Monday, July 12, 2010

the beauty of all things broken

Even dressed for the weather of a Saskatoon winter, it must have been cold and dirty work. It was cold because it was Saskatoon in January. It was dirty because it was combing through the wreckage of the fire that destroyed St. James Anglican Church for the second time in its history – rubble, ice, ash, broken glass, burnt timbers, Bibles and prayer books charred beyond use, a congregation in shock.

Day by day after the fire, St. James member Mr. Pascoe patiently dug shards of stained glass out of the rubble. This labour of love began long before the congregation had decided what to do in the face of this disaster. Digging through ice and snow and soot and ash in search of what once glittered and now was blackened, smoked. What once was whole, beautiful, inspirational was now dirty, sharp-edged, fragmented, broken.
In her book Finding Beauty in a Broken World, Terry Tempest Williams uses the metaphor of mosaic to begin to make sense of the spiritual, ecological and political fragmentation of our time. Mosaic, she notes, is a conversation between what is broken. The play of light is the first rule of mosaic, she discovered when she travelled to Ravenna, Italy to learn this art. Mosaic as a metaphor is not exactly a new thought – our Jewish friends have long believed their mission to be tikkun olam, mending the world. And those of us who claim Christianity also take what has been dis-membered, and re-member, particularly in the sacrament of communion, a feast of re-membering as we remember the story of Jesus’ daring love and seek to affirm our membering among the people of the Way. Yet Williams’ image of mosaic resonates deeply with me in this broken world. How we need this dazzling conversation of light and broken glass, artist and viewer.

Great art – whether it be mosaic, theatre, dance, music, writing – great art brings what is broken to our hearts and urges us into conversation with it. If we are blessed, the conversation with the broken inspired by the art changes us, and we begin to see differently. Sometimes, we might see beauty and commit ourselves to protect it (the work of Robert Bateman, say); sometimes, we might see horror and know we aren’t doing enough to make peace in our day (the stunning play Scorched by Wajdi Mouawad).

But it begins with someone like Mr. Pascoe, someone who knows that the broken shards are worth gathering. When St James Anglican decided their church would rise from the ashes, decided to rebuild, they commissioned stained glass artist Lee Brady to do their new windows. Below, is the window he created with the broken fragments lovingly gathered and kept by Mr. Pascoe. The tree of life is the symbol for both St. James congregation and their arts centre, The Refinery. Rooted in history, this rich symbol of life, growth and care for the creation speaks to the community out of the ashes, out of the fragments, offering hope in creativity.

What are the broken pieces in your world, your neighbourhood that you want to gather carefully? How did they get broken? Where do you need to go to find them?
What new thing might be made of those fragments? How might artists and church folks work together on such a project? What art form might these fragments take to best speak to your community – visual, spoken word/theatre, musical...?
How is your congregation already engaged in tikkun olam (mending the world), mosaic, re-membering what has been dis-membered? How might you move that work forward in art?