Kin-tsugi

KIN-TSUGI is a Japanese word which means, in literal English translation, "golden joinery." It refers to the craft of repairing broken pottery with a compound of ki-urushi (raw lacquer) and pure gold powder. The result, while obviously highlighting the former damage, is always unique, and almost always beautiful. Blake Gopnik explains the history of the craft in a Washington Post article: 

The story of kintsugi may have begun in the late 15th century, when the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent a damaged Chinese tea bowl back to China to be fixed. It returned held together with ugly metal staples, launching Japanese craftsmen on a quest for a new form of repair that could make a broken piece look as good as new, or better. Japanese collectors developed such a taste for kintsugi that some were accused of deliberately breaking prized ceramics, just to have them mended in gold.

How fascinating that it is considered art—and indeed beautiful, desired art—to repair something in such a way that the repair is what draws the eye. This is so unlike our way of thinking (my mind turns to Mr. Bean's "repair" of Whistler's Mother). We want our repairs, be they rhinoplasty or fender work, to appear as if nothing has been changed or damaged. 
Yet could there be value in our scars? I love the way Leonard Cohen put it:

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh. It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat.

Jesus was not ashamed of His scars, freely extending His hands to the disciple who doubted He had risen from the dead. I should be willing to show my scars as well. They do not tell anyone anything they wouldn't or shouldn't know. They tell others I am a flawed, broken individual. Yet I have been—and am being—repaired. And my scars are glorious.
—W.S. 

"No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!"

   It's one of my favorite movie lines, from the 1964 James Bond movie Goldfinger. It resonates with me because it is so matter-of-fact. And it also has meaning because it sums up an important spiritual truth.
   So many Christians live tiresome, defeated lives because of one basic reason: they are trying to live a tireless, victorious life. Yet whether you try for a week, a year, or a lifetime, you'll never do it.
   The reason is simple, albeit easily avoidable. No one can please God all the time. Or even most of the time.
   But isn't that what God expects? Isn't the whole point of the Bible, from the Ten Commandments to the Beatitudes, that we should behave and operate in a way that will please God? Isn't that why we're punished by God sometimes for doing wrong, and rewarded for doing right? Shouldn't we, like Agent 007, be asking, "Do you expect me to always do good, to be kind to animals, read my Bible and brush my teeth?"
    The answer to that question, if properly asked of God, is as jarring and as final as Goldfinger's answer to Mr. Bond. And that's because it is the same answer:

"No, I expect you to die."

    For that is the secret to living a life that pleases God. It is exchanging our soiled, pitiful life for that of the spotless, powerful Savior. It is to surrender (something Bond would never do, I agree) in order to win. As Matthew quotes Jesus:

"He who has found his life will lose it, and

he who has lost his life for My sake will find it."

   So what does God expect of us? Good choices? Living right? Nope. He expects us to die. Every day. Every moment. To give all we are aware of that is ours to Him.

   Why? 

   To please Him? No. Who is pleased by being given what they deserve? 

   To get into heaven? No. That ticket requires a different payment, and has already been paid anyway.

   To make life easier here? No, although it should make your life more meaningful.

Allow me to offer an answer in the words of the always thoughtful C. S. Lewis:

"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you know that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of--throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself!"

—Wayne S. C. S. Lewis quote is from Mere Christianity.

The Stairway to Heaven

   During our recent visit to the island of Oahu, Hawaii, my wife and I were being squired about the island by our resident friend, Bonnie Sanders, and her two oldest children, Tabby and Corbin. After taking the H3 Interstate (yes, interstate—I have no idea) through a tunnel in one of the mountains, we popped out on the other side. While the view to the left of us was commanding (looking down onto Kaneohe Bay), my eyes were distracted by the large and precipitous mountain we had just transected. Suddenly, I saw something that seemed to defy reason.

   It was a stairway—a very narrow stairway—beginning somewhere below the roadway and angling erratically up the large face of the mountain before disappearing in the clouds.
   Our host Paul, an Army surgeon, told us later as he reviewed the video that the stairway is called the "Stairway to Heaven." First built in 1943, the stairway allowed workers to first build and then man military radio equipment on the peak. It was replaced by a metal stairway (of nearly 4,000 steps!) in the 1950s. The military installation was decommissioned in 1987, and the trail was closed. Yet the occasional intrepid hiker will attempt the summit.
   Sometimes my spiritual pilgrimage seems to resemble what a climb like this must feel like. No matter where I look, only stairs remain—either up into the mist or down into the gloom. It seems I may never reach the top, while the bottom seems to grudgingly, slowly drop away. For days I never move at all.
   But my theology tells me a different story. It says that, at the moment I realized my ability to climb was futile, and confessed as much, the Master of the mountain took me from the precarious and never-ending climb and placed me at the summit. It is still misty, and I can't really see what's there yet, but I am safe, in a different place.  A different kingdom, as it were.
   So why do I sometimes wake up and think I am on the path again, trying to scale the unscalable?
   Good question.
—Wayne S.
(Click picture to enlarge. For more info, see here.)

