I stand by the bed where the young woman lies, her face, postoperative... her mouth twisted in palsy... clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, one of the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be that way from now on. I had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh, I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had cut this little nerve. Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to be in a world all their own in the evening lamplight... isolated from me... private.   Who are they? I ask myself... he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously.
The young woman speaks.
"Will my mouth always be like this?" she asks.
"Yes," I say, "it will. It is because the nerve was cut."
She nods and is silent.
But the young man smiles. "I like it," he says, "it's kind of cute."
All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with the divine. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to her... to show her that their kiss still works.

There is a part of every one of us that feels broken. Sometimes, literally.

Other times... when we feel stuck or without passion, when we betray our own heart, or when our dreams are derailed by ridicule, or when we live only to "fit in," and censor our own voice; we are broken.

I sat with a friend this week. His life has turned left. Call it what you will, it feels broken nonetheless. And, I didn't have words to make it right.

Whether we feel it or not, brokenness takes a toll.

In the movie Scent of a Woman, Colonel Frank Slade (Al Pacino)--blind and on the edge of despair--finds hope in his new friend Charlie, and makes an appearance at a New England prep school disciplinary hearing to help out, when Charlie is being punished because he will not snitch on his classmates.  Slade tells those gathered, "There was a time I could see. And I have seen, boys like these, younger than these, their arms torn out, their legs ripped off. But there is nothin' like the sight of an amputated spirit. There is no prosthetic for that."
 
I was raised on this stuff.  At least in part.  You know, "The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."  (from The Psalms)  This is, undeniable hope.  

And yet, the "translation" (in my church tradition) was crystal clear: God loves the broken, only if it is in the process of being tidied, or cleaned up, or touched up, or renovated. 
 
In our culture, the concept of brokenness wrecks havoc with the picture in our mind of an unspoiled life.  So, we frantically try to fix it, or dismiss it or hide it.  Blemished beauty has no place here.
 
Which begs the question: What do we do with our brokenness?  Henri Nouwen suggests that we need to "embrace it."   

Seriously?

But here's the deal: because we are beloved of God, we can dare to embrace and befriend our own brokenness; and in befriending, to really look at it: "Yes, I am hurting. Yes, I am wounded. Yes, it is painful. And... I no longer need be afraid."

Conceptually, I get it. 
But how do I have to invite my brokenness into my life? 
Or, how do I embrace it (as Mary Oliver says, "row toward the embattlement")?
This is certain:  Embracing the brokenness that affects us all may not carry us toward safety, but most surely toward salvation.
 
Rembrandt painted the picture of the prodigal son between 1665 and 1667, at the end of his life.  As a young painter, he was popular in Amsterdam and successful with commissions to do portraits of all the important people of his day.  He was known as arrogant and argumentative, but he participated in the circles of the very rich in society.   Gradually, however, his life began to deteriorate:
First he lost a son,
Then he lost his first daughter,
Then he lost his second daughter,
Then he lost his wife
Then the woman he lived with, ended up in a mental hospital,
Then he married a second woman, who died,
Then he lost all his money and fame, and
Just before he himself died, his son Titus died.
As he lived his overwhelming losses and died many personal deaths, Rembrandt could have become a most bitter, angry, resentful person. Instead he became the one who was finally able to paint one of the most intimate paintings of all time. (from Nouwen's The Return of the Prodigal Son)
 
When Vincent van Gogh saw this painting he said, "You can only paint this painting when you have died many deaths."
 
But then, I can tell myself, I'm no Rembrandt.
 
Well... as they say in the Wizard, "This isn't Kansas anymore."  We're no longer in Sunday School.  And the spirit of God is no nesting dove.  Where God's spirit is, there is in all probability, chaos.  Yes. Sometimes the chaos is called to order as it was in the beginning... other times our need for complacency erupts into chaotic confusion (just like Pentecost), unraveling everything.
 
Here's the reason it is not easy: because I have orchestrated my world--all my ducks so carefully and neatly in a row. And then... life happens.

"Life," Lucy tells Charlie Brown, "is like a deck chair."
"Like a what?" asks Charlie Brown.
"Like a deck chair.  Some people put their deck chair at the front of the ship so they can see where they are going.  Some people put their deck chair at the rear of the ship so they can see where they've been.  On the cruise ship of life, Charlie Brown, which way is your deck chair facing?"
"I haven't figured out how to get mine unfolded yet." says Charlie Brown.
Ahhhh. Wisdom.
 
When we acknowledge the broken places (our unfolded deck chairs), there is an open space, a place for gestation and receptivity (what the Japanese call "hollowness to the divine"), where new things are hatching and being born, if only we do not panic.  These are the times and places from which we can truly and wholeheartedly, give of ourselves.