“Ring the bells that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering.
There’s a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in.”
Leonard Cohen died this week. While I may not have cared for his vocal stylings, you cannot deny the man was a gifted poet. The words above are lyrics from his song Anthem and the chorus has been resonating with me this morning.
The past few days have been some of the hardest days of my life. They have been days of uncertainty, days of worry, and days of anxiety. If I felt like my vessel was cracked before, the pressure of the past few days has left me with more stress fractures than I care to count.
I don’t really want to talk about the fear and the worry and the anxiety though. It was awful and I don’t want to relive those moments. What I want to do, what I need to do is focus on the good and sometimes miraculous things that happened, which the dark times only served to accentuate.
In those long and difficult days, I found reserves of strength I didn’t know I had and in the weakest moments when we were overwhelmed with emotion, we drew closer to each other, hugged, placed a hand on a shoulder. There is hardly a way to express what passes between people when they offer comfort and support through touch, but something definitely passes between us. Comfort, strength, courage, energy, and unbelievable love.
I watched my family come together to support the ones who were suffering the most. Not everyone was able to be there in person, but I can tell you I felt their love and prayers. When things were grim, my heart ached for them because I knew they wanted nothing more than to be there with us and as hard as it was to go through those days, it must have been harder to want to be there and not be able to.
We are proud people, my family. We are strong and stubborn and independent. We don’t care much to admit our weaknesses and while laughter comes often and easily, we are more likely to keep our struggles and our tears hidden. Not this week. Oh we still laughed, but we shed plenty of tears.
It may have been the first time in my life that I didn’t care if someone saw me cry. The tears were a reasonable response to the situation and honestly, not once did I think or care about the judgement of another for my tears. People are always apologizing to me at work for crying and I tell them, “Don’t apologize for your tears. It’s okay to cry and if you can’t cry in a funeral home, where can you cry?” Maybe I’ve said it enough times that I believe it for myself too, and now I’m adding hospitals to that list.
My Christian friends say that people are clay pots, imperfect with cracks from the struggles of life. They say that God’s love and light shine through the cracked places to offer light to those around us.
Leonard Cohen says the cracks are how the light gets inside too. We need an opening to let light in.
They’re both right. Love and light flow both ways, in and out.
It flows out of us to those in need when we show kindness, compassion, and caring to others. We share our light and love with those around us in both remarkable and ordinary ways. It is offered in hugs for the hurting, in donations to the food bank for the hungry, and in buying coffee for a stranger. It is shared through intentional deeds of friendship and neighborliness, and in random and spontaneous acts of kindness. It feels ridiculously good to be kind to someone. Think about the last time you did a kindness. I bet you smiled afterward. I bet you thought about that feeling many times throughout your day. I guarantee your kindness filled two cups – yours and the person on the receiving end.
After the struggle of the past week, I can tell you that being on the receiving end of the smallest of kindnesses is restorative and strengthening. Every hug, every rub of my shoulder, every thoughtful cup of coffee kept me from completely running out of whatever it was that kept me from falling to pieces. The nearness of family, the thoughts and prayers of those far away, the compassionate care of doctors and nurses, the hugs, the ‘I love you’s’…every bit of light and love sent in my – in our – direction made a difference.
While the struggles are not completely behind us yet, we are at least in a place where we can catch our breath. We can take time to rest a bit. We can reflect on how important family and friends and love and kindness are, and how grateful we are that we have an abundance of all of those things in our lives. And I will encourage us all to make sure our cups, our clay pots, our hearts, are filled up with light and love because you never know when you will need to share your abundance with another or use some of your stores to keep your own head above water. Fill your cup through baby cuddles, meditation, a walk in the woods, scripture, coffee with a friend…whatever works for you to restore and rejuvenate your soul.
Wishing you a day filled with light and love and kindness…
Cathy
Cathy, I know what you are talking about and I have prayed everyday for all the family. I will keep on praying for all even after the next big hurdle is over. Love to all from me.
Thank you Auntie – love back to you!