Hi everyone,

I am currently reading Sue Mosteller's new book "Light through the Crack".  She quotes Leonard Cohen, a song writer who says "There is a crack in everything.  That's how the light gets in".

I was touched in her opening lines at how she spoke of the L'Arche daybreak community as full of cracks.  I think that many look at the developmentally disabled as full of cracks, fragile, imperfect, ready to break.  If we only focus on the crack on the surface, we stay with the imperfection (in our eyes).  When we look closer, we begin to see a light coming through the crack, which causes us to wonder what is beneath.

This is not only true of of the core members of L'Arche daybreak, but of ourselves.  We who come as support people to Daybreak for whatever our reasons are, live with cracks in our own fragile stories.  The challenge is to see them as opportunities to see the light and to explore where the light is coming from.  L'Arche Daybreak has a way of inviting us to embrace the cracks and to dare to explore and find the hidden treasure.  There is a wonderful story in the book about buddist monks finding a statue in their monastery cracked and only to peel away the clay surface to find a beatiful golden statue underneath.

This is a challenge in my life, to see beneath the cracks that exist in my life with my experience, my questions.  Life can cause these cracks in our souls, but if we look closer, maybe it is a peeling away of another layer to discover something beautiful.  Am I glad I had to live through the terrible ordeal that tore apart our parish grouping, that caused so much un needed pain? Of course not!  But what can I find beneath the cracks in this story?

In the midst of our pain and what we live, each one of us.  Can we, dare we dig deeper and grow?  I pray for the courage to do so in my own life.  I know I am not the same person, and a new Jeff is emerging because of what I live, the questions I ask myself.  It is interesting as I write this a good image comes to me.  At night I help Tom Krusiak with brushing his teeth.  We stand in front of the mirror.  I can look at Tom and see his brokeness and he can look at me and see mine.  Two different people with cracks, but both of us containing a wondrous story beneath...a light that shines from our baptism.  It is the journey to this light within that each of us must dare take.

It is painful, but growth often is.  Maybe that is why we fight it even though it is what we need.  Until next time!

Jeff