Afraid of strength?

   Perhaps I'm stronger than I think.
   Perhaps I am even afraid of my strength, and turn it against myself, thus making myself weak. Making myself secure. Making myself guilty. 
   Perhaps I am most afraid of the strength of God in me. Perhaps I would rather be guilty and weak in myself, than strong in Him I cannot understand.
—Thomas Merton, in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

The Gospel According to my iPod

I love music.

Way back when (and I mean way back, in the early 70s) I even played music, dragging my guitar and my own songs (as well as Cat Stevens's and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s) all around.

I like all kinds of music. I know, that sort of comment usually prompts a rolling of the eyes, and a suspicion that whoever is speaking really doesn’t know all that much about music. But my Ipod has over 14,500 songs, from over 5200 albums, representing over 3800 artists (from ABBA to Zappa, as I like to say), and I can tell you something about each one of them. I have songs in Latin, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Russian and Italian. as well as a lot of jazz and classical, which have no words. I think music is the soundtrack of life, and a world without music would be far less rich.

One of the nice things about portable music players is the ability to shuffle music. In shuffle mode, the player simply plays the songs in random order. For someone with a lot of music, this affords me the chance to hear tracks that I haven’t chosen lately. It’s always a treat to hear something that I haven’t heard in a while.

Occasionally, there is a sublime juxtaposition of two songs which, taken separately, might say one thing but, taken together, say something else altogether. Recently, I heard something like that.

Suzanne Vega, an English major turned pop storyteller, has many interesting songs to her credit, some bright and optimistic, but many dark and mysterious. One that falls in-between is the song Caramel, from her album Nine Objects of Desire.

The song is pretty straightforward. The singer is telling someone that, for reasons unknown, she must refuse a love relationship.

It won't do
to dream of caramel,
to think of cinnamon
and long for you.

It won't do
to stir a deep desire,
to fan a hidden fire
that can never burn true.

I like how the reason for her decision is never revealed. What is it? Race? Religion? Age? Most likely, most people’s thought goes to adultery—either she, the other person or both are married to someone else.

But whatever the story, she has made a decision, although the song’s tone seems to give the listener reason to believe her resolve is perhaps not exactly rock-solid. Nevertheless, she has made a good choice—for now at least—although it was obviously a hard one.

I like Suzanne Vega’s voice. I like the song, too, so it was a treat to hear it. No less a treat was the next song in the shuffle. Lari White is the daughter of a rock-and-roll guitarist and the granddaughter of a Primitive Baptist preacher (which curiously, allowed no musical instruments in church) and she draws deeply upon both men with her gutsy, gospel-choir powered version of There is Power in the Blood from the soundtrack of the movie The Apostle. You know the words:

Would you be free
from the burden of sin?
There's power in the blood,
power in the blood;
Would you o'er evil
a victory win?
There's wonderful
power in the blood.

It occurred to me the proximity of these two songs was providential. Every day, we make choices. Some are easy. Some, like the one described by Ms. Vega, are harder. Some seem impossible. It is then that followers of Christ have something extra. The power of the blood. Simply put, it is a power, a gift given of God and within us, that lifts us higher than we can go on our own, and allows us to do, or do without. And to discover that a hard choice can be more than loss, but gain.

It's grace. It's growing. It's being saved all over again every day (not positionally, but practically). And it's part of the real, warty you in this real, rocky world. Grace is not needed in a sinless world.

Here are performances of the two songs. I would encourage you, if you like them, to buy the studio versions.

Seeing the tables and chairs

A few verses in Proverbs, chapter 3, seem to offer an interesting insight into how certain people view the world, and sin in particular. They read as follows:

       "But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, that shines brighter and brighter until the full day. The way of the wicked is like darkness; they do not know over what they stumble."

Only the cruelest, most adolescent among us would find humor in a blind person trying to negotiate a living room without benefit of cane or directions. So why are we surprised when the spiritually blind among us trip over or break things? If anything, we should be more surprised, more dismayed, and even more baffled when the spiritually sighted trip over something that they can actually see. That, to me, seems to be the essence of grace and the promise of sanctification: not that we will never stumble or break things, but that, as the light gets brighter, we will recognize more and more what we must avoid.

In a letter entitled 1st John, the author says, in verses 6-8 of the first chapter, "If we say we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the light as He himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us."

So for those among us who are spiritually sighted, the challenge is not to save the china or avoid the cat's tail--it is to have our "eyes" open enough that, at best, we avoid some obstacles, and, in general, confess our "clumsiness" (sin) when we stumble.

But there is more to sight than that. While we may see the obstacles, we may also see something else the blind cannot see: the table, set for a feast, and the feast-giver Himself, holding an outstretched hand to an empty chair.

W.S.

Feast of Simon the Pharisee by Peter Paul Rubens,oil on canvas, ca. 1618, 

189×254.5 cm, Ermitage, Sankt Petersburg. Click to enlarge.