Saturday, March 29, 2008

lovable disasters

"Take these broken wings
And learn to fly again
Learn to fly so free.."


I had a good discussion with my roommate the other day (we have a lot of those!). I can't help but see that we, as human race, are a broken people.

I looked around my church the other day, and I felt full of emotion.. not sad, not happy.. enlightened, I guess. I felt that for the first time, I understood what it was like to live, to really be human. We're all broken, busted pieces of work. We're constantly striving and working and exhausting ourselves trying to appear put together, and, more often than not, we're able to keep the mask in place just long enough for everyone to think we're doing alright. But when we are able to let the mask slip, when we're able to be open with each other and say, "No, I'm not alright, I'm falling apart.." and that's okay.. that is a glorious thing. When we're not afraid to be real with each other.. when we are able to identify as a broken people, that's an incredible thing.

What's more wonderful is when we look around at each other, this mosaic of shattered pieces, and see each other working towards becoming whole again. I love progress.. I love being part of other people's lives, the exciting things, the dirty things, the joyous things, the messed up disaster things.. we are a community of disasters just trying to keep it together. I LOVE that!

I just looked up "disaster" in an online thesaurus.. and one of the definitions was "unholy mess". How appropriate..