Brokenness

February 12, 2007

10:12 PM

I am sure that I have written about brokenness at some time or another in my life, of course I spent a lot of time dealing with brokenness recently before I left, and being broken in Europe and on the Camino and in St. Peter’s Basilica. But now there is a new sense of brokenness that is being borne of me that I have simply forgotten, and one that is shining much light to my time here in Micronesia. You see the crazy thing about life is that, me as the “eternal optimist”, have spent so much of my time living it up to the fullest out here, always doing everything I can to enjoy every single moment and love every single minute. It was odd, but the other day Lincoln and I shared in the thoughts of this feeling too summer campish, and that just doesn’t seem right. But I wonder what I am doing to actively move against those thoughts. I have spent so much of my time here in joy and optimism for everything and everyone. Our school will get better at all the things it does wrong, our principal will get better, my students will get better, the government will get better (meaning less corrupt). But when, how, by who? It never really pans out, and in my mind all continues to be happy go lucky, right? No, things aren’t getting better, and I realize that this eternal optimism of mind has lead me to a corner, a dark corner where I don’t see as well as I should, sometimes leaving me blind. You see, I have always had this problem with experiencing brokenness, pain, suffering, sadness. Who likes to feel those things anyways? And so instead I successfully shielded myself, with optimism and lots of joy to always look at the brighter side of things, the glass half full instead of half empty. But I realized today, with the help of the bestest friend anyone could ask for, that that doesn’t always work that way. And you know what, she’s right. And it has shattered a bit of the world view that I have built up here, and I think my world view needed some shattering. Everyone’s always does, it’s too easy to pull the blinders over our eyes and think that our world is fine and dandy and getting better. I came to Chuuk with that mind set that things will get better, with heavy optimism for the island, of course the governments corrupt, of course the teachers don’t show up to work, of course the principal doesn’t seem to care about the students, but it will change. And so thus far, all that I have experienced all that I have written home and all that I have seen has been all the fluffy fuzzy stuff that makes people feel all warm inside, and makes this time here look summer campish, and makes it seem like living on an exotic tropical island is the most incredible thing that can ever happen to someone. But what about the brokenness, the brokenness that I continually sought to fight with my eternal optimism? never allowing myself to experience this brokenness only left me looking at the world around me with blinders on. I wrote a reflection a while back on hunger and poverty in Micronesia, and how people hear seem that they will always be provided for because its in the culture to always take care of your kin, a beautiful and perfect thought and example of kinship, the optimist thought. Remove the blinders, a lot more complex and difficult world of struggle for food, services, and help is shown, between the haves and have nots, and that too often gets overlooked here in Chuuk. My optimism can be blinding, and so I ask myself, “am I too become a cynic?” what is to become of my optimistic ways? I have no clue, and I like looking at the world, in a glass half full kind of way. “Be the change you want to see”, right? But I think that I need to work on shaking my naiveté about the world around me a lot more before I throw the blinders back on. Henri Nouwen wrote about the experience of brokenness as a sharing in the mystery of the Eucharist. Like the Eucharist we are all Blessed, Broken and Shared. God always fills our lives with many blessings, whether blessings of challenges and strife or joy and pleasure, blessings just the same. But as we are blessed, we are also called to live brokenness. That in those moments we share in Christ’s dying on the cross, and that it is only through our moments of brokenness, those moments of truly humbling ourselves to the fate of taking up our own cross and bearing it as difficult and challenging it may be, that leads us to being shared. Shared with others and the world, there we spread the Eucharist, the life of Christ to others. At our first JVI mass at Georgetown before our Summer Orientation started, a quote was shared that has stayed with me since. Mother Theresa had a prayer that went:

Lord, break my heart open so wide, that the whole world may fall in.

It is a difficult thing to pray for, or even feel the need to desire, but it is truly only through brokenness that we will be shared and that others may come into us, and that we may be able to give ourselves to others. I have a lot to learn and a lot to work on, but right now I am praying that I may simply allow myself to sit in my brokenness not trying to rush through to the good of things, realizing that through sitting in my brokenness, that God is inviting me to meet Jesus on the cross, and perhaps find God in a whole new way, rather than settling for the fuzzy moments that come from my optimism. I pray that I can get there, time will tell. Pray for me.