Waste treatment plant, Auburn, NY. Photo by Heather Ainsworth, New York Times

At our RadJoy Earth Exchanges people usually spend some time on their own, getting to know the damaged place they're attending to. While visiting a small sewage treatment plant in upstate New York, one woman had an important realization.

Joanna and her friends arrived on a Saturday afternoon to see only one other car parked in front of a small yellow brick building. Behind the building a chainlink fence surrounded half a dozen long, narrow concrete pits. Water of varying degrees of viscosity, from murky brown to sparkling clear, filled each pit. As they peered through the fence, marveling at the technology that transformed the products of thousands of flushed toilets, a young man came out of the building.

After chatting briefly with him, Joanna and her friends went off on their own to explore. Joanna sat down on the grass near the fenced area. Later, when everyone regathered to share their stories, she said, "I'm a wound-care nurse. I take care of people who have had surgeries and deep wounds. A lot of those wounds are in the gut, the bowels. Not everybody can stand to look at them or even think about them. In my work, what's normally covered up and out of sight is exposed and raw, like the sewage here. I was looking at the waste from so many people's bodies and thinking about that young man who came out to talk to us. He does work that most people wouldn't want to do. He takes care of the waste. I appreciate him and I appreciate that there are places like this to make what's dirty and secret into something clean and part of life."

Looking for beauty in wounded places, we often discover beauty in other people and ourselves as well.