On Monday evening I was sitting in a meeting listening to a report from the chair of the Board of Trustees.In the course of listing all the many large and small tasks that had been done to maintain a large, aging, yet beautiful building, he said:"The architects facility review addresses concerns about the north sanctuary walls and so crack monitors were installed". My ears perked up. Crack monitors? What in the world are crack monitors? Upon further investigation I was told that they are like rulers glued over a crack in a structure and read monthly to determine whether a crack is changing.

What a concept! What a metaphor! I began to think of all the places where crack monitors are needed. I mulled over the situations that could have been so different if only a crack monitor had been installed before things broke apart. Perhaps most wars would never have started had this stop gap measure been in place.  I wondered if the United Nations has an equivalent of a crack monitor to alert them to times of action…..or inaction.  I thought of some of my past friendships that could have fared better had they had a ruler glued over the hurt caused by an ill spoken word. Perhaps that ruler could have shown the visible change in a precious relationship before the person drifted out of my life.

We move through our lives with ferocious speed, bumping into this, bouncing off that. Sometimes the fact that cracks are forming, growing, hurdling us toward a rent in the tide of our lives goes unnoticed. It is only when bridges collapse or buildings fall do we stop. Then our minds take the needed time to travel back, back and we begin to see that tiny little crevice that could have used some tending.

Where does your life need a crack monitor? How might the attention to the beginning of a problem prevent a devastating outcome? What small ruptures need tending?

I think tonight I may gather together all the extra rulers and glue and begin some important monitoring. Join me?

"O God of new beginnings, who brings light out of night’s darkness and fresh green out of the hard winter earth, there is barren land between us as people and as nations this day, there are empty stretches of soul within us. Give us eyes to see new dawnings of promise. Give us ears to hear fresh soundings of birth." J. Philip Newell, Celtic Treasure