It was a beautiful bowl. The vivid blue color, the gloss, the shape, the white rim accent. They all came together to make a creation of which the artist could be proud.
But something had happened. It might have been purely accidental, maybe neglect or carelessness, a bad decision to leave the bowl in a risky place, or perhaps even intentional. However it happened, the bowl was broken. It no longer had the symmetry, the beauty it once had. Maybe now to be relegated to the trash heap.
I know how I would have tried to fix it. A little super glue, the pieces carefully lined up, maybe even a little touch-up paint. Anything to make the cracks, the brokenness as hidden as possible. Maybe people wouldn’t even notice that it had been broken
But there is a better way. The Japanese have made it into an art form and have a word for it, KINTSUGI, the art of repairing with gold.
Instead of hiding the brokenness and pretending it wasn’t there, they repair the breaks with gold, winding up with a creation even more beautiful than the original . . . because of the brokenness.
We’re all broken . . . you, me, the homeless guy on the corner asking for cash from the cars stopped at the traffic light, but also the high-school prom queen or the star quarterback, the neighbor next door or the co-worker with the bigger office . . . every one of us. The people we envy, the ones who appear to have it all together. We’re broken. And very probably we have gone through times of trying to hide it, to make the scars as nearly invisible as possible. Hoping against hope that no one sees, that no one knows.
But hear me . . . it is in our brokenness that our value is to be found. Especially when we have let the Artist mend us with gold.
Henri Nouwen says that it has to begin within us. “Yes, we have to find the courage to embrace our own brokenness, to make our most feared enemy into a friend, and to claim it as an intimate companion. I am convinced that healing is often so difficult because we don’t want to know the pain.”
But then we have to take the next step, to realize that it is our brokenness that is of value to those around us, not our successes. If we are to be of any help to those sent across our path, it will be through our brokenness. Again, from Nouwen, “Nonetheless, real care means the willingness to help each other in making our brokenness into the gateway to joy.”
Oh, how I wish I weren’t broken! And even more, how I wish that you didn’t see my brokenness. But I’m learning to let the Artist practice Kintsugi in me, to fill my brokenness with gold, that I might in some way enrich the life of someone else as we journey through the gateway to joy.
