Fractured Pieces Part II

The Art Of Kintsugi

If you have never seen the beautiful art of Kintsugi make it a point to explore it. Kintsugi is a 500 -year -old Japanese art form known as "The Golden Journey". It is a practice dating back to the 15th century when a shogun warrior needed a broken bowl repaired. He brought the bowl to a village craftsman who gathered the broken pieces and mended them together using a paste of gold, silver, copper or, bronze to fill in the missing gaps. The result became a piece of art. The broken pieces are highlighted in ways that bring greater beauty to the piece than would be possible without the break. [Kenetha J. Stanton "Living the Kintsugi Life" Ebook download https://akintsugilife.com/blog/ retrieved 2-2-18]

The objective of Kintsugi Art is to recognize the history of the object and to visibly incorporate the repair of the new piece instead of disguising it. The process results in something more beautiful than the original. Here in the Western world we have become a "throw-away" society. Items are made for consumption with no long-term intrinsic value. We have disposable cups, plates, glasses...if it’s convenient its disposable. Broken people will even treat others as disposable due to their brokenness. Broken items have lost their value and beauty; however the art form can teach us invaluable lessons here. Kintsugi is more than an art form...it is a philosophy, not of replacement but restoration. It is about embracing our healing and finding gold in our scars. It means taking the journey of brokenness through the pain we are experiencing even when we can't see when we will reach the other side. It is a display of beauty and hope...of value not forgotten but summoned from deep within. It is restoration realized....

"We are more than any brokenness we may encounter in our lives"[Kentetha J Stanton "Living the Kintsugi Life" Ebook download http://akintsugilife.com/blog retrieved 2-2-18]

In her Ebook "Living the Kintsugi Life" author Kenetha J. Stanton speaks of a category of brokenness as an Imposed Brokenness as the kind of brokenness that happens to us while living. It is not who we are, but it may be how we feel about part of ourselves for a time. It is something that happens to us that temporarily pushes us out of the state of wholeness.

How do we then move beyond being broken by betrayal? What does the growth process look like? How does the Kintsugi mending of our fragmented lives begin? How do we trade past betrayal for beauty? We must recall that periods of greatest personal growth come during times of greatest personal struggle. If we retreat from the pain of understanding ourselves we will die having missed much. The Kintsugi mending of our hearts requires us to first; look past our introspective pain and secondly purposely find out what our life journey is trying to tell us. What are the patterns, habits and, choices we notice? What a "Kintsugi" approach to our hearts does is focus our attention away from the damage that was done to us while pointing us toward the healing that has to take place for us to move beyond betrayal to wholeness again.

"We can spend our time and attention focusing on the bad things that have happened (and slow down our healing process by keeping us stuck), or we can focus on the healing that is taking place and the ways we have grown and developed as part of that process. The latter approach can not only speed up the healing process, it can also make the journey lighter and more meaningful.

Valuing the gold between the cracks... those fragmented moments of our lives, we actually can avoid the trap of bitterness that has ensnared so many...we choose to move beyond bitterness. We don't excuse the evil that may have been done to us, but we can choose to focus on the resiliency that will move us beyond the bitterness. We have a choice we must then exercise...you have a choice this very moment as you are reading these words - focus on the healing or stay in the wounded state you're in? The moment you cognitively make that choice to embrace healing...your heart will begin its Kintsugi process of mending piece by piece by piece.