Broken things and the art of Kintsugi

In my naivety, I went looking for the Perfection of God’s hand within the world, yet everywhere I looked I only found imperfect and ‘broken’ things. 


And so I looked for God in others, gazed deep into their eyes looking for the Shine of Divine ecstasy - but saw only broken hearts and wells of pain and suffering


And finally, I looked within myself to find the brightness of God’s love - but found only darkness and despair.



It was only when I truly saw how broken I was - how imperfect and damaged the world, how hurt our humanity - that I realised that the God I was looking for does not exist.



God is, and never was, ‘perfection’, or ‘beauty’, or ‘light’. God could never be something so one-dimensional and vacuous - so devoid of meaning and purpose. So utterly NEGATIVE.


If God is anywhere, god is in the cracks - the breaks, the hurts, the multitudinous cry of pain and despair as LIFE itself struggles against everything - and keeps going. Cracks and all.


Because my God could never be a distant and uninterested ‘observer’, tinkering with the Universe from a safe distance, deigning to answer the desperate prayers of a chosen few. My GOD is here: in this flesh, this explosion of joy and hurt and pain - this LIFE, this LIVING.  Spirit-deep in every scintillating quintessence of experience. In every unbearable moment of beauty, every painful heartwrench of love; in every cry of desperate anguish and every sob of pain. 


In every broken pot, and every golden vein:




Kintsugi: the beauty of the ‘broken’. (With thanks to @dgbastide for your wisdom and inspiration 🙏🏻) 



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