This morning my Spanish teacher was 15 minutes late arriving because of the awful Bogotano combination of rainy weather, bad traffic and aggressive drivers. For each of those 15 minutes, I prayed fervently that she wasn't going to show. But as the priest said in the homily on Sunday (yes, we did go to a Catholic Church on Sunday and quite frankly we got more out of it in one service than we did out of the last 4 weeks at the Protestant Church), sometimes God's answer is "no" and the teacher showed up.
In addition to my praying, I was reading the latest edition of Oprah's magazine and I came across a quote in an article about the interior designer Nate Berkus that I really liked. The quote from Leonard Cohen's song "Anthem" follows:
"Ring the bells that still can ring,
forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything;
that's how the light gets in."
In other words, we don't have to be perfect because nothing is and isn't intended to be.
This concept completely freed me during my Spanish class to just do my best. My Spanish will never be perfect, my flower arranging will never be perfect, my childrearing will never be perfect, but as long as I ring the bells that still ring, the light is getting in and that's what matters.
3 comments:
So perfectly put! Can I use it?
Thanks, I needed to hear that.
This is just what I needed to be reminded of. This last week has made me feel like everything is spinning slightly off-kilter and that I'm going to fail at everything I put my hands on. Thanks for reminding me that it's okay to be a little less than the Perfect Everything.
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