"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, "Anthem"
Yesterday my friend Haley gifted me with the above Leonard Cohen stanza, and I'm putting it to memory.
What an uplifting response to many of the feelings that have weighed on me this past week: failure, disappointment, hopelessness.
Cohen's song was released almost 25 years ago, and 1992 was hardly the first year our world felt cracked. But the chorus swells my heart as I hear it today.
Since the election I have upped my imperfect offerings: words here on this page, intentional addressing of erosion in incivility, shining my feeble light through cracks here and there.
Yesterday I gently talked with some students who were using the term "white trash" without hearing its racist overtones. It was not my finest teaching moment, but it went okay. It was an imperfect offering.
Can this brokenness we are experiencing as a country generate an outpouring of light, a ringing of the bells that still can ring?
Join me.
Leonard Cohen RIP
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