12/29/2025

My Dear Friend & POTUS, DJT, 

Have you heard of the Japanese art of kintsugi, where potters take broken vessels & glue them back together with an adhesive that looks like gold? According to AI, “it embraces the breakage as part of the object’s history, transforming flaws into a unique aesthetic feature.” It goes along with “wabi-sabi, which values imperfection and transience.” 

Yael Schonbrun advocates we adopt a similar mindset toward people, looking for “jagged beauty” especially in those who make relationships complicated! She encourages us to appreciate the complexity of people & uses Vincent van Gogh as an example of someone who was “genuinely awful to live with ...But was also a keen observer of nature, a philosopher, someone who noticed things others missed. The difficult parts were real. So were the exquisite parts.” 

Thinking of “jagged beauty” is the aesthetic version of our Quaker spiritual practice of looking for that of God in everyone. “Jagged beauty” has the advantage of highlighting our imperfections as essential to who we are. 

Maybe VOZ has adopted the “jagged beauty” mindset in navigating his conversations with you. Maybe you have adopted it in dealing with VVP. Maybe it would be healthy for MAH to adopt it in dealing with the various leaders of the EAOs & PDFs.  

Speaking of VOZ, I loved his math reference when he said, 20-point peace plan [is] 90% agreed.” I took him to mean you were still working out specifics on 2 of the points. Was one of them how to deal with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant? That’s a challenging one! For the time being, you need to get VVP to get some electricity flowing to the cooling towers to prevent an accident.  

OoM, please find out about the election in Burma. The Irrawaddy reports turnout has been low at most polling places. I am having trouble aligning that info with the news that the junta is coercing people to vote. Either way, please make some noise about how the election is neither free, nor fair, & put some pressure on MAH to share his power with the people. 

BYBS, 

RCA