house is actually awe-inspiring.

Awe can come from a completely unexpected surprise from out of nowhere, but it can also come from a conscious decision to look at something you overlooked or never noticed at all and realize that it is in fact quite amazing. Gutters, for instance. They are like above-ground sewer systems taking water away from your house and causing problems when they get clogged. Until today I thought of them as a necessary evil, and often an annoyance when they don't do what they're supposed to. But I never thought for one second about how they are made or joined to a house.

From my perch on the second floor, I'm looking down on my front lawn-turned-workroom and I can see these three skillful men bending metal, sealing places where it joins, measuring lengths, and attaching downspouts. Is it odd to call gutters beautiful? They are. We didn't get some fancy variety - just the material fact of them is striking me as beautiful right now. They gleam white and have nary a ding or divot compared to the ratty little ones we've been living with for years.

The men scale ladders, kneel to put pieces together and work in a carefully choreographed series of steps to craft and carry and lift and fasten this fresh new appendage to my home. Being privy to this work feels like an awakening. I'm suddenly noticing all the other features of my surroundings I take for granted and wondering about the human skill that makes windows, roofs, fences, sidewalks, roads, drainage ditches, siding, brickwork, electricity - you get the idea - possible.

Wherever you live, you probably have gutters. Take a look at them. What else do they make you see?