Beauty and Brokenness
I wrote this poem as a memorial for my brother. He lived his life between the extremes of much beauty and much brokenness. I think all of us can find ourselves in these verses somewhere.
Beauty and Brokenness
Broken
Beautiful
Which of these tell our stories?
We long for one,
it is the other that answers.
Which is our lot, our recompense;
the experience of earth dwellers
gift or punishment of the Divine?
Some experience one, yet see the other.
Wonder even among pain;
emptiness even among bounty.
Persuasion, scorekeeping, case building,
mercy seeking, wishing, whining,
aggression, capitulation -
Tactics we use to buy our way out of one to the other;
Or, maybe, just hoping to stake a permanent claim.
We celebrate the beauty.
We grieve the broken.
In ourselves, our world, and the other.
There are those who for their special vision - some say affliction -
ride the peaks and valleys of the contradictions.
The beauty so very wondrous;
the broken so very awful.
He was one of those!
Most moderate and balance;
finding their way to a place of tempered expectation.
Let’s just call it numbness.
Grasping for a few sure things,
groping for the illusion of control.
Don’t seek much beauty.
Don’t get much brokenness.
What if they coexist,
in reliance on each other,
for understanding, for completeness?
Naming, owning, embracing our brokenness;
engendering a deeper wonder of beauty.
The mystery of beauty finding its humble origins in brokenness.
“Its all good” the response of those who allow themselves to see no brokenness.
“Its not worth living” the conclusion of those who can no longer find the beauty.
Both are ever-present, even if momentarily unseen;
integral parts of each other.
How shall we then live?
Seeking one, shunning the other?
Numbing ourselves so both become harmless?
Or, present
to the power of both
to shape us, move us, transform and unite us?
Travel the inescapable road
paved with the interconnected stones of beauty and brokenness
through vulnerability, surrender and compassion.
