From the time she was a toddler, she saw beauty in broken things. She just saw things differently. We saw broken things. She saw wholeness and potential.
She loved to fix things, or, as she explained it, to help them become whole. And there was something to this. She didn't just fix things, she made them better. When she was done, the brokenness wasn't just gone, it was transformed.
A broken cup became a mosaic that had been in the cup all along, but had never been allowed to express itself.
A broken door became a wheel barrel. We didn't even know we needed a wheel barrel, but now we used it constantly, far more than we ever used the door it used to be, hanging sadly from a single hinge by the back shed.
When a jug lost its handle, it miraculously turned into a flower pot, and we were left wondering why anybody would put a handle on a flower pot in the first place.
By the time she was nine years old, she was fixing living things. Puppies who had tangled with porcupines. Kittens who had trapped themselves in pipes. A newborn colt who became tangled in a fence. The animals were not just rescued, they were rejuvenated. Or as she said, made whole.
I asked her once how she did this. She was eleven. She said, "I don't make them better, I just help them see what they really are. They don't remember, so I remind them."
When she was twelve, she graduated to humans. I remember the date because it was her twelfth birthday.
Her cousin had fallen from a tree. He shouldn't have been climbing trees in the first place. He had a bad left hand and couldn't grip. But he did it anyway and he fell.
His screams brought in every available adult. It was easy to see his arm was broken. But she just walked over to him. "You're okay," she said to him. "Your arm is fine. You are healed."
He stopped crying. His arm was straight. He walked away holding her hand in his hand, the same hand that hadn't worked since he was born and two minutes before, had been attached to a broken arm.
I asked her how she healed him. "I didn't do anything," she said. "I just reminded him that he wasn't hurt, not really. His arm was strong and beautiful. He just forgot. I reminded him."
This was thirty years ago now. I'm not sure I have all of my facts right. Things were a lot different then. Do you remember? Garbage was everywhere, the climate was a disaster, famine and disease were widespread. Many people thought we couldn't survive the decade. It was very bad, or so we thought.
But she saw it differently. Where we saw despair, she saw hope. Where we saw trash, she saw beauty. Where we saw war, she saw people who wanted to love. We had forgotten what the world could be. All she did was remind us.
Spiritual questions:
- What have you forgotten about your wholeness? About our wholeness?
- Do you remember now?
This is one of the Parables for the Spiritual but not Religious Series.
May 2, 2019 - This was written at the Roundhouse Writing Group, Santa Cruz, Guatemala. The writing prompt for the session was: The beauty of broken things.
The photograph of the broken cup is by Joanna Bourne and made available through Flickr and Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.
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