Inspiration:
Ring the bells that still can ring 
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
— Anthem, Leonard Cohen
Brokenness
When I heard the song Anthem recently, I thought (not for the first time) that this image of light shining through the cracks of our brokenness is such a beautiful one. And then I wondered why I have trouble seeing the light when I’m broken, or why it takes me longer than I’d like to feel its warmth.
I suddenly pictured myself in tears, sitting on the floor, with lots and lots of pieces of an “Iris vase” scattered about me. Some were large and chunky, others were sharp little shards…it was an overwhelming mess. When my children were small, and we were struggling with a difficult diagnosis for one of them, I felt alone with my broken pieces. All I thought about were my own broken pieces. I couldn’t begin to figure out how to fashion a vase out of the mess around me. Cracked or not.
Before I can see light coming through the cracks of my brokenness, I need some help getting to the point where I am “merely cracked,” and not scattered in countless pieces all over the floor! It takes courage to reveal what feels like such a mess to another, to share my pain and to listen in turn to another’s. The mutual sharing, the listening, the understanding…all these create a connection that is better than any cement for putting together those broken pieces in new ways, stronger ways, ways that allow for a great light to shine through – even when my own little candle has gone out.
Iris Hardin attends Andover Newton Theological School and is a candidate for the Unitarian Universalist ministry. She is married with three stepchildren in their late twenties and nineteen-year-old twin sons. Her son Adam has autism. TO READ MORE