#kitsugi

“It won’t always be this way.”

It’s one of the most important things that anyone ever told me. That the worst times in life, the worst things in life, aren’t permanent.

That the worst times in life, the worst things in life, are seasons.

Like seasons, they may take their sweet time getting here. And they may linger far too long. It seems like the worse they are, the longer they linger.

Or maybe it just feels that way.

But no matter how long a season drags on, eventually it gives way to the next season.

For every season, especially the worst ones, there are two questions. How do we get through it? And who will we be when we do?

So how do we get through it? No matter how you answer that, or how you want to look at that, it all really boils down to one simple question. Asked to each of us – by God.

“Do you want to do it by yourself, or would you like some help?”

The answer matters. Because how we go through it, that is who we go through it with, tells us the answer to the second question. Who will we be when we do?

Going through it on our own? It’s a recipe for being broken. And for being left on our own to pick up the pieces.

Going through it with God? It’s a recipe for being able to handle anything that happens. Even being broken. Knowing that we’re not alone. Knowing that Someone will help us pick up the pieces, that Someone will put us back together.

This is the point that Jesus is making in today’s Gospel. That no matter how we have been broken, if we’re going through it all with God, God will put us back together.

Not as if nothing had ever happened. But put back together with the evidence of God’s grace writ into every seam, every break, every crack.

Until no one can mistake the hand of God at work.

And we are stronger for having been broken.

Dress by @gogokbootz

Hair by @gogokbootz

I'm hollering. This took so long to make. Started as me doodling on my phone in class, and now is the second fully rendered piece I've made on my phone using nothing but my finger.

Yee Sookyung, Translated vase, 2011, 

Ceramic shards, Epoxy, 24k Gold Leaf, 

63 x 63 x 64 cm

Kintsugi

Kintsugi (金継ぎ , "golden joinery") is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with gold. 

When Kagome realizes her relationship with Inuyasha isn't what she wants, she leaves the village in search of a purpose. On her journey, she reunites with an old friend and discovers that even broken things can be made beautiful again.

(A Post-Canon SessKag one-shot for Day 6 of SessKag Week 2020)

The heart beats radiate out,

earthquakes from the epicentre of my being.

With my ear pressed to the mattress,

I hear it rumble. The pulse

of my body; the proof of my living, my

breathing.

Sometimes it feels like everything I touch

shatters. Like the magnitude of my heart

is too strong for anyone or anything to handle.

Sometimes I hold myself back from holding

just in case I make a break by accident;

I am not a master of mending - I cannot seal

your cracks with gold, you have to learn how

yourself.

Like I did.

That's why no one can ever tell

how often my whole self - body and soul -

has splintered under the force of my own

undeniable

existence.

The rumbles cease; the aftershocks,

the followers and the precursors

to the main event - so quiet now

they bleed into the history of my being

even as I seal the wounds shut.

No wonder my hands shake; they know their work

will be in vain.

But the history of every war

is written in the hand of the victors,

and my stories will be told,

even after the earth reclaims me