When I was looking over my photos for the week, I was struck by how several of them feature sidewalk cracks. They sort of look like they were taken in the same place, but they were three different places at different times. I wondered what subtle message I might glean from this recurrent image. Why so many cracks? And then I remembered the often-quoted Leonard Cohen song with the lyric, "There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." So I invite you to go listen here. Lots of wisdom there.
And I'd say that cracks also allow for space to come in, currently one of my favorite themes. If you're feeling squeezed, and I think a lot of us are these days, keep an eye out for the cracks and feel where you might be able to connect with the underlying space. As my dear Pema Chodron wrote in When Things Fall Apart:
"Instead of struggling against the force of confusion, we could meet it and relax. When we do that, we gradually discover that clarity is always there. In the middle of the worst scenario of the worst person in the world, in the middle of all the heavy dialogue with ourselves, open space is always there."
How? Well, that's the million dollar question, isn't it? For me, the breath, just as my body is breathing it, just feeling that air going in and out helps. Or picturing the vast space in the atomic structure, or looking at the sky, or feeling the space around my body. You may have something brilliant that works wonders for you. If you do, please feel free to share. I'd love to hear!
So, as we venture into another week, I invite us to forget our perfect offerings, let the light come in, relax with things as they are, and breathe, breathe, breathe...
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