Forget Your Perfect Offering

 "Forget your perfect offering -- there's a crack in everything -- that's how the light gets in."

From Anthem by Leonard Cohen

Have you ever tried to do something for someone and had it not work out like you wanted?  I made dinner for neighbors once and it would not get done.  The rice would not stop being crunchy.  It took forever, was late, and then probably wasn't very good.  It was far from a perfect offering.  It was probably a good thing that I think someone else ended up taking dinner the same day.  So, was my effort wasted?  It was frustrating for sure, but I hope, even though the food was far from what I had intended, the light of love showed up with the food because of the effort.

Sometimes we just really, really want things to be perfect.   We want to help someone, but we want to help them with food that is tasty (And hello!  Nothing wrong with that one!).  We want to say exactly the right thing, or give exactly the right gift!  It's okay to want to do those things, and sometimes we will pull it off, but I know from experience that it's easy to not give things, or say words, or show up at all because we know it won't be perfect, and in hesitating, we are blocking the light that would otherwise have shown up with our imperfect offering!  

This is just a thought I hope to keep in mind to help me avoid hesitation when I want to do good, but am afraid.

***Photo by Joe Gardner on Unsplash