Stephen Shoemaker writes:Last week I was convalescing in late afternoon and I turned on the Oprah Show…The guest was Elizabeth Gilbert whose best seller Eat, Pray, Love is a powerful spiritual memoir.
Someone asked if everyone needed to be broken open as much as she was in order to find one’s spiritual path. No, she said, but everyone needs to experience some crack in their life; and she quoted Leonard Cohen:
“There is a crack in everything/ That’s how the light gets in.”
I looked up Leonard Cohen’s song, and it sounded for all the world like an Advent hymn to me:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets into our personal lives. That’s how the light gets in to our community and nation. A crisis, a broken dream, a ruinous choice, a brute reality. And the hard shell of our perfect but hollow life cracks open to the mercy and light of God.
Source: Stephen Shoemaker, Myers Park Baptist Church, 9 December 2007.
Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Eat Pray Love is reviewed at Reviewing Books and Movies.
Dr. Geoff Pound
Image: “That’s how the light gets in.”