The promise of Grace is the promise of “beauty out of brokenness”. But far too often in the Christian tradition(s) this beauty is an ill-defined wish, deferred for some other time, an object of eschatological embarrassment because it never quite seems to arrive. Never mind that the supposedly most faithful of adherents tend to be more invested in reminding everyone about the brokenness that requires the “grace” we all so desperately need.

Kintsugi (literally “gold joinery”) dates to the Muromachi period, when the Shogun of Japan, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358-1408) broke his favorite tea bowl and, distraught, sent it to be repaired in China. But on its return, he was horrified by the ugly metal staples that had been used to join the broken pieces, and charged his craftsmen with devising a more appropriate solution. What they came up with was a method that didn’t disguise the damage, but made something properly artful out of it.

Influenced by Zen aesthetics, the broken pieces of an accidentally-smashed pot would be carefully picked up, reassembled and then glued together with lacquer inflected with a very luxuriant gold powder. There would be no attempt to disguise the damage, the point was to render the fault-lines beautiful and strong. Even today, in kintsugi these precious veins of gold are there to emphasize that breaks have a philosophically-rich merit all of their own.

You see, over the centuries, Zen masters developed an argument that pots, cups and bowls that had become damaged shouldn’t simply be neglected or thrown away. They should continue to attract our respect and attention and be repaired with enormous care – this process symbolizing a reconciliation with the flaws and accidents of time.

Here, in Zen, we see a practice that could “operationalize” professed Christian commitments. God knows we need it. It’s a faith, in its most popularized forms, that is obsessed with talking a good game of generalizations, but is short on practices when the rubber hits the road.

What good is it to believe:

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

If you can’t celebrate the beauty you’ve experienced with your own two eyes? Or if people have an obsessive need to not let you live in your truth?

It’s as if Grace cries out:
“Look at the beautiful gold lines in that exquisite vessel!”

And all we can say is:
“Yeah, but it was cracked! Who’s to blame??!”

What’s the point of filling our cracks with gold if the “keepers of grace” just go on and on and on about moment the housekeeper dropped the vase, or how the kids knocked over the tea bowls, or that you got mad and threw the good china while you screamed?

What’s the good of a faith that only offers a grace that you have to promise you’ll never enjoy?

What’s the good of a community that believes they have the right to expect your apologies in the present for long past repented of deeds?

My wife’s aunt still regularly reminds her, and her sisters, of the terrible time she had to babysit them all when they were all under the age 6. It’s almost a holiday ritual to hear the story as Auntie laughs and reminds us once again of how happy she is that she never had children.

Friends.

My wife and her sisters are in their 40’s.
It might be time for someone to look inside and let it go.

It might be time for you and me too.

It’s this obtuse, punitive, shame driven complex that drives far too much of our own so-called Religion of Grace. And it’s time we stop giving this a pass because of its “good intentions”.

The Teacher in Ecclesiastes writes that God has put eternity in our hearts, and yet we still can’t fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Maybe it’s because we aren’t supposed to get it?

We’ve got this whole universe inside and here we are obsessed with what’s “out there”. You’re not actually designed to grasp all that.

Maybe we’re supposed to turn in on the eternity we each carry in our selves and do the work of understanding our individual selves?

Not God, not others, no. Just our little ‘ol Self.

No more speculative abstraction and generalization about some ultimate being that may or may not be.

No more analysis, scrutiny, and domination of others.

Just a life of honest inquiry about the conundrum for which we are each responsible…the person who you see in the mirror.

What would happen if we stopped relating to each other in any other way?

What if we discovered that we’re all simply pilgrims and, while we may walk alongside each other, each journey isn’t the same and can’t be the same, so stop trying to insist on making everyone the same?

We’d be free, safe, and full of love.