There is nothing so whole as a broken heart

October 31, 2018

“There is nothing so whole as a broken heart”
-Kotzker Rebbe

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much pain one heart can hold.

We each have our own individual pain, and then we each share in the collective pain, that of our communities and of the world.

This past Shabbat, the pain inflicted on the Jewish community of Pittsburgh ricocheted out to the Jewish community at large and to our many allies. The horror, the disgust, the blatant disrespect for human life, all of it came flooding into our minds, hearts and souls. How is it possible to harbor so much hatred? How is it possible to be so deluded and cut off from the Source of Life, that one would commit such atrocities?

I have no answer.

Just a broken heart.
An utterly broken heart.

The famous song from the 1960s peace movement continues to play as background music in my mind, “When will we ever learn, when we will ever learn?”

I want to be alone, to escape this madness, and simultaneously I want nothing more than connection, to connect to community, to others who also have an utterly broken heart.

Unable to leave my home, and in a vain attempt to numb my mind or perhaps in an attempt to find solace, I turn to my Facebook feed, hoping to find some kindness, some goodness in humanity.

And I do.

I am astounded as friends post about flowers being left by their synagogue’s front door, workmen coming to their homes, noticing their mezuzah and offering words of support and comfort, thousands of dollars raised by the Muslim community to help cover the costs of burial expenses. Community organizing and fundraising, interfaith vigil after interfaith vigil being planned all the around the country.

There is so much good to be seen.

I imagine all of our broken hearts searching out each other’s brokenness. Those sparks of light within each one of us, scanning the darkness, desperately reaching out for those golden sparks, those glimmers of hope that can be found in one another. Searching for those golden lighthouses in each other that beam back to the Ultimate Lighthouse.

I am reminded of the Japanese technique known as kintsugi, translated as golden joinery. “Kintsugi is the centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a special lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. This repair method celebrates each artifact’s unique history by emphasizing its fractures and breaks instead of hiding or disguising them. Kintsugi often makes the repaired piece even more beautiful than the original, revitalizing it with new life.” (https://mymodernmet.com/kintsugi-kintsukuroi/)

With each act of kindness, with each word of comfort, with each squeeze of a hand, I imagine our individual hearts and our collective heart receiving a brush stroke of gold. Infusions of light, one after another, until our hearts slowly begin to mend, sealed with gold.

It is true that our hearts will never be the same.

And it is also true that our hearts, when painted with the golden light of Divinity found within each of us, will slowly mend, creating a different kind of whole.

There is nothing so whole as a broken heart.

With much love and hope,
Amy