"...I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer."

I used to love the word broken.

So much, in fact, that I was going to tattoo it in a classic handwritten script on my neck, a permanent reminder of my how I viewed both myself and the world around me. Tainted. Flawed. Damaged beyond repair. Marked like Cain.

And while I think the current state of affairs supports such a theory, it wasn’t until someone I love very much started throwing the word around during weak, lengthy defences of poor decisions that I began to see it for what it truly is: An abandonment of hope. An excuse. A get-out-of-jail-free card.

It should come as no surprise that we all have the capacity to do great good or unspeakable evil, one moment feeding the homeless, the next feasting on the insecurities of another. But what then do we let define us? Good cop or Bad cop? Saint or Sinner?

Sadly, many of us have spent so much time in life’s penalty box, having lost so many of the little battles, that we have grown apathetic to the fight, convinced that victory is a pipe dream. And so we build our houses on the sand, basing our self-esteem on how fucked up we are. We chuckle at our self-abuse, brag about our infidelities and addictions and balk at those who don’t share in our self-destructive pursuits. Disturbingly, we relate more to Californiacation’s degenerate sex and alcohol obsessed protagonist Hank Moody and Sex and the City’s hedonistic temptress Samantha Jones than we do anyone with a hint of character and integrity. And for some reason, we’re proud of it. We wear our brokenness as a badge of honour. As a title belt of folly, to which we cling for dear life as if it were the only thing that could set us free.

In his must-read book The Return of the Prodigal Son, the late author and Catholic priest Henri Nouwen has this to say when describing the Rembrant painting that so captured his heart: “The soft yellow-brown of the son’s underclothes looks beautiful when seen in rich harmony with the father’s cloak, but the truth of the matter is that the son is dressed in rags that betray the great misery that lies behind him. In the context of compassionate embrace, our brokenness may appear beautiful, but our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.”

Once again: "...but our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it."

Simply, there is no beauty in our brokenness.
There is definitely no beauty in the breaking.
There is only beauty in a brokenness redeemed by compassion.

And so I am left with a choice: will I fall at the feet of my God, my family, my community and accept a compassionate, loving embrace and be redeemed? Or will I continue to wander around in my tattered and torn rags, peacocking as if they were the latest showing from Prada?

In a world, as a close friend recently pointed out, that glamourizes empty pursuits as cool, the former will be tough. It will be counter-cultural. It will scary. It may generate some light ribbbing from friends. But I suspect it will be worth it.

I wonder how the word Redemption would look in a nice Old English script.