Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Where the Light Gets In


“There is a crack in everything.”
                                                                Leonard Cohen

There are some places in life, that are compelling because of their importance and difficulty. 

Some things hurt us so much, at the same time, that they are lifting us beyond ourselves. 

At one moment Life can make me so tender and so hateful. It has been fairly said, “you can’t live with them, and you can’t live without them.” No matter what your stripe is, or in whose hands you put your heart, the crack that is relationship is going to work one over, break and open the heart, and ultimately let some light in. This bit of reflection honors the frustrating truth that being twisted around by the heart— and where it takes you — is part of Nature’s gift to us.

 Relationship has always been a love/hate part of my life. I haven’t done it well. I have created more hurt than I really care to look at. But, despite the debacles, and now I’m certain because of them, I’ve been grown. Each time I dared to open my heart, for the right or wrong reasons (and there have been plenty of them), I have had delivered to me more insight, pain, wonder and humility than I could handle. The bees made sweet honey (hopefully) out of my many failures.

I could go on in this vein for some time. I am a typical white male, educated by my own insensitivities, socialized by certain assumptions and violence —that made me a bad candidate for the very thing that redeemed me — the love of others. I am amongst the many walking wounded, the lost and lonely refugees of a continuous conflict between differing hearts. I’ve been touched by love too, more now in my later years, and have at last come to see that the miracle has been cracked all along.

I don’t know about you, but I have always assumed that if I could find the right person, or circumstance, I could find relationship contentment. I guess I thought Mystery comes in some preconceived package. It doesn’t. But, I haven’t really given up that notion. I fail, repeatedly, in a gloriously human way. It is one of the things I’m actually quite good at.

Anyway, I’ve come the bitter way to a better understanding. The relationship darkness that haunts me, even to this day, exposes me to more light than I can stand. Good relationships guarantee that I am brought to my kneesand thrust right up against my limitations. I can’t live with them, and can’t live without them. No wonder I’m ambivalent at times.

The light comes in anyway. It doesn’t always feel good.  Sometimes it illuminates a seething mess, but always it brings some tender awareness, a forgiveness that is coated in redeeming humiliation. I’ve done it again –broken something precious. And participated in a birth, of light, of heart, of sweet and terrible illumination.  The light gets in through the cracks in my/our hearts.

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