I was supposed to write a poem, but there wasn’t one brewing in my spirit quite yet.
I went to reflecting about what it means to live 98 years. How many lives granddad had lived. Choices he made. Decisions that could have been different. Joy he captured. The world he saw. Things he survived. His life really made me think about what grace really means.
Grace.
Sometimes a moment before a meal.
Sometimes an extension on a late payment.
Sometimes it’s refinement in movement.
Grace is also a verb, what you do.
To grace someone’s presence. To bestow.
Biblically we see grace It is understood by Christian folk to be a spontaneous gift from God to people– "generous, free and totally CB b unexpected and undeserved". 2 Corinthians 12:9. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Grace means that even when things are crumbling, and breaking around us AND within us, grace finds a way to be sufficient. Just enough.
I’m sure things felt like they were beyond repair plenty of times in Granddad’s 98 years.
The depression. Multiple wars. Existing as a Black man in the south. Fatherhood. Health challenges. And so much more.
But at every step of brokenness, grace interceded.
Kintsugi, is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum.
It’s truly the idea that something broken can be repaired in such a way where the brokenness is apart of the beauty.
The phrase used is “to be finished in gold”
And if I look at the last 20+ years Nathaniel Dyson’s life. What a beautiful testament of being finished in Gold?
To be surround by family, gold
To fish and garden and gamble, gold
To travel, gold
To even keep your affinity for a hooker (a beer) or two, gold.
To live 98 years, gold.
One of my favorite songs is “the potters house” by Tramaine Hawkins.
Where the lyrics say:
“In case you have fallen by the wayside of life
Dreams and visions shattered, you're all broken inside. You don't have to stay in the shape that you're in. The potter wants to put you back together again. Oh, the potter wants to put you back together again.
In case your situation has turned upside down. And all that you've accomplished, is now on the ground. You don't have to stay in the shape that you're in. The potter wants to put you back together again. Oh, the potter wants to put you back together again.
You who are broken, stop by the potter's house
You who need mending, stop by the potter's house. Give Him the fragments of your broken life. My friend, the potter wants to put you back together again. Oh, the potter wants to put you back together again.“
As tribute to Nathaniel Dyson, I ask of us, to take our brokenness, place it in the hands of a potter who knows how to finish us in Gold.
Well its Cleveland, so Wine & Gold.
See the tribute here: