Kintsugi means “to repair with gold.” It’s the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with a lacquer containing powdered gold or silver. The gleaming gold or silver illuminates the seams—and the mended object is more beautiful for having been broken.
Here, we’re likely to view a broken bowl as worthless and toss it. If we do repair a favorite object, we try to make the repair as seamless and invisible as possible. By contrast, the Japanese worldview treats breakage and repair as part of the honorable history of the object, increasing its value—celebrating the broken-ness.
It’s impossible to think about this without applying it to our own lives. At some point in every life, there will be events or experiences that leave us feeling broken, physically or emotionally. There are losses that leave us feeling that the world has fallen apart. We may feel that we can’t go on—but somehow, we do.
And we have a choice as to how we go on. We can become bitter and brittle. We can feel worthless. We can deny our “wounds.” Or we can acknowledge our pain and become stronger and more compassionate toward others when they feel shattered. We can be more beautiful and valuable because of our broken-ness. We can discover faith and gain wisdom. We can become healers.
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rum
For many an individual entity, those things that are of sorrow are the greater helps for unfoldment…”
— Edgar Cayce Reading 3209-2
Each person’s path to wholeness is unique, just as each piece of broken pottery repaired with kintsugi is one of a kind. But there is a path to wholeness for each of us, and that path often involves letting our wounds be our teachers—letting the pain that comes into our lives temper us, so that Light can pour through our broken places.
