Kintsugi – Mr G's Ponderings

9/11 Kintsugi

The 11^th September 2001 is forever marked as one of the darkest days in the journey of humanity on this earth.
That day, I was bidden to turn on the television news and I witnessed the second of the planes flying directly into the second of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. The sense of horror was deep within me. This was an unbelievable act of demonic terrorism which destroyed not only many innocent lives but also changed forever our perception of what evil human beings are capable of. It brought back the atrocity of World War Two and Nazism. This time, the perpetrators were an Islamist extremist network called al-Qaeda who planned the attacks on both New York and Washington from Afghanistan.
The first thing that came to my mind was a line from the poem by W.B.Yeats, Easter 1916 – All changed,changed utterly.

And so it has turned out because so much has divided humanity since. The experience of the demonic and the hatred, hurt, prejudice and distrust between people are only part of the legacy of that day and event. What is happening in the Middle East today is only one example of an evil gripping our race.

But, as always, there is also an opposite reaction and view.

One of the sources of prayer and reflection that I turn to is one provided by the Jesuitresource.org which is part of Xavier University in Cincinnati. (It provides resources in Jesuit education and Ignatian Spirituality.)

On its prayer website, I came across a number of prayers and reflections relating to 9/11 and its aftermath.

I was particularly touched by this reflective prayer from a Hindu source which seems to me to put into words what many felt that day and since:

As glass shattered, cement crumbled and steel melted in the inferno of senseless cruelty, the heart of humanity screamed in anguish. September 11, 2001 — a day when the evil potential of misguided ego was again exposed. While our landmarks collapsed in a cloud of smoke and debris, beneath a surge of shock and rage, something awakened in our hearts: compassion. Suddenly, our worldly obsessions faded away as we cried for the plight of others and were deeply affected by our “remen’s sacrifice.” In memory of this tragic day, let us join hands and pray for God’s grace to heal, unite and empower us to serve with love.

– Radhanath Swami

This sense of moving beyond the destruction and brokenness into a new hope of love is strongly prayed in these words. It is also what drew me to the illustration I have used above. It is a piece of glass sculpture by my dear artist friend, Kay Gibbons.

It is a piece which began as an attempt to fuse blue and green glass together. In the process it broke into 3. So she “played around, had fun, and created something quite different.”

The process in doing this she describes as, “This panel has been produced in a ‘kintsugi’ fashion, after the Japanese art of bonding broken ceramics with gold.
Beauty in fracture..
Broken beauty..

It struck me that this resonates with the prayer above. The aftermath of 9/11 could be seen as a spiritually human ‘kintsugi’. Bonding broken people with the gold of repentance and love and with determination to work for a beauty which though broken is nevertheless bonded in hope and as the prayer says, filled with compassion and love.

I have no solutions to what we can do to heal our broken world but another prayer on the Xavier University resource site puts it so movingly and offers an amazing way forward if we would but take it.

One Loving Family

Loving God of Peace: On this anniversary of unbelievable sorrow, comfort those who mourn, and guide our hearts toward healing and hope. Remind us of the love of Christ, love which leapt over cultural and ethnic boundaries to feed the hungry, seek the lost and care for the least. Make of Your children, no matter how we name You, one human family, bound together in the work of justice and peace-making. Make us one with the Light that shines in the darkness and illumines a path toward understanding and reconciliation. Let love be our genuine call.

Amen.

– Rev. Dr. Jacqueline Lewis

[Mr G. 13th September 2026]

Kintsugi

We come as broken shards
to be pieced together –
our sharp edges,
patiently softened
and held by the glowing flux
which traces what has gone before,
transforming regret into strength and beauty.

Not mending but creating anew…

[Piers Northam]

Kintsugi is the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with seams of gold. When the brokenness is repaired, the object becomes more beautiful and unique than it was before. Instead of hiding the scars, it makes a feature of them.
The word Kintsugi means Gold (Kint) and to Mend (Sugi)

One of the leading artists promoting and teaching Kintsugi is Makoto Fijimura.
He gives his insight into the meaning of Kintsugi in a video he recorded as part of his programme known as Culture Care Creative, of which he is the founder.

In seeking to mend what is broken, this is the opposite to our prevailing disposable culture. Instead of throwing away and buying new, it is about valuing what you have.
Makoto describes the mending not as ‘fixing’ but as a redemptive journey which leads to a new creation.
He tells of the aftermath of an earthquake in Japan. Homes were destroyed but the concern of many was to mend their bowls. Bowls were all that was left the mending became a ‘safe zone’ which has the power to heal people.
In the mending you stand between repairing and creating. The imperfect becomes a symbol of the beauty of broken things.

We live with trauma, he says, and we are looking for healing in the midst of all that.Never more true than in our own times of conflict and destructive brokeness.

There is a physical process but it belies a kind of spiritual meaning.
At a popular level, the British TV Programme, Repair Shop´ in which people bring favourite broken objects which are steeped in memory, involves a kind of Kintsugi. The Team restore and renew what is presented to them because they are skilled in particular crafts. However, it is a work of love which is fed by the stories behind the damaged objects.
Old memories are reshaped and recreated into a new ones. Often we can be moved to tears, and certainly the ones seeking repairs are, because this is the real renewal.

In Kingsugi, the bowl or object seems just like a broken bowl but the cracks are filled with gold – what Makoto calls a gold river running through it.
Makoto emphasises healing and he draws from that a Gospel message.

Christ, he says, came not just to fix us but to restore us to create something new, which is more valuable than what we began with.

Redemption is re-making us in the image of Christ and the result of that is the river of Gold that reconnects us is God Himself holding us.

Kintsugi = God mends