I recently came across the Japanese art of Kintsugi. It is an art form in which broken vessels are repaired using metals, usually gold, but also silver and platinum. A shogun sent a tea bowl to China to be repaired and was at first dismayed on seeing the cracks rejoined by staples. This motivated the craftsmen to find an alternative in which they mixed gold powder with resin, and so a new form of beautiful repair had been born. The pot, once more whole, shone with the beauty and lustre of its fractures.
This struck me as a beautiful metaphor for grief. We can feel so undone, broken, fearful and gloomy that we grope helplessly for something like staples that will hold us together. Not realising that our broken hearts have become more open, more sensitive, more tender and more receptive to the light of beauty and kindness around us. They long for the hearts’ equivalent of the ancient wisdom and insight of Kitsingu, which sees the beauty in brokenness.
In his beautiful book ‘The Wild Edge of Sorrow’, Francis Weller states that ‘Grief is akin to praise; it is how the soul recounts the depth with which someone has touched our lives’
So as we gather together to honour those we love, let our praise weave together golden threads with which we, corporately and individually can mend, honour and beautify our pain.
We are drawn here by our need to honour our love, yet it is also an act of hope, a place of belonging, where we find that we are not alone. Instead, we discover that darkness can both awaken us to the sound of angel wings announcing new life and the realisation that ‘love is more than a candle, it is a whole bright star, which makes us shine’.