Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.
These lines are from Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem”, and when I came across them recently, they felt like a gift to me. A gift that I’ve been working on unwrapping and opening … and want to share with you, just as it is, unpolished, straight from my heart to you!
I have heard the last line quoted often before – There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in – without ever hearing the whole song. But when I was listening to it, it was these words Forget your perfect offering that resonated most deeply with me.
What is it saying? It may say something different to each one of us, something different to you than to me, but what it said to me was, Be authentic, be your imperfectly real self. Not who you think you’re supposed to be, but who you are. Who you are right now, including what you believe to be your brokenness, what is your brokenness. What you think, or know, are the cracks in you.
It’s saying, Forget striving for your perfect offering and remember your imperfect offering. Remember that your imperfect offering is beautiful, it is enough; it is enough because it is what you have right now, here and now, in this moment. See where the light gets in your offering and makes it beautiful, perfectly, beautifully authentic. Imperfectly perfect, perfectly imperfect.
It’s saying … forget perfection. Forget striving for it. Yes, give of the best that you have, the best that you are … but don’t then judge it as ‘less than,’ ‘not good enough,’ or ‘flawed’. As if ‘flawed’ is an ugly, irredeemable, unholy thing. Except that it isn’t … oh, it isn’t. Not in the light of belovedness, it isn’t!
And like a popular Christian song goes ‘Beautiful, the mess we are/The honest cries of breaking hearts, are better than a Hallelujah sometimes.’ It’s the honesty and the authenticity that’s so beautiful, the real rawness, the raw realness. No pretending. No pretending that there isn’t brokenness, breaking places in our hearts and lives. But acknowledging them, offering them up in vulnerable, beautiful openness. Then, oh, the grace that bountifully blesses such an offering … and what remains imperfect about it, then?
Authenticity and honesty make the imperfection into something perfect …. the imperfect offering becomes a whole offering, even a holy offering.
Our brokenness, our imperfections can be things of holiness, places where the light gets into us … places where the light flows out of us and shines all the more perfectly!
The gift of our imperfections is that they can be a gift to others; a gift of light and grace. They can be the places where we have the most to offer, the most light to give. The places wherein we seem the most beautiful to others, where we are the most beautiful to others!
Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.
Ring that bell! The cracked bell that can still ring, and ring resoundingly!
Ring that bell! The cracked bell that can still ring … ring resoundingly with belovedness. A cracked bell can still echo belovedness, and perhaps all the more richly and perfectly because of its imperfection.
Ring that cracked bell … embrace your imperfections. Know the gift of them, share the gift in them. It’s where your life echoes with belovedness; it’s where the light gets in and where it is most luminous.
Your authentic offering is truly your ‘perfect’ offering! It is where you are most you, where you are most beautiful, where you are enough.