Finding Beauty in Middle Tennessee

There is a beauty to Middle Tennessee. It isn’t the beauty of the ocean. Nor is it an architectural beauty; most of the buildings around here – the one’s that aren’t strip malls – are made of brick. It isn’t the charm of European walking distance, the library, the grocery store and a playground all within a few moment’s walk. It would take an hour or more to get anywhere here on foot. Yet, there is a beauty to it.

I first noticed it one morning when everything was shrouded in fog, laying thick and quiet along the slope of the land. Myself and the other commuters sped through these earth-bound-clouds cautiously, making deadlines, going places. And then, as I crossed over the Cumberland River, I looked across the rail at the water below. The sun glinted off the strange water and refracted through the overhanging fog. The scene was strange and mysterious, and flowed with memories of the frontier.

A few days later, I saw something else. Construction is everywhere in Nashville. The city has grown so fast over the last decade that public roads and other facilities have burst against rising demand. In an effort to make up the difference, nearly every road in Nashville is being widened, and new connections are being made. Thus, cars share the roads with construction machinery and their handlers. It was just such a situation that gave me another glimpse of the beauty to be found here.

Just off highway 155E, in a knot of trucks and pylons, a group of construction workers had gathered before starting their daily labor. They stood together in a loose circle. Tattered shirts and old jeans, gloves and hard-hats, dusty hands and faces, they gripped coffee or a biscuit from Jack in the Box or McDonald’s and greeted each other. It reminded me of my warehouse days. It reminded me of the feel of the warehouse first thing in the morning. Muscles just warming up as hands and feet took up new tasks. In their faces and postures, in the work that waited all around them, I saw something else that is beautiful in Middle Tennessee: its people.

And, finally, a third thing – quickly said as this is getting long. We visited a Baptist church yesterday. A congregation of perhaps 120 in a not-unattractive sanctuary for 350 people. Just before the sermon, a man of about 45-50 years sang “Special Music”. It was a gospel song of gratitude for being a “child of the King” filled out with pre-recorded percussion, bass and background vocals. Cheesy, that’s what I thought as a kid. But, as this man, this bearded grown man, got into the song, and could barely choke out his real gratitude for being such a one, I didn’t think it was cheesy at all. It was grace. Southern religiosity takes some getting used to, and I’m not sure if I will ever totally trust it, but that doesn’t mean that it is false. It certainly wasn’t to this man. And as he struggled to sing in those last few bars, I saw something else beautiful, beautiful and beyond beauty.