There's a Crack in Every Bell

The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be

Yeah the wars they will
Be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again
The dove is never free

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

We asked for signs
The signs were sent
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
Of every government
Signs for all to see

I can't run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
A thundercloud
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

You can add up the parts
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

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
That's how the light gets in
That's how the light gets in

*******

Dear Kate, 

Human discourse.  Human discourses.

Like God, we speak things into existence, do things with our words, and, taking ourselves to be God (for His being absent or too incompetent or care-less or generally disengaged in our affairs), from our ruling throne, we issue a fiat "Let there be..." and in its very utterance the thing is considered done.  Our "light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."  The darkness has not overcome us.  So we hoped and often claimed.

"We need to dismantle ---ism!" we hear the noble cries, and they are noble indeed.  All sorts of injustice, imbalance, atrocity, brokenness, fallen-short-of-the-glory-of-being-human, must be "dismantled," taken apart, into pieces and be (another rally word) "eradicated."  Done away with, for good--in both senses of the phrase.

Like evil is an atomic bomb.

Are you an atomic bomb?  No, you are not.  You can be a person who carries with you an atomic bomb, and with the power to detonate it.  But you are not the bomb.  The bomb is outside of you, not part of you, and even if your being in possession of it looms large enough to take over and becomes metonymic to your very humanity, you are still not the bomb per se.

With that understanding of humanity, yes, I suppose we can dismantle evil, all sorts of evil, all evils.  We might need to repent of our historical possession of them, but now that we know better, it is obvious we must take them apart and build something new, something good, out of the dismantled materials.

So let's just say we've done it, this time and finally, done away with the particular evil we tried to tear down.  Now, facing the scrapheap of dismantled materials, our task should be as easy as falling off an atomic bomb, to cross a dried seabed and reach the promised land of milk and honey, and build something good and new out of the bad and old.

Of course it's not that easy.  And it is easy to observe how it has not been and probably shall never be easy.

Look at human history, and we have all the reasons to despair.  What is a toppled tyranny usually replaced with?  Often a worse one.  Did we set out to build another Babel out of our disgraced, discordant, "dismantled" past?  No.  We truly did mean good.  Our aim was true.  But to aim at all we must also weaponize like our shamed and defeated enemies, to build things that hurt and kill, out of, alas, old materials.  (If only we were given something new...)

Look at ourselves, our own life story, and we have the deepest and most convincing reasons to surrender and resign, grow cynical and despondent about it all.  Do we ever change?  Like, ever?  We might change our self-packaging, possessions that, we think, are not part of us, dispose of our old bombs, paint over our past with new slogans, pick up a more "progressive" lexicon to redraw the moral map in our heads, but, alas, we are our old selves all over again by the next sunrise.  (If only we were given something new...)

So maybe we are the atomic bombs.  Just saying.  Take it as a theory and see where it might take you.  Maybe there's something fundamentally wrong about us that needs to be righted.  Maybe we are all ready to detonate at any moment, just a matter of when and how.  Maybe the line between good and evil is not drawn "out there" between -isms or skin colors or the sort of uniform we happen to have put on, but right through each one of us.

Which is to say as we judge, we are exposing ourselves to greater judgement in the hand of a Judge who is All-Right--or how can a Judge judge justly?  We know there is no All-Right Judge in this world we can appeal to.  That's why we fight the System, the Establishment, the Authority.  We are eager to set up our own, new and improved salvation franchise, only to become another System, a new Establishment, a more brutal Authority that aims and shoots to maintain "order" among human chaos.  Our being the particular kind of bomb that we are is all very...necessary.

Yet to be human, at all, is to "ring the bells that still can ring," and keep at the vocation even if there's "a crack in everything."   But how do we live with such contradiction, that we are all, deep down, both good and evil, noble and horrible?  Who are we to judge without finally committing murder?  How do we stay faithful to the call of being human without destroying the humanity in ourselves and others?  What sort of worldview could accommodate such brazen contradiction in all of us?

Yours, Alex