Balm of Gold
There are inevitable contractions and cracks that come along with this human life. Pressurized times can create hairline fractures, and intense passages often lead to shifts in the foundation.
We had a cold snap lately that warped one of our windowsills. There’s also a place in one of the baseboards that sticks out now from the house heaving in the cold like a great ship on frigid waters.
We too, are changed by the pressures and movements of life that are, all too often, out of our control. Regardless of the tools we have or the practices we use to set our compass and chart our course, life has a mind of it’s own. No one gets out unscathed or unaffected.
In these formative times, I found myself spontaneously remembering Kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken or chipped pottery with gold. This art is built on the idea that in embracing fractures, we create an even stronger, more beautiful piece of unique art. As a philosophy, it frames breakage and repair as part of an objects history, instead of as something to conceal.
As humans we tend to see the cracks as unfortunate, and life-wear as a problem. We try to smooth over or even hide the impact of life as though it never happened.
There’s a billion dollar industry that aims to keep us looking youthful forever to maintain an illusion that we haven’t been worn by living. Strangely, we expect to remain untouched, inside and out, and strive for an unreachable ideal, but life does live through us for better or worse.
I’m beginning to think about the impact and wear of human life as inevitable—not as a problem, or an indicator that I’m doing something wrong. I’m entertaining the idea that those cracks and fissures, that wear, may even be an opening for something beautiful—golden even.
What would it mean to bring gold into the cracks?
A golden balm of mercy, compassion, and love. Could we see any breakage as a space of availability for grace, for a luminosity that comes not from us but through us?
Might the wear and tear of life be offered up, not for erasure, or fixing, but for a gold-blessing from grace, or God, from the Source of this life?
Might we fill any achy cracks with the light of our hearts and our highest ideals: love, beauty, truth, goodness, grace.
What would happen, I wonder, if we stopped making ourselves wrong for the way the vessel is impacted by the voyage, or for how the home weathers the storm, and instead celebrate our resilience and our unfolding story?
What cracks, breakage, or dark spaces might you fill with gold?
This is your invitation to paint, dust, sprinkle, or smoosh some gold in those place in your life and in yourself —only you know where.
May this beautiful permission and acknowledgment of the real-ride sound out as a blessing for all creatures adrift on this great ocean of life.
Remember your luminous nature. These tender and nourishing guided journeys are ideal for soothing the nervous system, resting the body, and comforting the soul.
