I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world,
and I am getting along.
I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too.
I am not washed and beautiful,
in control of a shining world in which everything fits,
but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck
I’ve come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe delicate air,
whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections,
but overwhelmingly in spite of them…”
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.
~Herman Melville from Moby Dick

We all bear chew marks, some fresher or deeper than others. Maybe they came during childhood from the constant nibbles of a competitive sibling, or from the intentionally painful wounds left by a bully at school or work. Some folks grew up in home environments that continually gnawed away at their self-confidence rather than feeding their sense of value.

Somehow – despite our eating whatever we find tasty and being eaten because we ourselves are tasty – most of us continue to get along, frayed and fragmented as we are, searching for an eventual mending of our wounds and filling of our empty spots.

Like the marks in a trunk where a missing limb used to be, or the notch holes left by the springboards loggers stood on to saw down an immense tree for lumber, our scars represent the price of being a living sacrifice. We persist because nothing we endure are as deep and wide as the scars that were accepted by the Word made Flesh on our behalf, nor as wondrous as the Love that oozed from them, nor as amazing as the grace that abounds to this day because of the promise spelled out by them. 

Our scars have become beautiful as a result.