I wonder how many of us met last night, during the night in the class of Broken Pieces 101.  I woke up thinking it was my friend Maria’s (fullmoonfiberart)  post I read awhile ago on how we seem to become friends with others who are broken.  Perhaps the broken pieces of us want to unite with the broken pieces of others to become a new whole something.

I just finished reading Tom Atkins (Quarry House) post on restoring broken old things, and he said we could think things or pieces of ourselves broken.  Never to become what we were but I like to think that all that work in refining must show gold eventually.  Both in things and ourselves,  especially ourselves.

We all have something to contribute to that class and we work diligently on what we consider worth fixing.  Many do not come to class for the simple reason it is hard work but also many do not think anything is broken.  And why fix what isn’t broken?

But worse than that thought is that some do not see what is broken because to them it is not.  That something, either the thing or themselves could be better, work or think differently and therefore life would be enhanced and peace more than a promise,  they cannot visualize since it is outside their frame of reference, of thought.

It is not a matter of dismantling or throwing the baby out with the bathwater,  but simply of broadening the horizon, enhancing the meanings to be more inclusive and restoring what has been covered by rust and grime and dogma long past its prime.

To find literally that we have here an idea whose worth in its infancy was outside the box, outside the frame of reference, with derision not given a chance, to now be finding its niche, its putting place of prominence in our lives, is the miracle.  That is to show gold.

(excerpt from)
The Broadening Aspects of Knowledge. . .
(man)
Clad in soft slippers,
arranged in soft nightclothes,
too comfortable to mean business,
unless pierced with guilty stabs
into a lethargic conscience.

Man sits established,
too tired to lift the printed page.
With a mind anesthetized
and eyes already pressed in sleep,
he has succumbed to the day’s tally.

Oblivious to the fact
that only he can save himself,
he spurns knowledge,
resting uneasily in the revelations
of the last book.

. . . fearful of its responsibility,
with mind’s edges sealed,

he waits futilely for a savior.

 

photo courtesy of
Jon Katz  BedlamFarm.com