“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 was right. Well, of course he was. In every life there are challenges that absolutely delight us, and other challenges that absolutely break us. The things that break us are not the challenges of small things. These are the big things of life. From lost jobs to lost friends, broken legs to broken hearts, being born into chaos, and dying all alone, we are both blessed and vulnerable to all that life can take. Every season of our lives is both a beginning and an ending.
We are in the waiting room of the world. We are waiting to go forward to a new normal because going back to the old normal is not an option anymore. Not even close.
We are waiting parent by parent, child by child, teacher by teacher, for a reliable plan for the ongoing, steady presence of schools. And in the absence of a reliable plan, a path to incrementally getting to some reasonable facsimile, day by day.
My grandmother, Mable Hopper, was a mostly stern, serious woman, at least to my 5-year-old self. Small in physical stature, Mable had a big wit, a beautiful singing voice, and a depth of intelligence that did not suffer fools or foolishness gladly. I, being five, was full of foolishness.
There are some sounds you never forget. The sweetness of your toddler’s voice, the off-key perfection of your best friend’s singing, the dependable snore of your snoozing dog.
There are some sounds that are so close to the heart and soul of your life that you never forget them. Sweet, reassuring sounds, like the joy and consolation of your big brother’s laughter.
When the virus hit the United States, Washington State was brought to its knees. Washington is my home state and I live in the Eastern part of it, the part that by comparison, has been dealt a significantly less lethal blow than our west side neighbors. And still, in some fundamental, essential way, each of our lives across the entire planet have been dealt a lethal blow. Within that devastation may come our salvation.
This winter was, for most of us, what my wise mother would have aptly described as “a long-ass haul.” No snow for Christmas, but plenty in March. Temps so low outside that the dogs’ breath crystallized at first pant. Days as brief and dark as a Kafka short story. Seriously. It’s good to finally be looking at winter mostly from the rear-view mirror now. So damn good.
I came into the world old. By that, I don’t mean an old, wise soul. I mean a child who was, from the beginning, overly familiar with death. By the time that I, the youngest child of a second marriage was born, my old father was on his way to dying and my young mother was in the deep end of the ocean caring for him.
We wait for the better thing that is just beyond our reach, that great good thing that will finally make us happy and whole. We are more than willing to wait for it, even though it take a lifetime. The thing is, waiting to fully live until the right set of circumstances comes along is like waiting for a pie to cook without ever turning on the oven. It takes some heat to get the gold, on a pie or in a life.
Some moments in life shake you to your core and take your breath away. In these moments, the only way out is to find a path through. If you’re a hiker, then you know if you ever find yourself lost in the woods, you should almost always seek to take the path of least resistance to conserve energy and strength. This means stepping over, not up, walking around and not scaling whatever obstacles you encounter.
As I settled into the idea of simply listening instead of demanding to hear what I expected, a space opened up for a new sound to come. It was low at first, and quiet, but as my ear tuned to a new frequency, I heard it clearly. It was the sound of the whoosh of life, as strong and sure as the spring current flowing across the paddle of a kayak, constant as the river that holds the kayaker and his dream.
