I see two ways of living as time threads through. In one we learn to exist as cleanly as possible. We learn the roads and valleys. We learn to protect and make our longing less, hope less, forgive, but only in word. We bite our tongues because the words that want to escape might drown us, all of us. A tightness grows around the lips. We do not kiss or cry with our whole bodies. This ensures we can swallow life in manageable chunks.

And then there is another way to live. To be ever in pieces. To let the world press its great body into yours. To relent at the sorrow and pain. To let it rush headlong into you and lay your shield down. Fractured and beautiful, life surges through you the way water weeps and glides through the rough stones of a river. The brokenness keeps you moving. Your crumbling keeps you yielding to the relentless flow of life.

There is a diety in the Hindu tradition named Akhilandeshvari. “Deshvari” translates to “goddess”, and “akhilan” to “never not broken”. Goddess Never Not Broken. A goddess who is constantly fractured, not whole, in parts, dismembered. I’ve been calling on her this week.

She reminds us that we are never not broken. We are never not in pieces. It’s in the face of death, loss, heartbreak, and great change that this becomes clear. We are body parts, fingers, flesh, tissue, fat, cells, blood, brain. And sometimes we lose our body parts. There is toxic tissue, we cut out what is killing us. Or people leave us- through death or loss. Or we leave to save ourselves. What once seemed whole and solid is shattered against stone in countless, unglue-able pieces.

And so when it happens that we see this condition of being ever-in-pieces. When the pain hits in the heart like an arrow to thin glass, let us weep. Let us crumble like the sides of a river over time. Let’s not harden in our truth or stance. But let us be like water. What’s so bad about being broken anyway? What would happen if we admitted it?

We are a dancing mass of stars. We are forever in pieces. You and me, we are pieces of the same shattered light in the sky. Let’s bless the space between us.