My weakness is a broken bough
bent at the place I will my way.
But the gardener of my heart
breaks off the branch
that does not bear life
and which grows astray.
Like the ship which mistrusts its charts,
and deigns a way of its own design
comes to grief,
we break at the place
where we veer off course.
But great ship builder,
gardener, lover,
and renewer
of all that disintegrates,
you reveal how –
new shoots grow to replace the old,
and bent rudders can be repaired.
How in your hands
we are lifted, mended and restored
in that place
you’d have us begin again.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
October 2018
“Wholeness does not mean perfection; it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness–mine, yours, ours–need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.”
~ Parker Palmer
Living Tree Poetry 