Kintsugi: Damage becoming art

Images source: Kintsugigifts.com

Ring the bell that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That’s where the light comes in

                                                                               Leonard Cohen

I know nothing, except what everyone knows –

If there when Grace dances, I should dance.

                                                                            W. H. Auden

And God showed me that sin will be no shame, but somehow honor for humanity….. God’s goodness makes the contrariness which is in us very profitable for us.

                                                                                      Julian of Norwich

Kintsugi - the word means golden joinery – is the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics using resin and gold powder. Other metals like silver, bronze or copper were also used, even broken pieces from other ceramics, to fill the gaps. In the process the history of a piece is shown and its damage and the repairs done to it incorporated, even highlighted in such a manner that it becomes part of the work of art. These art pieces were regarded as more beautiful than the original and became highly prized and sought after.

In our culture where even religion has become perfectionistic in its moralism, Kintsugi can act as an important guide into tolerance and the understanding of God. At one stage or the other, all of us have to gather the pieces of our lives and try again. Or over. Or for the first time. In a world of perfection where our mistakes and botched efforts are often highlighted as flaws and used as justification for permanent suspicion and rejection this is not made easy.

A friend of author Philip Yancey once told him about an experience he had while working with the down-and-out in Chicago:

“A prostitute came to me in wretched straits, homeless, sick, unable to buy food for her two-year-old daughter. Through sobs and tears she told me she had been renting out her daughter – two years old! – to men interested in kinky sex. She made more from renting out her daughter for an hour than she could earn on her own in a night. She had to do it, she said, to support her own drug habit. I could hardly bear hearing her sordid story. For one thing, it made me legally liable – I’m required to report cases of child abuse. I had no idea what to say to this woman. 

At last I asked her if she ever thought of going to a church for help. I will never forget the look of pure, naive shock that crossed her face. “Church!” she cried. “Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse.” 

While still in ministry, this would have acted as very useful material for me to incorporate in a sermon that called for compassion. Used in such a manner it had a hollow feel to it though. I felt a contributor to a religion where the admonition “Try harder!” was built on a basis of guilt. 

From own experience, by discovering my own darkness and owning it and through many sessions of spiritual direction, I have come to realise that I can only be deeply compassionate and kind by getting to know the God of compassion and kindness. The God creating art pieces from the shattered pieces of my life. Who can somehow turn my fault lines into seams of gold. 

Philip went and found Nathanael and told him, "We've found the One Moses wrote of in the Law, the One preached by the prophets. It's Jesus, Joseph's son, the one from Nazareth!"
Nathanael said, "Nazareth? You've got to be kidding." But Philip said, "Come, see for yourself."
When Jesus saw him coming he said, "There's a real Israelite, not a false bone in his body."
Nathanael said, "Where did you get that idea? You don't know me." Jesus answered, "One day, long before Philip called you here, I saw you under the fig tree."

                                                                                            John 1:45-48 (The Message)

I can live a life time on a theology based on being noticed under a fig tree. Yes, it’s a big deal. It’s done long before me noticing I’m being noticed. It’s a mundane simple episode in my life being picked up, gently held against the light as a source of delight in the sheer beauty of it. It’s about “the passion of possibility” as Kierkegaard called it. 

As someone who is loved by the God of kindness and possibility I truly want The Restory to be a place where Kintsugi flourishes. Where we practice a spirituality of imperfection and where we have learned that art is often just another way of looking at broken pieces. Mostly our own.

George