Everything Has Value

Broken Things

“Often we try to repair broken things in such a way as to conceal the repair and make it ‘good as new.’ But the tea masters understood that by repairing the broken bowl with the distinct beauty of radiant gold, they could instead employ a ‘better than new’ aesthetic. They understood that a conspicuous, artful repair actually adds value. Because after mending, the bowl’s unique fault lines were transformed into little rivers of gold that post repair were even more special because the bowl could then resemble nothing but itself.”

Teresita Fernandez

          As I have mentioned before, I have a small collection of broken things—a giraffe with no lower jaw, an alabaster woman whose head was broken off, a green swordfish planter with a cracked sword, and this little mid-century sugar bowl and creamer. One is missing its lid, and the other has a very tiny crack. My friend, Andy, brought them back from his family’s lake house in Indiana, saying, “No one wants them.” Those are always loaded words for me. Besides, they are funky and weird shaped—how could I pass that up?

          Broken things remind me of Leonard Cohen’s lines, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Also, of Mark Nepo’s words about a baby bird’s need to break out of its shell, “Every crack is also an opening.” The fact that something is cracked or chipped or broken is not a good reason to scrap the whole thing—whether we’re talking about an alabaster woman or a real human being. In fact, the most valuable part may turn out to be what’s in the crack. The gold is found in the flaws, and not in the lovely finished and perfect lines.

          I don’t know any human beings who do not have multiple cracks in them. Some of us are walking around as glued together pieces. And that’s okay. With every crack, with each chip, we learned something about ourselves and the world. The light shines into those cracks and is reflected right back out even brighter. We can see that there are rivers of shining gold, even in this broken world. We are renewed and resemble nothing more than our true selves. Vessels of great value.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane