The Gleam in the Gaps

“And they’re going to hear from me. 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”
– Leonard Cohen

This is a popular turn of phrase now that this master musician and song writer has passed. It’s also the perfect anthem for December. The last month of the year is designated a 3, which invites us to find the joy. In a 9 year though, often the joy is completely obscured by the remnants and heartache of the old cycle. It’s only through the proverbial cracks that we do not lose all hope, for we see our dreams peaking through, a glimpse of brilliance in the breaks and fissures;  we seek out our deepest desires in the monuments to oppression, a glint spark radiating to the depths of our consciousness in spite of sadness, in spite of despair. This is the promise of active grace.  Grace that asserts and inserts itself in the world.

Undoubtedly, there will be some who will label the above a pollyanna style folly…a pointless exercise in wishful thinking. But the 3 energy doesn’t call us to be blind or willfully ignorant about our circumstances.  I’m the first to admit… things don’t feel like they’re looking up.

Still, the 3 counsels to everyone (everyone as in not just the victors, not just the losers), to seek out some deep, elemental truth. Essentially, universally, the 3 invites us to wake up. While the 11/2 energy last month cautioned us against too much agitation in favor of building back our strength, the 3 says…there is another way, if you make the effort. There is a better way, a way toward mending collective wounds, toward knitting ourselves back into whole cloth, but it will a) take work and b) require us to swallow a big dose of reality.

For now, our beacon of hope is still just a crack where a light is shining through. The sight line to the higher path isn’t visible yet…but the glow, the gleam in the gaps is, uncontrovertibly there, if we look. And wrapped in this knowledge, we move forward, perhaps shuffling at first in the dim, but steadfastly moving toward the rift, to uncover and discover what lies ahead.

Another quote, a perennial favorite of mine, that I am keeping close, this month:

“Walker, there is no road. The road is made by walking.”
– Antonio Macado

Peace.