7:30 Bells: Light in the Cracks

Two converging events this week made the bells ring.

First, I watched this Ted Talk: Four Lessons in Creativity by Julie Burstein

At the end of this amazing seventeen minute talk with incredible photos (near the 16:27 second mark), Burstein holds up this 100 year old Japanese tea bowl. It was broken at some point in its history.

Burstein says: ". . .but the person who put it back together, instead of hiding the cracks, decided to emphasize them, using gold lacquer to repair it.  This bowl is more beautiful now, having been broken, than it was when it was first made.”


Second, I heard the song Anthem by Leonard Norman Cohen, a singer-songwriter, musician, poet, and novelist from Canada. Here are the words from the verse:

               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. 

As I look at the golden cracks celebrated in the tea bowl, as I hear the words of Cohen’s song, as I look at my own life and books, I wonder. The crack in everything is how the light gets in, but maybe it is also how our light gets out.

LORE OF THE BELL:  Where you are broken, seize the opportunity to ring more beautifully still.