“…and ye shall be as the gods, knowing good and evil.”
— The Serpent, Genesis 3:5
Recently, Jane and I were camping with her brothers and their wives in Bears Ears. Jane’s brother has become quite conversant with the many native dwellings and granaries often built high up on cliffs, as well as the landscape and lifestyles of the remarkable peoples who once lived there. It is a yearly spring trek we eagerly look forward to.
I especially love hiking up the east side of Comb Ridge, a jagged, massive 80-mile stone ramp running from the Abajo Mountains in Utah down to Kayenta, Arizona. Once you reach the top, you are gifted a vast and breathtaking view as the foreground dramatically and dangerously falls away at your feet. On this west-facing cliffside, the rock is cinnamon, blush, and berry red. The east side ramp is primarily shades of bare-skinned concrete with lots of lichen freckles.
All along this sculpted rock are cracks. And many of these cracks have become a cradle for life. Lives that would not exist were it not for these fissures collecting soil, water, and seed.
And that observation, while hiking on Comb Ridge, prompted the play on words that we normally hear—cracks let the light in. Nothing you haven’t heard before. Or the idea of Kintsugi—a shattered vessel rebuilt with gold, gluing the seams, making it more interesting and beautiful than before.
When my ego, faith, certainty, and comfort have developed cracks—when my heart, mind, and soul have been broken open—I have been forced to reckon with the soil, sun, seeds, and storms that these crevices collect—as I try to be still, reflective, prayerful, and patient, I grow new ways of seeing and being that, despite the pain and trauma incurred, create a me that is much more beautiful and useful than when I lived in my prior pseudo shell of perfection.
In the story of Adam and Eve, Eve makes a choice that cracks open their supposedly picture-perfect world, creating the opportunity to be as the god’s, knowing good from evil, experiencing joy through sorrow, and creating a splendid variety of rich lives from heartache and loss.
Faith Matters’ recent interview with Jeff Strong resonates with this theme. More specifically, how the cracks in the faith of those we love, can offer the opportunity for them and us to grow our compassion, appreciation, and respect for each other. How a “faith crisis” can birth a more godly love in ourselves and in others.
And isn’t that really the point of life anyway?
