I’m sitting at my home-office desk, unable to concentrate because the men painting the outside of my house are scraping the wall exactly two feet from my ears. It isn’t the scraping sounds that distract me, but their conversation, which I can hear every word of through the wall.

The older man—I’ll call him Evan—is talking to the younger one, Phil. Evan has a strong voice; he’s a musician when he isn’t house-painting, and music is his creative love. I’ve heard him say this on other days. Today what I hear him say first is: “Today I’m falling into the arms of grace.” My ears perk up. He’s high on a ladder—so if he’s going to fall, grace’s arms are surely where I want him to land.

Evan explains further to his younger colleague whose feet are firmly on the ground (I’m relieved to see): “Today I’ve repented of my bad attitudes of yesterday, and I’ve been forgiven by the Lord. What happened yesterday was that my neighbors had a big family event, and everyone came in brand new cars, and I thought ‘why can’t I afford a car like that?’ It wasn’t envy exactly, just a reflection on my own choices in life. I sensed some discontent with my choices—but that’s what I’ve repented of, because truly I’m content with my choices. And it was a humbling experience to have to admit that something in me would like to have a new car.”

Some nonverbal scraping for maybe five minutes. Then out of nowhere, Evan’s deep bass voice again: “Phil, what does the Eucharist mean to you personally?”

Phil’s voice comes to me only faintly from two stories down on the ground. I hear something like “It’s not about me. It’s a meal of everyone coming together.”

Evan affirms him but goes even further: “It’s relationship. Yes. But not just relationship with others at church. It’s the LORD! (His voice is in all caps when he exclaims the word.) The Lord is entering each of us—just as he did for Mary, he’s entering my very flesh. It’s amazing! I can’t understand why people aren’t constantly talking about this—about the incredible gift of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is EVERYTHING. Every minute we should be exclaiming what a grace it is that God’s own flesh and blood enter into ours.”

And Evan does proclaim it nearly every minute. The scraping has stopped during this theological exchange, and I’m of two minds about this. Mostly I’m bubbling over with delight that my housepainters are discussing theology—no, are proclaiming their love of the Lord.

But part of me is grumbling, “Hey, I’m paying you a heap to be painting my house, not to be praising the Lord.” I know how naughty that grumbling part of me is; and I know I’ll need to repent of it, as Evan did about the car.

Truly, I love that my housepainters are praising God as they work. Even as they don’t work—as they pause from their work to utter praises.

I’ve always felt that work somehow contains the spirit with which it was done. Somehow the new coat of paint on my house will carry the Holy Spirit. Thirty or so years ago, when my husband and I bought this house and first had the hallway wall-papered, we chose a workman from the local Zen Center to do the papering—because we wanted the spirit of his Zen attentiveness to remain hanging on our walls.

We’ve had the contrary experience, too. The last roofer we hired was sleazy in his business practice and sloppy in his roofing. That part of the roof continues, in my mind, to hang heavy over our heads.

Am I being merely fanciful in feeling that work contains the spirit of its making? I don’t think so. After God created the heavens and the earth and proclaimed them “good,” God’s goodness remained (and remains) in Creation. When we pray with Psalm 90 “Prosper the work of our hands,” we’re praying not for financial prosperity but for a holy goodness in our work.

The Tibetan Buddhist meditation master Chogyam Trungpa wrote in True Perception: The Path of Dharma Art: “From the modern American point of view, you can just go to the store and buy things and pick them up. That is not quite a good attitude, let alone elegance. People have to realize how things are made and produced, how they happen to be so beautiful, so lovely.”

“Elegance” for Trungpa is a moral category. For me, “beauty” and “loveliness” are as well. How things are made is what makes them “so beautiful, so lovely.”