Ring the Bells

As a life's work, I would remember everything - everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net. 
Annie Dillard 

Broken, by Taradharma 2011

• One friend's husband leaves her after three years of a seemingly happy marriage.  Another's husband leaves her after 30 years.  Both because they could not forgo the temptation of an affair with another woman.
• A friend's father is diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease.
• Another friend's father is killed in an auto accident.
• In a baseball park full of people, each holds up a sign signifying their loved ones lost to cancer.

Do we ever come to terms with loss, our own and the world's?  Sometimes there are no 'do-overs.'  Sometimes what is lost can never be retrieved.  Like Annie Dillard, I gather the good around me because it is all I can do.  The good things are a balm against all else that life throws at me.  I bask in the goodness; I celebrate every chance I get; I thank my lucky stars.


Broken bottles broken plates
Broken switches broken gates
Broken dishes broken parts
Streets are filled with broken hearts
Broken words never meant to be spoken
Everything is broken.

Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground
Broken cutters broken saws
Broken buckles broken laws
Broken bodies broken bones
Broken voices on broken phones
Take a deep breath feel like you're chokin'
Everything is broken.
-- Bob Dylan


You can add up the parts 
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

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


Damn those cracks.  Praise those cracks.  They are the stuff life is made of.  As I grow older, I am learning not to be so terribly afraid of broken things, lives, hearts.  I am learning that they are great opportunities for deeper understanding, for more intimacy and exquisite compassion for others and myself.


Now, please pass the Ben & Jerry's, will ya?