The Grace of Brokenheartedness

 

Recently I was honored to offer a sermon at my dear friend Dana’s ordination to the priesthood. As a result some new people were invited or led to my blog Blessing Imagination! Consequently I was asked why the title and why the image above of kintsugi pottery.

In offering some kind of explanation memories of the past 3plus years flooded my soul. And I was able to place those blessed memories alongside more recent ones as well as discoveries along the way which help me fill in the gaps of what was once a tenuous title and frame for writing and meditation.

In her memoir Tina Davidson recalls a seminar at which Stephen Levine when asked about the meaning of life responded: “…I think the meaning of life is to let your heart be broken.” Davidson adds: “Moist, dark soil, ready for new life to begin” spills out. 

Or, I would note, fertile soil is exposed…and the work of reconstruction, reconciliation and redemption begins.

The blog, the title, the writing began on March 17, 2020. It began in days of imposed pandemic isolation. It began as my heart, and those of so many others was leaking, although at the time the pain overwhelmed the promise of fertile soil.

With some encouragement and persistence, not to mention some safety in what I thought was anonymity, I just let my heart open and soften and weep. I did so, however, with the faith that sorrow and joy flow mingled down. 

Gazing at the kintsugi pottery with its glittering veins of healing bonds, I allowed the Gospel message of reconciliation and mercy and the philosophy of what is broken can be made even more beautiful seep into my own cracks and crevices. This process continues today, and will tomorrow, as pandemic became and becomes a plural of enormous proportions and infections.

The thing is, though, that it/they will never be so enormous as grace, the pandemics that is. 

I look now for the glittery substance of healing in the midst of or often at the edge of pain and anxiety. While often surprised by grace, I have come to hope for its revelation in difficult and trying times.

I am not sure I would have, could have, appreciated or comprehended these merciful adhesions had I not let my heart be broken. In contrast to efforts expended in trying to bandage a heart before it falls apart, the grace which enters upon total collapse is eternally strong and penetrates anyway.

Riffing on Falling Upward by Richard Rohr: instead of falling apart and crumbling it feels more like falling apart and being held and carried, shaped and raised up. The salvation is always greater than the destruction.