Beauty out of Brokenness

Hello blogosphere! It's been awhile.

I am oh-so-slowly coming back to the YA world in terms of writing and reading, and it feels oh-so-good to be back. But before my blog becomes a YA one again, I want to share a bit about where I've been and what I've been doing

I've spent the past month hanging out at drop-ins, after-school programs, and on the streets of Halifax as a participant in an Urban Partnership. If you're interested in our work, you can read a blog post about it here, or feel free to ask me about it.

The Urban Partnership team venturing through Halifax.

On our last day in Halifax, everyone on the Urban Partnership team presented a creative project that represented our month. We called the night Beauty out of Brokenness because we wanted the pieces to reflect where we see hope in Halifax.

I wrote a polyphonic piece, which means that I wrote a piece and then wove passages from other works into it. The program is a Christian one, so I included scripture in my piece, as well as passages from Under the Overpass: A Journey of Faith on the Streets of America by Mike Yankoski, a book about a university student who chose to live on the streets for five months to understand Jesus's heart for the homeless.

As I transition from my time in the Urban Partnership back into my normal life, I thought I'd share that transition by putting my Beauty out of Brokenness piece on the blog. Yankoski's words are in italics, scripture's words are in bold, and the rest of the words are mine.

Beauty out of Brokenness

The men I was meeting were at the bottom--the worst part of their lives--and weren't afraid to admit it.

It's a bit surprising when it happens.

But their ruin opened the way for honesty.

The conversation shifts from the polite, the easy, the questions of where are you from, what do you do, and isn't the food great, into something harder.

You are searching for honesty.

But still something better.

Pretending didn't help anymore, and anyway, they didn't have the strength to keep it up.

It comes as confessions of mistakes, ignorance, pretending. It comes as an admittance of exhaustion, love, hunger, joy, actually feeling something and actually telling people that you feel it.

Look at those who are honest. 

It's a challenge. It tells you that something--somehow, somewhere--something is wrong and that thing isn't being fixed, so what are you going to do? What are you, as one person, who can barely even process this, going to do to fix it?

The wise listen to others.

And that's easier, to listen. You hear the words, you retain them, but your reaction is of a different kind. It's not for you; it's encouraging them to continue.

They just told it as it was, when it was.

Because you're learning so much.

Speaking the truth from sincere hearts.

Their feelings become yours and you want that, you want to keep them, you want to feel this way again. You want to know this again because you realize, so clearly, that what's been presented to you is not a confession or challenge, not really. 

But this is what you must do: tell the truth to everyone.

I found that part of their ruin to be refreshing.

It's truth. And it's all that needs to be known.