There is a crack in everything

SOURCE: ROSEMARIE MONNERJAHN

The idealized and highly romanticised concept people have of their »perfect summer«, filled with relaxation, rejuvenation and languid days of ease, often has the exact opposite effect. The annual striving for the perfect summer makes people hectic, then desperate and finally depressed.

This has nothing to do with summer. It is the result of an unrealistic and unattainable ideal. When we paint a perfect picture in our head, it often collides head on with the reality outside of our heads.

Again, I turn to a line in Leonard Cohen’s song to guide us through the summer. »There is a crack in everything.« The other time of the year when we are plagued by exaggerated expectations of life and people is Christmas. Just as we imagine what the perfect summer looks like, so, too, do we carry in our hearts an idealised image of the perfect Christmas. Yet, the Gospel story of the birth of Jesus is one long reflection on the truth: »There is a crack in everything.« We have Mary standing under the almost permanent shock of stunning surprise, first with the angel Gabriel from heaven came, then with the shepherd who watched their flocks by night and suddenly show up to be her first visitors, and finally with Simeon in the Temple.

There is a crack in everything. Joseph has already considered dismissing Mary in silence in order to spare himself the shame of a child born out of wedlock. There is a crack in everything. The shepherds who are heading to Bethlehem belong to the masses of the religiously ignorant, who are not supposed to know that the Messiah is coming, let alone appear as his manger.

The authentic question is not what a perfect, flawless world, summer or Christmas would look like. Instead we need to ask ourselves: How shall we deal with the incompleteness and imperfection of life? Like Mary, Joseph and the shepherds, we come to God in a world that has a crack in everything. This includes the fact, that we also come as people who carry a crack in themselves. We are in no way different from the original cast of characters in Bethlehem.

We always carry in ourselves, a longing and hunger for a more complete and healed life. Perhaps we desire to love more, to live more meaningfully, or to pray more deeply. Surely, we want more peace and more understanding. But many things weaken us on the way:  Anger and fear arise, which we do fully control. We have suffered losses that have left throbbing scars on our hearts. There are fresh wounds between ourselves and our beloved brothers and sisters. Among us there are men and women who hope to live with less pain in their hearts and fewer tears in their eyes. Each and every one of us lives with this imperfection and incompleteness of life, and therefore we carry more worry and weariness in us that we would like. We live like the original cast of characters: weak, unprepared and with a crack.

This is not a sign that something has gone wrong. Cracks are not the exception to the rule: they are the rule. It is the fundamental staging ground of every life, from Jesus’ to our own. There is no other place in which we will live and breath and love and long. And there is no exception to the rule, regardless of the time of year or our wish that we could create a “time out”.

This summer does not admit of solution of perfection. This is not the place where you make things perfect, neither in your marriage, nor in your work, nor anything, nor your love of God, nor your love of family or country. The thing is imperfect. And worse, there is a crack in everything that you can put together, physical objects, mental objects, constructions of any kind. But that's where the light gets in, and that's where the resurrection is and that's where the return, that's where the repentance is. It is with the confrontation, with the brokenness of things.

Therefore, when we are in search of the perfect summer and ask ourselves, »What went wrong?«, heed the soft and gentle reply: »Nothing. There is a crack in everything, including your plans for the summer«.

Erik Riechers SAC

Vallendar, August 6th, 2026