What if it’s not wasted? I have a writing partner with whom I’ve been writing weekly for going on twelve years now and that was her prompt about a year ago. What if it’s not wasted?
What if it’s not wasted? What if the broken pieces are a necessary part of the process? Scraps are a required by-product of trimming off the edges. Quilters keep scraps, because you never know if they can get re-incorporated back in or used for a future project. People who create, need and pay attention to all the pieces, whether broken or whole, because we’re still discerning what will be used. It takes time. It doesn’t look like brokenness to the creator while they’re creating. It probably doesn’t look like a mess when they’re done, either. These were all the pieces, both used and unused, that were required to have on hand to arrive at the final product.
It’s like all of my writing, whether it’s shared publicly, or just with my writing partner, or with no one at all. None of it is wasted. Just because it doesn’t have monetary value or have more readers does not make it less valuable. It is not wasted.
What if none of it is wasted? What if all of your experiences are valid and helpful? What if the brokenness you feel and see isn’t wasted?
In 2016, the animated film, “Sing,” helped re-popularize a 1984 song by Leonard Cohen. Buster Moon is a down-on-his-luck koala bear trying to save his theater. After all of his elaborate plans completely and literally break down, Meena, the elephant who was too shy to sing in the theater, stands on top of the pile of rubble and sings Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” The movie picks up with her on the last verse, and the volume turns up halfway through that last verse:
“And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.”
There was one day last year when I drove home from the hospital after a child death, and that was the song I was drawn to. I put on my copy of the “Sing” soundtrack, which my children had helpfully put on top of my car CD’s, and I broke down in tears when Meena sang those words. “Even though it all went wrong,” horribly wrong, a child’s death is as wrong as it gets, “even though it all went wrong,” and I wasn’t able to do anything to save the child (which isn’t my role or within my ability, anyway), “I’ll stand before the Lord of song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.” Even when it all goes wrong, even when everything breaks down, even when fill-in-the-blank, Leonard Cohen, the mystic who was raised Jewish, says he’ll keep the faith. The faithful response when everything goes wrong, when everything seems broken, is to still stand before your maker and say, “Hallelujah.”
The previous verse ends with these lyrics:
“There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah.”
It doesn’t matter which Hallelujah you heard because the broken Hallelujah is the holy Hallelujah. There is no difference. Brokenness does not mean a lack of sacredness. The broken is holy and sacred. Just consider the holy meal of the Eucharist: the broken body of Christ, given for you. Even in brokenness, we can stand before the Lord of song with nothing on our tongue but Hallelujah. It’s not wasted.
A saying that I ran across once has stuck with me and I think it may be appropriate to your message.
"To truly love yourself you cannot hate that which has made you what you are."
Our challenges, and sometimes our resulting "brokenness", are the painful forge that makes us into who we uniquely are. I guess the trick is to continue to love the product of that process.