Did You Know?

We might take a lesson from kintsugi the Japanese art of "broken joinery."

You've seen such bowls: chipped or shattered, then repaired with lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. The sad, broken thing becomes useful again, more lovely than before.

The veins of precious metal don't deny a fractured past. Rather, they absorb it, and celebrate transformation.

As an art form kintsugi incorporates aspects of Japanese philosophy, It values the flawed, expresses regret for waste, and honors the reality of change.

If the Sacrament of Reconciliation were a concrete object you could hold in your hand, it might look like kintsugi ... because things do get broken: promises, relationships, hearts, people.

Yet our trust is in the Lord who 'gathers up the fragments, that nothing might be wasted.' What seems ruined or worthless now might yet be redeemed — if we just hand it over to the Artist of Divine Repair.

Shattered objects can be bound together again using precious metals.

What reconciles our interior brokenness is the precious element of forgiveness.

Want a society of justice and peace? Begin with forgiveness.

Hope to rid the planet of prejudice, greed, poverty? Fill the cracks of every intention and conversation with forgiveness,

Need to find a way to live with yourself, after what you've done or what you've failed to do? Let holy forgiveness surround you like light and pour into your soul its grace.

and when we consistently choose forgiveness as the restorative miracle that it is, even the saddest history can become, like the Cross, desperately beautiful."

- Alice Camille