Sunday, September 30, 2018

THE BEAUTY OF BROKEN PIECES




Pieces
There are so many broken pieces of me.
They have been harshly shattered.
Fractured by wave after wave of grief,
ground into the floor by pain,
covered with darkness by depression,
soaked by tears.

And so there they have lain, distant and disconnected from the few left intact.
Yet occasionally, rays of light penetrated...
They pierced darkness, disregarded the chaos and flittered around pieces like translucent dragonflies.
The tears sparkled and there was a sort of sacred beauty...
I wanted more of that.

Love persistently & steadily shone light down over sharp edges,
Comfort ministered gentle healing,
Hope carefully & respectfully turned over each piece,
studying it, believing it still had a place, a purpose, even a new story.
Grace picked one up and carefully found its original spot.
Against weak protest, it put it in place again with Gilead´s balm.
And slowly, ever so slowly,
Gently, ever so gently,
My broken pieces are being gathered.
They are being healed, are being put into place again.
It is taking so much time - more than I ever thought possible.
More time than a lot of people think it should take.
But healing time is in the hands of the Wonderful Counselor,
of the Good Shepherd, of the One who is near to the brokenhearted.

The Japanese have a surprising art form for mending broken items: Kintsugi ¨golden joinery¨ or Kintsukuroi ¨golden repair.¨  This centuries old art of fixing broken pottery fascinates me in my own brokenness.  When a ceramic piece is broken, it is repaired with a lacquer dusted with gold or with liquid gold. Beautiful seams of gold glint in the cracks of ceramic ware, giving a unique appearance to the piece.  Every repaired piece is unique because of the randomness of the shatters. This practice, this art, highlights and enhances the breaks thus adding value to the broken object.

Wabi-sabi is a world view (of which Kintsugi is a part) and is centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection.  The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete.¨  (Welcome to my world!)

Isn´t that stunning? It also sounds like the world view of a God who loves, restores, redeems and heals gently, shows us beauty in the process and then holds us up to the world, saying, ¨Look at this beautiful piece of art! See those broken veins? They are its most valuable part - they are filled with gold!¨ Our scars actually become the showcase piece.

Pieces.
There are so many broken pieces...





Photo: Unknown. Pictured on Lifegate.com
Info on Kintsugi from Wikipedia and Lifegate.com