Kintsugi restoration as metaphor for moral resiliency

“Kintsugi...’golden repair’... is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage [with golden adhesive]... it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi

h/t to lecture on moral resilience by Cynda H. Rushton, PhD, MSN, RN (https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Resilience-Transforming-Suffering-Healthcare/dp/0190619260)

See also Bessel van der Kolk M.D.'s work on Healing of Trauma
https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748

Empathy: The Human Connection to Patient Care

A New Normal: Ten Things I’ve Learned About Trauma

A New Normal: Ten Things I’ve Learned About Trauma

By Catherine Woodiwiss 1-13-2014

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I wasn’t really expecting painful things to happen to me.

I knew that pain was a part of life, but — thanks in part to a peculiar blend of “God-has-a-plan” Southern roots, a suburban “Midwestern nice” upbringing, and a higher education in New England stoicism — I managed to skate by for quite some time without having to acknowledge it.

After a handful of traumas in the last five years, things look different now. Trauma upends everything we took for granted, including things we didn’t know we took for granted. And many of these realities I wish I’d known when I first encountered them. So, while the work of life and healing continues, here are ten things I’ve learned about trauma along the way....

Atul Gawande: What Matters in the End

Atul Gawande: What Matters in the End
“What does a good day look like?” That question — when asked of both terminally-ill and healthy people — has transformed Atul Gawande’s practice of medicine. A citizen physician and writer, Gawande is on the frontiers of human agency and meaning in light of what modern medicine makes possible. For the millions of people who have read his book Being Mortal, he’s also opened new conversations about the ancient human question of death and what it might have to do with life.
(from On Being with Krista Tippett)

Accepting living water and amazing grace at wells where we thirst

Saturday, March 16, 2019 (Lent)
Listen to Choral Evensong Homily Rev. Michael S. Bell from St. John's Episcopal Cathedral on SoundCloud:
https://soundcloud.com/user-487997803/choral-evensong-homily-rev-michael-s-bell

Listen to Choral Evensong Homily Rev. Michael S. Bell from St. John's Episcopal Cathedral Podcast:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-episcopal-cathedral-podcast/id1183951881?mt=2&i=1000432119546

There is no white Jesus (humor)

Thanksgiving for our bountiful variety of friends...

...seasonally appropriate to post this one again - a beguiling reminder that we're all potentially nourishing parts of a sacred whole (Ref: 1 Corinthians 12:12-27). With thanksgiving for a bounty of friends, each a reflection of God's creative love....

"For children who are our second planting, and, though they grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are.

For generous friends…with hearts as big as hubbards and smiles as bright as their blossoms;

For feisty friends as tart as apples;

For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us we had them;

For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn — and the others — as plain as potatoes, and so good for you.

For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes, and serious friends as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate as onions;

For friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini, and who — like parsnips — can be counted on to see you through the long winter;

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;

For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils, and hold us despite our blights, wilts, and witherings;

And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past, that have been harvested — but who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter;

For all these we give thanks."

[credited to Rev. Max Coots, a Unitarian Universalist minister]