Kintsugi
Listen: “Kintsugi (You’re Never Gonna Leave It All Behind)” by The Way Way Back—Ben Wendt
Every morning I drink my coffee out of a broken, ceramic coffee mug which I repaired with superglue. You can see all the cracks and fractures, but it’s my favorite mug. In previous years, I would have thrown it away and gotten a new one, but the last three years I have been trying to fix the things which I break and keep using them. It’s a metaphor for my life. My life has been severely broken, but instead of throwing it away, I am healing, mending, and morphing into something beautiful, even though flawed and imperfect. The beauty is embedded in the brokenness. Every morning when I wake up and use my broken coffee mug, I am reminded of how every human being is a person of great worth and dignity, regardless of how broken or damaged they may feel. If they have breath, there is hope.
Kintsugi is a word I came across in 2021 when I was doing a podcast interview with Ben Wendt (podcast released on May 3, 2021 with Spirituality Adventures). Ben released a punk rock concept album in 2020 with his band The Way Way Back entitled “Baggage or You’re Never Going to Leave It All Behind.” One of his songs which caught my attention was Kintsugi. I had never heard this word so I did some quick research on Wikipedia.
Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powders like gold, silver, or platinum. It’s a philosophy which values breakage and repair as a part of the history of an object rather than something to be disguised or thrown away. The repair actually highlights the cracks and fractures in the pottery with metallic beauty.
Kintsugi is similar to the traditional Japanese aesthetics of wabi-sabi, which is a world-view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. It is an appreciation of beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete in nature. This Japanese concept reminds me of a similar concept in the book of Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Bible—hebel.
Ecclesiastes (or Qohelet) is the book from which The Byrds international hit folk-rock song “Turn! Turn! Turn!” in 1965 was derived. Hebel is the key word in the book of Ecclesiastes which is translated “vanity” in the King James Version: “Vanity of vanities, saith, the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2; KJV). Unfortunately, this is a misleading translation. It’s better translated “breath” or “vapor.” Hebel is not necessarily something vain, which implies worthless or morally inferior. Hebel is something temporal, transient, or imperfect. Most beautiful things in life are hebel. According to Qohelet, “All is mere breath [hebel]” (Ecclesiastes 1:2; translation by Robert Alter).
Finding beauty in broken things and broken people. Seeing beauty in the fractures. Repairing cracks with gold and silver. Recognizing that everything is temporal, transient, imperfect, changing, and beautiful. Learning to focus on the beauty in the moment. Breath. Mere breath. Life. The breath of life. It’s crazy beautiful.
I recently watched a new documentary on the story of Bobbi Jo Reed—“Bobbi Jo: Under the Influence.” Bobbi Jo is the Founder/CEO of Healing House in Kansas City, Missouri. Bobbi Jo started drinking at the age of 12, dropped out of school at 16, and lived for two decades under the abusive control of pimps or out on the streets by herself. She was an alcoholic for 22 years and ended up homeless, living under a boxcar next to a liquor store.
She miraculously sobered up in 1995 in an extremely toxic environment for women, and she immediately decided to help other women get off the streets and sober up. Today, Healing House shelters men, women, and children in beautiful, refurbished apartment complexes and houses in the Northeast section of Kansas City, Missouri. Men and women whose lives have been shattered, broken, and discarded due to pain, trauma, drugs, and alcohol are finding new life, new hope, new work, new sobriety, and new dreams. Healing House currently provides beds, homes, and a family environment for over 200 beautifully restored human lives in beautifully restored homes. Over 7,000 lives have been touched since 1995.
Kintsugi—It’s the art of restoring broken pottery by accentuating the broken cracks with gold, silver, and platinum. The art of seeing beauty in flaws and imperfection. Such a beautiful way of seeing the world in which we live and the people with whom we cross paths. In the words of Ben Wendt, “I’ll give attention to my repair using gold to fill the cracks….I might never be the same and I might never glow as bright, but I’m still here so I’m gonna make some light.” And in the words of Bobbi Jo Reed: “As long as a person with an addiction is still breathing, there’s still hope.”
Shalom
©realfredherron, 2022
