Sunday, December 2nd, 2007
“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets through.”
Leonard Cohen
There is a perfect moment many of us wait for. Perhaps it is warm and we are loved, and we feel beautiful in that moment…so beautiful. We feel that when we have overcome our flaws and filled up our cracks, we will be made golden and whole, and all will be right within and around us. It is a mystical moment that seems to drift in a slightly heavenly realm just out of our reach most of the time, like a kite we hold the string to…forever connected to us and yet rarely touched.
I think the place we need to touch is as close as it can possibly be, and while it is certainly in our hearts it is also as near as the surface of our skin…and as tangible. It is perhaps within the total redemption of the body that we find that absolution and possession of the soul. Maybe if we stopped seeing anything ugly about our image in the mirror, we would stop finding it in our hearts, and feel overcome by our own radiance. We can take either door to our own beauty…through the heart outward or the body inward, but the route of the body is the less proclaimed. We think the gateway of the body will distract and deceive us, but when we think this we know it not.
Do you ever have those days when nothing seems smooth? Everything seems to come with a rugged edge or a jagged seam? It becomes a bumpy ride over a landscape of nothing but those seams, as the parts of our lives seem to be roughly patched together. The days that we feel like a cracked jar that has been glued back together too many times, about to crumble at the smallest of pressures…
We want to escape from the cracks and the runs in the fabric, but when we flee we do not hear what they are telling us. For they are not our enemies but manifestations of our own being, coming to share with us something. They have wisdom and even healing within them. They can sing.
We just have to be courageous, and so patient. We have to get really close to the walls between ourselves and what we are keeping out, or in, and listen to the voices of the places that are crumbling. They will tell us why, and show us what is beautiful under what seems like nothing but ugly decay. They will let the light in. They will reveal to us the ancient writings on the walls that tell us why they were built in the first place, long before we can remember. They will remind us.
If you wish to do this and are experiencing challenges of any kind in your life right now, take an evening to yourself and find a quiet space to be. Make the space feel intimate and like it is very much your own. Bring a journal and candle if you like, and listen to what comes out of your pen. Don’t judge it at all if you possibly can. Let it be mundane, or desperate, dull or electrified. Keep listening when you think you are done. Gently push yourself to write more, to listen more, and to trust the voice that begins to emerge from your heart.
Know that you are beautiful beyond measure. Beyond comparison. The golden moment of your perfection is the moment you embrace all of who you are, cracks and all, as part of that unfathomable glory and exquisite grace. You are a moving, walking, breathing piece of art, whose heart beats through all things, and finds ways to open any door you wish it to.
With my Love,
Jennifer Luna
