Beauty from Brokeness

Shelf Mushroom, Hinckley, IL

Shelf Mushroom Hinckley, IL

Shelf Mushroom Hinckley, IL

The tree outside my front door had this weird blob growing on it. I hoped that the blob didn’t mean some disease had taken over the tree and was going to lead to the tree’s death. This blob began to grow and change. There is still parts that look very blob like. Recently this blob has become a mushroom. A rather large mushroom that I caught the squirrels nibbling. From one moment to the next, it seemed the mushroom appeared. Not a little growth but a form of beauty.

Now I admit I know very little about mushrooms and trees, but I know that mushrooms grow in dead and decaying material. So this tree which has green leaves must have some hidden decay. This is not a good sign for the tree in front of my house for it means while the green leaves and the mushroom create an image of wonder. The tree is hurt, maybe broken beyond repair.  I can’t help the song running through my head,

Shelf Mushroom Hinckley, IL

Beauty from brokenness,

Hope for despair
Lord, in your suffering
This is our prayer

                             Graham Kendrick

There is beauty to be found in that mushroom even though it means the tree may be broken. We are never promised a life that will be free of pain, sorrow, death, hurt. Each of us will be touched at some point with the brokenness of the world or our lives. Those moments of pain and sorrow, of emptiness and hurt, are places where we are in the most need of healing, but also the places where we are most likely to seek out an answer or help. It is not easy, it takes work to live in the pain, live through the pain and move eventually toward beauty and light. When we look at our wounds, when we learn about our wounds, we are often able to begin to feel and experience the light, the beauty of the world. It is in those moments of brokenness that we can grow to take stock of the beauty in the mushroom growing unexpectedly.  Rumi once wrote:

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

May your broken places be filled with the light.