Ring the bells that still can ring

SOURCE: ROSEMARIE MONNERJAHN

I suspect that for most people, thinking of summer brings back very personal memories. For the most part, these memories will be warm, pleasant and comforting. I wish you nothing less, but therein also lies a great danger. We associate this season with a world that is still intact, where everything is in order, the family is close-knit and life is complete. But it is precisely in summer that we also experience stress, whether it be during holiday trips or within family dynamics. Summer is a time of high expectations and, at the same time, of deep disappointment, especially when the things we had hoped for during this time do not come to pass.

If I were to make a proposal for a song to carry us through the summer, then I would nominate »Anthem«, a song composed by my countryman Leonard Cohen. In the refrain of this song, he writes:

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in

Ring the bells that still can ring

The first lesson of the story is to show us how God acts when life is incomplete and imperfect and then to say to us: Act like God! What does that mean? To act like God means to work with what you have. To act like God means to work with the hand that life has dealt you, instead of complaining the conditions as they exist. It is one of the most basic lessons of the spiritual life, flowing from the very heart of the biblical narrative. Do not curse the emptiness but rather seek the fullness.

A few years ago, I held a course and a number of the participants complained to me about the results. They were not dissatisfied with me, but with themselves. They were unhappy about the way they had taken part and how little they were able to learn out of one experience that occurred during the weekend. They were discouraged by their lack of openness and even their downright stubbornness and resistance. At one point, a participant described the experience as »sub-optimal«, an interesting way to describe an experience that was, in fact, less than perfect.

That is not uncommon experience for any of us. Often life is sub-optimal, less than perfect. And often we are dissatisfied with the way we dealt with life, when the conditions were less than perfect. And it is precisely to this situation that the Gospel speaks. There are stories of sheep that stray, coins that are lost and sons that end up in pigsties. A widow’s plea falls on deaf ears, disciples eager to help and heal cannot do so, and even Jesus first round of healing a blind man does not bring about instantaneous success. Everything that human beings do is sub-optimal. There is a crack in everything. It does not matter how well we do anything. Afterwards, we can always imagine an improvement, a better way, a greater achievement.

Or take the story of Bethlehem’s most famous birth. In this story of God, we are shown a night in which everything is sub-optimal. The housing for the birth of a child is sub-par and would meet no housing code. The medical assistance is non-existent, without even a midwife to help. The timing is terrible. No red carpet, no welcoming committee, no interest, no pity. Those are hardly ideal conditions. Life, in this night, is utterly imperfect and incomplete.

And what is God’s reaction to these less than perfect conditions? God works with the situation he has before him. If God had waited for the perfect set of conditions to arrive, then we would have no child and no feast until this day. Act like God. Ring the bells that still can ring. Life may be imperfect, but the inability to act brings life to a standstill. It is one of the most marvelous and refreshing revelations of God that it is entirely possible to love something or someone who is imperfect, and still be able to form, mold and fashion life.

Erik Riechers SAC

Vallendar, July 9th, 2026