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Rev. Joey N. Welsh: Making it on the Broken Pieces A CM THANKSGIVING CLASSIC: This essay also appeared in the Munfordville, KY, Hart County Herald, on October 2, 2005; reprinted with author permission ANOTHER ANGLE, the occasional musings of a Kentucky pastor" MAKING IT ON THE BROKEN PIECES By The Rev. Joey N. Welsh Near the end of the New Testament Book of Acts, the ship taking the Apostle Paul and others to Rome as prisoners wrecked on the shores of Malta. The vessel broke into pieces, and the passengers made it toward shore by jumping into the stormy surf; the people who couldn't swim clung to hunks of debris from the shattered ship. Everyone survived, making it to shore on the broken pieces. I'm sure that the passengers would have preferred to arrive on land by putting down anchor in a calm harbor and rowing to shore gently, but on this occasion it was a blessing to arrive at all, making it alive on the remains of what had been. We all must proceed through life, frequently not with what we wish to have but with what we do have. What we have at hand is often the debris, the broken pieces of our hopes and expectations. The unparalleled disaster visited on our nation by Hurricane Katrina has taught us a lot about going on while clinging to the broken pieces of life. In New Orleans and along the Gulf coast, too many lives were lost tragically, and a lot of regional and family history and culture was swept away or submerged. As is often the case, just when things looked their very worst people who were witnessing the tragedy began to respond with their very best. Folks from disparate places and backgrounds - both in the U. S. and abroad - came forward with their gifts of money, items and hard volunteer work. Through the years I have always been impressed with the crazy quilts I have seen in museums and at fairs. Pieced together out of scraps of varied sizes, colors and shapes, a crazy quilt becomes a beautiful whole. I believe that the people who responded to the Katrina crisis helped to form one mighty, brilliant crazy quilt of caring and compassion. They began as unrelated pieces, but they soon came together and enwrapped the disaster survivors whose lives were in tattered pieces. It really is possible to go on in life, even when we have to struggle for a while and cling to the broken pieces of what was or what could have been. Our lives may be shattered into broken pieces by a betrayal, the breakup of a marriage, our own unwise decisions or the errant lives of our children or close friends. Sometimes what we hope for at home, on the job or especially in the community life of a small town just doesn't come together when we want or in the form we want. Sometimes, though a town's vision for progress is clear, the view becomes clouded by economic forces, uncooperative bureaucracies and local naysayers. At those times we can choose to give up, or we can go on ahead, staying afloat by grasping to the broken pieces of a dream, very much like the shipwreck survivors on Malta so many years ago. While I was preparing this column I heard a commentary on Louisville Public Radio station WFPL by Fairleigh Brooks. Mr. Brooks quoted some words written by American painter Robert Henri. Henri was one of the most influential painters and art teachers of the early 20th century. In his paintings he often found beautiful dignity in settings that many other folks viewed as ugly or gritty: urban scenes and the faces of the poor. He delighted in painting the faces of city children, capturing their hopeful eyes and expressions of joy in the midst of poverty. In his book The Art Spirit Henri wrote, "Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be, stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway." Henri's words have a universal ring. Whether we are a hurricane survivor or volunteer, working a job that's less than ideal, coping with family crises or working for a better Main Street in our hometown, we need to go on anyway. After all, "Everything depends on those who go on anyway," even if we have to make it on the broken pieces. To read other essays in the Another Angle series, enter "Rev. Joey N. Welsh" in the search box. This story was posted on 2011-11-24 06:07:52
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