Kintsugi
Broken but restored
Sometimes life hits us, and it hits us hard. So hard, in fact, that it breaks us: divorce, the loss of a job, the death of a child, cancer, bankruptcy, abuse, neglect, and rejection. These and countless others can take a man or woman, no matter how strong they are, and shatter them on the floor like a vase. Brokenness is not beyond anyone. The right circumstances, at the wrong time, can break the best of us, but the Japanese art of Kintsugi shows us there is beauty and value in brokenness.
WHAT IS KINTSUGI?
We learned about this art form when Philippa Hanna visited us a few years ago; I was also reminded in a book by Dr David McDonald, Then. Now. Next.
The word Kintsugi is actually the combination of two words:
Kin tsugi
(Golden) (Joinery)
Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique. It is believed to have appeared around the 15th century. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object rather than something to disguise.
TWO EXTREMES OF BROKENNESS
From what I have encountered over the years in ministry and coaching is that many people tend to live in one of two extremes. They are the following:
People who wallow in their brokenness and never find healing for their pain.
People who completely ignore or hide their brokenness until it eventually destroys them from the inside out.
For too long, we have glamorized the gouges and brokenness of our lives. We have fetishized our festering wounds. “Oh, woe is me! Look how terrible my life is! Life has broken me.” We tend to promote our damaged and baggage-filled lives like it’s a badge of honour.
We must stop trying to carry around the broken pieces of our lives and then still expect to have whole relationships with family, friends, and our communities.
Brokenness begets brokenness.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you must stop trying to put on the tough façade, like you have it all together. The truth is many of you are shattered on the inside and have never faced the pain of those broken pieces because you are too scared of being cut again.
In either case, you have not allowed your wounds to heal; rather, you are trying to function with a gaping wound and fractional pieces of who you are called to be.
KINTSUGI AND JESUS
Kintsugi is a perfect presentation of the power of the gospel and a masterful metaphor for Jesus. The gospel is not just “the good news.” The original intent of the word gospel was “the rewards of the good news.”
Kintsugi shows us the power of creation, death, and resurrection in Christ. We were created as God‘s workmanship and were all broken because of sin, sins of our own, and sins committed against us.
We are all broken because of pain, abuse, addiction, rejection, father wounds, death, or many afflictions. We have all been dropped and shattered in some way in life. For some, the shards of the crushed vessel are bigger than others, but the brokenness is all the same.
But thank God that Jesus Christ is the gold that binds us back together. He makes us whole. He restores us. Because of His life, death, and resurrection, our life, death (brokenness), and resurrection gives us the ability to tell His story better.
The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. – Psalm 34:18
… provide for those who grieve…beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. – Isaiah 61:3
Yes, brokenness happens, but instead of being thrown away and tossed aside as is common in Western society, our lives are even more beautiful for having been broken.
You have to allow Jesus to be the artist and the gold to both heal you and make you whole. You have to allow Jesus to bind up the brokenness of your life, to heal the wounds, to make scars of gold.
SCARS
A scar represents a healed wound, a trauma that has been treated. They say, “Every scar has a story.”
You don’t have to walk around with the broken pieces of your life, nor do you have to sweep them under the rug in shame or stoicism.
In Christ, you can have scars instead of open wounds; and he doesn’t just bind you up. He binds you together with the gold that is His life.
Until we choose to allow Christ to heal the wound, our brokenness will be of no use.
A broken bowl holds nothing, but a kintsugi vessel has value and beauty.
And because of who Christ is and because of His power in our lives, we get to tell a greater story. The philosophy of Kintsugi tells shows us there is beauty in brokenness, and imperfections are not something to hide but to put on display when they have been healed by something more valuable than themselves.
Because of what we have gone through, because of what we have endured, because of brokenness, pain, and being dropped and shattered in life, we are now restored because of the gold that is Jesus Christ. We get to tell the story of Jesus in a way that is compelling and convincing because we were broken, and He has restored us. Just because you’ve been broken doesn’t mean you’re worthless. There is an artistry to be unveiled in the fragments and ashes.
When people ask about a scar, we can tell them the story of how God redeemed the brokenness. We can show the beauty of his redemptive and restorative power from those shattered parts of our lives.
We can point people to a healer and an artist.
We can point them to Jesus.
