I’ve been thinking a lot about stained glass recently. In truth, for the past several years it’s been prevalent on my mind. Among my own family I’ve referred to these past challenging pandemic years as our “years of stained glass” for several reasons. First and foremost because I felt broken and needed something beautiful and hopeful to look to. Stained glass is undeniably lovely and awe-inspiring and is usually in reverently striking places.

I call it our years of stained glass because of what we’ve been through, how it affected us and wondering, as so many of us are, what should follow moving hopefully and purposefully forward. It’s comforting to frame it as taking the fragments of our post-pandemic? lives and making something beautiful out of them.

Creating stained glass is NOT an easy process! It’s messy and a little dangerous too. You take the broken pieces and painstakingly arrange them into a larger complex picture. Slowly and carefully selecting, shaping and soldering each piece into place, stained glass artists must keep the big picture in their mind, even as they work out the most minute details. Many of the pieces are broken intentionally with specific angles and shades already in mind. But not everything goes according to plan each time, and a true artist can make even the slightly wonky and misshapen pieces work in the grander scheme and use them to enhance the completed picture. The newly formed window is stronger than the original pane of glass was, not in spite of its brokenness, but because of it.

This is us.

This has been us.

We’ve been broken, sometimes with very sharp edges in ways we didn’t see coming. The world has become, it seems, an increasingly frightening and vulnerable place. In some ways it always was, but our collective and individual traumas from the past few years have brought that more sharply into focus. It would be easy to wallow in our brokenness or allow our sharp edges to be an imagined defense in such a scary world. But that’s not what we’re supposed to be. That shouldn’t be our finished product. We need to take our broken pieces and make something beautiful from them. A window of light and beauty for the world to see.

Stained glass windows have historically been used to educate and inspire. In medieval times, they were used to illustrate biblical stories to a vastly illiterate population, as well as serving as status symbols for the church’s power and influence. The churches that I attended as a child and an adult each had different versions of stained glass. Some were pictorial depictions of Biblical stories, others were merely lovely colors in interesting shapes. Nothing as magnificent as the gothic European cathedrals, but still pretty and both soothing and inspiring to look at. From within the building, stained glass is just that; soothing, inspiring, and impressive because that’s what it’s meant to be. The light from outside shines through all the colors and enlightens the room, and the people inside. But to the outside world, stained glass is dark, colorless and foreboding when the light is also from without. Too often, we’re content to take in the outer light, enjoy it for ourselves and keep it there instead of turning it outward. Stained glass shines brightest to the world when it’s dark, but only if there’s an inner light.

This needs to be us.

We each have the ability to take the seemingly broken pieces of our lives and make them into a new, more complex and interesting picture and shine that story out into a dark world that so desperately needs light and hope. All the light, in all the beautifully varied colors and all the intricate and unique designs! To tell each of our stories and say to the world, “Look, how broken I was and made something new from my brokenness. Isn’t it beautiful?!”

Acknowledging the brokenness is vital too because that’s how you begin to rearrange the pieces. Many of us associate stained glass with places of worship. Unfortunately, some of those places and some of the people there can be the source of brokenness for us. For me and my family, we lost our church and therefore our support community when I left my job at the school associated with that church. It was absolutely heart-breaking and foundation shaking. But as C.S. Lewis said, “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” Shaken faith can be refortified; not with defensive walls, but restructured as a stronger foundation for a new beginning. Believing that even when people let us down, we’re still worth lifting up, and worthy of lifting up others. A dimmed light is not extinguished. It can be rekindled and refocused and even brighter than before. We can be the light of the world, but it’s up to us to choose light and hope instead of fear and bitterness. As so many artists over the years have espoused variations of the sentiment – when things break, it lets in light. Even light itself must be broken into its component wavelengths to show it’s full spectrum of glorious colors.

We’ve all lost a lot, but we’ve hopefully gained a lot in these trying times too; resilience, patience, reorganized priorities, a new appreciation for good hygiene, just to name a few. The past few years have broken me down in some serious ways. I think that’s true for a lot of us. But broken doesn’t have to mean finished. It can be the beginning of something new, something rare and hard-won but ultimately stronger, undeniably and utterly fantastic.

So how do we do this? How do we put ourselves back together and shine our individual and collective lights into the darkness?

One piece at a time.

Keeping the big picture in mind while tending to the minute details; carefully arranging each selected fragment into place. Creating a masterpiece takes time and thoughtful effort, and each of is a masterpiece! We may be under-construction, but we’re a masterpiece in the works none-the-less. With each broken piece of ourselves that we fit into its new place, we move everyone forward. No one piece of glass is responsible for being the entirety of the stained glass window. Imagine how dull and plain a single pane would look compared to the kaleidoscope of colors and shapes that we typically associate with these works of art. No, each piece needs to play its own crucial part. We need to appreciate and support each other’s amazing individuality as we bring together our new complex creations. My stained glass window may not won’t look like my neighbors, or anyone else’s. Not only is that ok, it’s ideal.

So whatever particular shape that takes for each of us; volunteering, donating time or resources to a worthy organization, planting a garden, speaking up against injustice, learning a new skill, embarking on a new career, being kinder, being more patient, healing the past with therapy, or meditation, or prayer, or all of those. Whatever positive ways in which we can begin to be made whole after experiencing so much brokenness moves us forward, glues us back together, strengthens us and shines our rekindled lights out to illuminate the world.

A beacon of hope and beauty for the world to see.

It’s been plenty dark. Time to let this little light of mine, shine. Time for each of us to let all of our lights shine, together.