*From Reverend Joan Halifax of the Upaya Zen Center, although I believe in my heart that all times in human history have been complicated, the present is all we have, and know – and yes, it’s a challenging, hot mess. Rev. Halifax’s wiki page is below. I gasped when I saw she spent time at Feathered Pipe Ranch in the 70s, where I spent time in the 80s and 90s, because – gasp!! – it’s a small world, even if it is complex.
In these complicated times, we have plenty of opportunities to transform moral suffering into moral resilience, what ethicist Cynda Rushton defines as “the capacity of an individual to sustain or restore their integrity in response to moral complexity, confusion, distress, or setbacks.” When we have moral resilience, we are able to stand strong in our integrity, even in the midst of moral adversity.
There is a Japanese practice called kintsukuroi, meaning “golden repair.” Kintsukuroi is the art of repairing broken pottery with powdered gold or platinum mixed with lacquer, so that the repair reflects the history of breakage. The “repaired” object mirrors the fragility, imperfection, and beauty of life—and also its strength. The object returns to wholeness, to integrity.
I am not suggesting that we should seek brokenness as a way of gaining strength, although some cultures do pursue crisis in their rites of passage as a way to strengthen character and open the heart. Rather, I am proposing that the wounds and harms that arise from falling over the edge into moral suffering can have positive value under the right circumstances. Moral distress, the pain of moral injury and outrage, and even the numbness of moral apathy can be the means for the “golden repair,” for developing a greater capacity to stand firm in our integrity without being swayed by the wind.
Over my years of traveling to Japan, I have held several of these exquisitely repaired vessels in my hands. I have seen that the “golden repair” is not a hidden repair. It shows clearly the cracked and broken nature of our lives. It combines ordinary stuff and precious metals to repair the crack but not hide it. This, I believe, is how moral transformation happens and integrity opens—not by rejecting suffering but by incorporating the suffering into a stronger material, the material of goodness, so that the broken parts of our nature, our society, and our world can meet in the gold of wholeness.