Kintsugi
This is absolutely fascinating and an excellent and true image of how God is with us.
Kintsugi: Gold Repair of Ceramic Faults
In 1999 I traveled to Japan to participate in several exhibitions hosted by my dear friend Mr. Shiho Kanzaki. I arrived with gifts for all the many people that were required to make this amazing opportunity a reality for me.
After I arrived and was unpacking, I discovered that 4 of the side-fired cups that I’d brought as gifts had been broken by the baggage-handling process. Without a thought I dumped them into the waste basket in my room. Sometime later that week, someone came to my room and took out the trash.
After a remarkable 6 weeks in Shigaraki, two exhibitions, travel, fine food, new friends…my visit came to an end.
As often happens there were some “parting gifts” given by me to my hosts; and some gifts were given to me by my hosts. Among the parting gifts I received, I discovered the 4 cups….but they were all reassembled and mended with silver.
I was rather astonished, as I’d thought that putting them in the waste basket was the last I’d ever see of them. Mr. Kanzaki laughed, as he noticed my incredulity, and said: “Now, even better than when you brought them!” Remarkable: gifting back to me, the cups I’d brought as gifts…only now more valuable than they originally were.
The Japanese have a long tradition of repairing pots with gold; it’s called “kintsugi” or “kintsukuroi”. Curtis Benzele tells it this way: “The story of Kintsugi may have begun in the late 15th century, when the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent a damaged Chinese tea bowl back to China to be fixed. It returned held together with ugly metal staples, launching Japanese craftsmen on a quest for a new form of repair that could make a broken piece look as good as new, or better. Japanese collectors developed such a taste for kintsugi that some were accused of deliberately breaking prized ceramics, just to have them mended in gold.
The good you do
“God has chosen you because you are so weak and so little, in order that it may be clearly seen that the good you do comes from Him.” (Bl. Columba Marmion)
We may be sure of this.
“So when we prayed and have a multitude of distractions like troublesome flies, as long as they displease us and we do what lies in our power to turn from them faithfully, our prayer doesn’t stop being good and acceptable to God. We may be sure of this.” (St. Jane Frances de Chantal)
Spirituality of events
Friday from the archives
In a talk I gave at WTH on Mary, the Witness to Hope, I shared about learning how to live our lives with an attentiveness to the “spirituality of events.” This basically means asking the Holy Spirit to speak to us through the events that happen to us in our days, to help us to learn what God is trying to teach us through all that comes our way. God wants to teach us how to look at the events in our lives with His eyes, with the eyes of faith. Yesterday’s meditation in Magnificat reminded me of that:
“The circumstances through which God has us pass are an essential and not a secondary factor of . . . the mission to which he calls us. If Christianity is the announcement of the fact that that Mystery has become flesh in a man, the circumstance in which one takes…
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The greater love of God
“God looks with greater love at a soul which returns to him through humility than at a faithful soul which is well pleased in its virtues.” (St. Mary of Crucified Jesus)
If you seriously desire joy
My heart is singing
Happy Sunday!
A Sunday-poem from Amy Carmichael:
Too High for Me
I have no word,
But neither hath the bird,
And it is heard;
My heart is singing, singing all day long,
In quiet joy to Thee who art my Song.
For as Thy majesty,
So is Thy mercy,
So is Thy mercy,
My Lord and my God.
How intimate
Thy ways with those who wait
About Thy gate:
But who could show the fashion of such ways
In human words, and hymn them to Thy praise?
Too high for me,
Far shining mystery,
Too high to see;
But not too high to know, though out of reach
Of words to sing its gladness into speech.
The truth is there all along; sometimes we just can’t see it
Reblogged from Aleteia:
The Truth Is There All Along; Sometimes We Just Can’t See It (a Lesson for the Synod—and Everything Else)
Time and perspective matter, especially in the workings of God
D. Westry is an American “speed painter” (“speed painting” an artistic technique where the artist has a limited time to finish the work), and this example of his work is a reminder of how perspective changes everything.
In our lives things can appear a certain way—or even be incomprehensible—when we look at it from one perspective. But when we look from another, an entirely new understanding can emerge.
God often works like this in our lives. We’re sure something is a terrible mess, and then suddenly—from the distance of time or a simple tilt of the head—God’s purposes become clear. His workings are not always recognizable, or even attractive, and we have to remember that he is always working with and through broken channels. Prayer and discernment can help us gain new perspectives and come a little closer to seeing as God does.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. …”—Isaiah 55:8–9
Dull weather
I’ve been re-reading Amy Carmichael and thought I would share her again with you.
Is it “one of those days”? Here is a little encouragement from Amy Carmichael:
Ps. 76.4 LXX Thou dost wonderfully shine forth from the everlasting mountains.
Sometimes it is dull weather in our soul. Here is a word for such days. Often when it is misty on the plains it is bright on the mountains. ‘Thou art more glorious and excellent than the mountains’ is a lovely word, I think, but this beautiful LXX rendering, which our Lord must often have read, carries us even further. The mist may lie low on the plains, but there is a shining forth from the mountains.
There is nothing in me. I may be as dull as the plains are when the mist is heavy upon them, but what does that matter? ‘Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens; and Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. Thy righteousness is like the great…
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Witnesses to Hope 