Told by another investment banker in London, a woman of almost mythic competence and courtesy. Before she told me this story, she had been describing in the most searching and serious detail her readings of the early stories of Kafka and her interest in the Sufi saint Bahaudin Naqshband.

I told her that I could hardly believe some of the work she described in her story, and she answered: “No one, no one at all, cares if you believe. But you should consider whether you can watch, and listen, and develop the patience to study our lives. If you can learn what we do, you just might have your chance.”

A BUSINESS LIFE, A SOCIAL LIFE

Once upon a time a well-known, prosperous woman awoke to discover, alarmingly, that she had a rare skin disease. The skin on her right hand had become completely transparent. For a moment she felt a horror at the exposed complication of blood vessels, the crisscrossed luminous padding of muscles, the mysterious nerves, the tracery of finely fitting bones. But as she watched, that horror evaporated beneath the natural sunlight of her amazement.

This woman, our friend, had that very morning to affix her signature to documents, comprising the formal agreement of a long-negotiated financial matter. But when she took up a pen to sign, she was struck by the musical shiftings, the painted and precise alteration of bone, muscle, and nerve, and she could not concentrate on her task. In fact, no one else could either, for the business colleagues of our friend had been overmastered by their own fascination. It was as if a treasure chest had been opened, and all the jewels knew one another, and had for millenniums been looking forward to this performance together in the light.

None of the colleagues present could resist asking for some special trick of the hand. One wanted to see our friend pick up a paper weight and put it down again. The kaleidoscopic effects of this trick alone were such that it had to be repeated several times. Another trick was the drumming of fingers on the tabletop, which created a shifting of colors, as though the light had been invigorated by prisms. Someone else wanted to see a slow-motion snapping of the fingers, a spectacular trick that made it look like a tropical storm at sunrise was forming in our friend’s newfound palm.

The favorite trick of all was the slow unfolding of the fist into the fully opened hand. And of course they all hoped they would be able to see her fingertips move across the keyboard of a piano.

After a few weeks of tricks, and much conversation with her colleagues, our friend remarked that everyone’s hand had the same qualities, and that the fact of hands is not less wondrous, for being concealed. She noted as well that if we conceive of the earth itself as a hand holding all our lives, and having greater resources for wonder than our own mere bones and veins, that it may very well be worthwhile to look more carefully and patiently at our own planet. It, of course, was not covered, except by the crude and rough skin of human conception.

Everyone agreed that the analogy was an important one, and they made a pact to take the rest of their lives to find out what the world really was like. It was the obvious and necessary thing to do. That was seven years ago.

Some of her friends now do various kinds of work, all of it having to do with the real, often invisible world that we all talk about occasionally, before we return to our pressing individual affairs. If I might describe one of the most improbable and complex of these labors: one of them, using techniques she has refined over many contemplative years, melts down opals and combines them with the fluid song of certain meadowlarks. To this brew she adds a clear solution made of small portions from each of the headwaters of many rivers and a liquor made from traditional distillations of twilight; and then she gently paints the resulting mixture on the hearts of young girls. It sends them off in the direction of incandescent adventures.

Another of them is a teacher. He teaches children how to watch, on windy afternoons, the strong patterns of flashing along the broad lines of cottonwoods, so that they might be better able to recognize the bright pathways in their own lives.

Another of the friends has taken on a job of courier of moonlight, and in the middle of the day delivers satchels to certain people. She does this for those who know how to use moonlight to lend to their work, their ideas, and their language certain lunar qualities: softness; suggestiveness; lucent, lovely variability; and power—for example, the ability to make whole oceans move.

The others have different jobs. We could describe them, but you have yourself been witness to what they do; they all collaborate, and their accomplishments are everywhere.

You may ask, in the meantime, what work is being done by our friend, who started all this philosophical tomfoolery. She has the simplest work of all—just going about her business and shaking hands with everyone she sees. After all, she has bonds to sell, companies to analyze, economists to bedevil. Shaking hands seems like a traditional part of daily etiquette, until people see the hand they have in theirs. As a matter of fact, it is part of daily etiquette; our friend always was a convivial and mannerly woman, and it is natural to her to conceive that the most commonplace courtesy, honestly undertaken, might lead us directly to an extraordinary new life. It all goes to show something that she had often thought—that the mundane may be inevitably a matter of spirit; and that, in all our conduct, what is most in harmony with miracle is good manners.