At least one speaker believes that all we adults are broken. Broken people often hurt, are often angry, hurt, or sad, or helpless. Broken people resist bullies and invite bullying. Broken people invent medicines that heal people and foster illness in themselves and in others. Broken people lead others to wholeness and hope. Broken people lead others into slavery and early deaths. (Recent examples of the latter include Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush.)
In parts of the Japanese culture, pottery is broken, mended and valued. Wikipedia describes it thus: "Kintsugi (金継ぎ?) (Japanese: golden joinery) or Kintsukuroi (金繕い?) (Japanese: golden repair) is the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a lacquer resin sprinkled with powdered gold.[1][2] Kintsugi may have originated when shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent a damaged Chinese tea bowl back to China for repairs in the late 15th century.
As humans how much more must we learn to value broken and mended people, including ourselves. You are broken, and have embarked on the journey to "being mended". Maybe you have been mended. Christians in particular believe in people-mending. Other faiths do as well.
Hope is not gone because we have been broken. Hope is not missing because we admit to brokenness. Relationships, growth, healing (with scars), and insight do not have to be missing, distorted or ignored just because we are broken. Apply the concept of Kintsugi to your own life and to the lives of those around you.
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