Healing with Gold

Death is a funny thing. It’s something that happens all of the time, yet for the fortunate, it doesn’t seem like it happens at all. It invades our lives as quickly as it arrives and leaves a scar that we can’t see, but we know that will be there forever. Perhaps it’s this mystery that has me caught up in a suspension. I can’t just yet figure out how to feel, react, cope or understand why death happened to my friend Joe. I found myself asking ‘why?’ and saying ‘it’s too soon’, trying to justify with my peers what happened and ultimately going through the motions as if it didn’t.

And perhaps it’s why I’m writing this entry. To stop the madness and convey what it is I feel at this moment, in a way that I probably can’t express in real life. Not just yet, anyway. As the thought of Joe’s passing slowly sinks in, it’s made me [and others] acutely aware of our mortality; my friend Josiah said it best, ‘How can someone [Joe] so alive, be dead’? The loss of our brother sweeps in with such quickness that it literally stuns the soul. Yes there has been tear shed here and there, or a breakdown behind closed doors; but quite frankly, stunned. 

I had begun an entry a few days ago, and as with all things, God put a pause in finishing that entry for a reason. It’s become clear that in this state of mourning can I express it better than before.  Without avoiding, minimizing, rationalizing or substituting the pain that I feel towards the loss of my friend, I can only write a small message of hope within this text.

Kintsugi (金継ぎ^?) (Japanese: golden joinery) or Kintsukuroi (金繕い^?) (Japanese: golden repair) is the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a lacquer resin sprinkled with powdered gold.^[1]

I saw this image a few weeks ago and what caught my attention was the curious way gold was used to mend broken pottery. Moreso, artisans deliberately broke their urn-fired creations with full intent to rebirth them using this technique. Like death, God shapes and casts our lives in a way that is as mysterious as the time death chooses to come; I’d even venture to say that there are times in our lives when God deliberately breaks us down, so that he can put us back together with His hands, the hands that originally created us, using the finest gold ever created. 

For me, each life that Joe has touched can be considered an example of Kintsugi; of being broken and being healed. I shudder as I write this down, I know that God is swaying the mightiest mountains to forge the gold that heals us all, with my brother Joe, with his unrelenting laughter, by His side in heaven. He is home.