I love the dying light of early winter morning today. I can’t explain why. Maybe it’s the rich paleness of it or the simplicity of its spareness. It’s like the fallen red berries on my garden path: the fruit of life meeting its certain end.

Now green tea at my desk again after brief sitting. Feeling filled with the words you have all posted the past two days (and two Leonard Cohen YouTube links). All so very moving, each in its very own way. Thank you, truly, truly thank you.

And so begins another day of my newly « unemployed » life. Much to write about that, and I will, I promise, but there’s no time or space to do so here, this morning.

Today, like almost every day since I first heard them in July 2009, Mr. Cohen’s words come to me: « There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. » The cracks seem to be omnipresent these days – or maybe I’m just paying more attention to them, whether I want to or not? So much seems to be falling apart – socially, politically, economically – and I’m finding all around me, near and not so near, the presence of so much sickness, old age and death. Amid all this seeming unraveling, I can’t explain why, but Leonard Cohen’s words change the experience of those cracks for me. It’s not so much that I « see the light » that he refers to. No, it feels more like I « see the cracks, » I really see the cracks, which means I let them be, which means I experience them as they are. And that changes everything. That’s how, as Leonard says, the light gets in.