Kintsugi, A beautiful scar | Blog

When our bodies are wounded, when we’re physically wounded – like when we cut ourselves, or even when we break an arm or a leg, we know our body will repair itself. We may put on a bandage – we may even have to wear a plaster that makes life difficult for a while. But we know we can look forward to a time when we can take off the bandage or plaster, and our body will have repaired the wound. Perhaps there’s a scar, but after a time that, too, usually fades. They say you can’t remember physical pain – otherwise women would stop having babies after the first one!

It’s different when we are wounded mentally, or emotionally. We can’t use plasters or bandages on an emotional wound, and sometimes we remember all too vividly what caused the pain. Often, we can’t forget it, no matter how we try. Sometimes, we even go back to what caused the pain, and go over it, over and over again. Mental wounds can take a long time to get over. We might even worry that we will never be the same again.

Well, perhaps we never will be the same again. But perhaps we will be better. Broken perhaps, but stronger. Wounded but healed. Like the Japanese art of Kintsugi. Kintsugi literally means ‘golden repair.’ It’s a way of mending broken ceramics, using a sort of glue made of powdered gold, mixed with lacquer. The lacquer runs into the breaks in the ceramic and binds the break together. The breaks themselves turn into channels of gold. The gold lacquer emphasises, rather than hides, that the vessel has been broken. You could say that the gold lacquer repair forms ‘a beautiful scar.’

And a golden repair not only makes the cup or dish useful again, it makes it beautiful, too. If we, too, can accept that we will never be what we were before we were damaged, before we were wounded, we might be able to accept we can be something else – something that now has a different kind of beauty or value. We can be precious in a way we never were before.

Elle Weaver

Watch a video by Revd Andy Birks