What's in a logo?

A good logo is one that helps represent the essence of a team or a company just by looking at an image. For those of us in Pittsburgh the Steelers logo conjures up feelings of pride in our civic history as well as our glorious football history.

In one image the logo for the Alliance for Honor and Repair captures the nature of what we hope to represent as well as what we desire to accomplish.

The image is one of a communion cup that was broken but has been reformed through the art of Kintsugi. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with urushi lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum.

The result is a piece of pottery that highlights the broken spaces but is in some ways more beautiful than the original piece.

There is no question that racial injustice, white supremacy, and racism has broken the communion between Black and white people in America. The church has been no exception to this and in many unfortunate ways has contributed significantly to this divide.

The AHR has a charge to examine those broken places in the Pittsburgh Presbytery with the hope of honoring our Black communities and then offering actions to repair the damage that has been done. We do this to find healing and hope for a better and more holistic future.

The hope is that we will be remade as one in the body of Christ in a way that does not forget our past but that will honor it by creating a new and even more beautiful way of being that body together.