Pastoral Ponderings—Swamps and Kintsugi
Part of our relaxation this week in Williamsburg has been geocaching along some of the trails we’ve been hiking. I’ve not usually thought much about swamps when Colonial Williamsburg has come to mind, but I found out that though Jamestown just down the road, part of “Virginia’s Historic Triangle,” though the first permanent English settlement, was not destined to greatness due to its being nestled in a swampy area.
Though I grew up in FL with the TV series “Flipper” set in the Everglades ever in the back of my mind, I’ve always thought of swamps more as places of decay and mess that I’d rather avoid. Yet it turns out that swamps are not only one of the most abundant biomes around, that it is a place of decay also means it is a place of abundant renewal of life, that I didn’t really realize until walking along these swampy trails, hearing the abundance of birdsong, and passing a group of excited birders with their cameras and binoculars eager to gab about their many avian sightings.
And in God’s ever amazing providence, I also stumbled this week across an art form I’d heard about long ago, but that I never took notice of, but that is now fascinating me, which goes along with swamps and renewal (at least in my twisted mind), a Japanese art form known as kintsugi. Kintsugi is the art of mending broken pottery, or the art of creating beauty out of brokenness. It is also built on a philosophy of accepting what is, and has been a part of finding or even creating beauty again after loss and grief.
You will likely hear more of these intertwining themes from me in the coming months, as these kind of “God-sighting” inspirations tend to bleed over into what I do. Makes me want to ask the question, where do we find places of decay in our lives that we just want to turn our backs on, rather that seeking to create beauty out of the places of brokenness? Or why do we find these kinds of places in our lives leading us to question God, rather than seeing God’s wisdom, as a golden thread throughout the Bible, just like the golden threads in kintsugi, showing us that God’s grace is sufficient for us, that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness?
I’m betting we all have these places of brokenness in our lives. Can we be open to the new thing God might be doing in our lives to help us create beauty in these broken places?
Doing God’s art together- Pastor Jim