Mending Our Brokenness with Rivers of Gold

     Ever since I met artist Makoto Fujimura I’ve been longing for “rivers of gold" to fill the cracks in my life that formed when my six-year-old granddaughter Lydia died. She left us a year ago after a mysterious seizure, and I still ache as I recall her dimpled grin.
     Fujimura, a Japanese-American, showed me this Fifteenth Century bowl that was used during tea ceremonies. It was shattered, possibly from an earthquake, but family members held onto the fragments for centuries “to behold because they told the story of those who had used it,” the New York City artist explained.
     Then in the Nineteenth Century, a Kintsugi “master worker of mending,” pieced the shards together with veins of gold in what Fujimura calls “a redemptive restoration. It’s now worth more than it was before it was broken.” And more beautiful, I observed, because of its shimmering rivulets.     
     Fujimura likens this restoration to what happened in his family after 9/11 when they narrowly escaped death, were left homeless, and needed piecing together. Gradually, streams of gold flowed into their fractures, and they healed.     
     The artist says that no matter what earthquakes shatter us, we can mend. “Jesus is the Kintsugi master.” Through him, we “move into the future, and the wounds we can’t dismiss become priceless rivers of gold.”     
     Which encourages me that while Lydia skips along Heaven’s golden streets, my wounds can turn into priceless rivers of gold here as I move into the future. 

My granddaughter Lydia, and a closeup of the rivers of gold.