Hallelujah Moments

Crack in Everything

“...Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in...”
Leonard Cohen (refrain from “Anthem”)

I'm going back through some of my old writings and updating them. I first used Leonard Cohen's song “Anthem” in 2006, to lament the Iraq war. “Anthem” was a protest song from the '70's, written with the rawness that Cohen was so good at expressing. Here is what he said about this song in his interview with Robert Hilburn: “It's the notion that there's no perfection—that this is a broken world and we live with broken hearts and broken lives but still that is not an alibi for anything. On the contrary, you have to stand up and say hallelujah under those circumstances.” Depressing I know, but also insightful. It has taken a long time for our protest shout to rise to the surface, but we are finally uncomfortable enough to stand up and declare this generation's hallelujah moment.

Cohen seemed to live in the dark underbelly of the human soul. And yet, the line “there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in,” is hopeful. I've heard the thought expressed by other notable people—Scott Peck, in a conference I attended when his landmark book The Road Less Traveled came out, said this: “Only a broken heart is open enough for love to flow out.” Mark Nepo, in his Earth Prayer wrote, “Let us have the courage to hold each other when we break, and worship what unfolds.” The idea of brokenness and the cracks in our lives is an anthem in itself. My theory is that when we are broken open, we have to let go of the egotism that keeps us deluded into thinking there is such a thing as perfection, and we are it.

Having cracks in our armor is, in fact, our salvation. The light gets in and the love and acceptance flow out, and we can shout from our deepest heart, “Hallelujah!” Let us allow our brokenness to give us hope today.

In the Spirit,
Jane