Tag: mending relationships

The Gift of Imperfection

We are all imperfect. But we are perfectly suited to the work we are called to do.

I sometimes think about a quote attributed to Michelangelo, when asked how he could sculpt a leaf that looks so real. “You just cut away all the parts that don’t look like a leaf”. 

In a sense, we all sculpt ourselves. When we let go of all the parts that don’t really fit us, we discover who we really are. It’s sometimes difficult to let go of the image of ourselves that we have tried so hard to create. Often this is an image of perfection, but accepting our imperfection is an important part of discovering our true selves. The mistakes we make along the way are part of this process.

How often do we say, “If I’d known then what I know now, I would have done things differently.” And yet, if we had done things differently, we would not know what we know now. We would not be who we are now. We only know what we know now because of those mistakes. Without them, we would be a different person. 

When we realize that we are imperfect, when we fully accept that, we can begin to know ourselves. When we can do that, we can understand what we are called to do.

What if our weaknesses, our weird-nesses, were an important part of our ability to do the work we are called to do? 

Our weirdnesses can help us to carry the burden of our calling. I think of a local Friend, who can be vastly annoying when they want something, but who has been able to do amazing work in their community precisely because they do not accept “no” for an answer. In my work with anti-racism, the ability and willingness to be impolite and confrontational is sometimes needed to call out micro (or macro) aggressions. Or to speak truth to power. 

We are all imperfect. But we are perfectly suited to the work we are called to do. Does this mean that we don’t have to try to be our best selves? I don’t think so. There is a difference between wanting to be better and wanting to be perfect. 

It’s interesting to note that the word perfect originally did not mean “without flaws”. It meant “complete”. It is from the Latin per facere, to make complete. Something that is perfect is complete. When we are imperfect, we are incomplete. And it’s this incomplete-ness that means that we need others to complete us. This is the drive for community, for connection with others. 

Understanding this enables (or even requires) us to connect to other people in order to be perfect – in order to be complete. Understanding ourselves, warts and all, helps us understand what we bring to our ministry, and what we need to call on others to do. 

When we understand ourselves, we can carve our own leaves – cut away the parts we have tried to be that aren’t really us, and “sink down to the seed that God planted in us”. We can do what we have been admonished to do: love our neighbor as ourselves: as our true selves, not as we want to be seen, not as we hope that we are, not as others see us, nor as we are afraid we are. But as our true selves. This is liberating. 

A Simple Faith in a Complicated World

News!

Oh, wow. I’ve written a book! And now it has a publication date: 28 July 2023. That’s a long way off, but it will be available for pre-order before that, and a few review copies can be had even before that. If you’d like to write a review, please let me know and we’ll see if we can snag one of those.

Watch this space!

Love Our Neighbor as Ourselves

We are admonished to love our neighbors as ourselves. I have always understood this to mean that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves

We are admonished to love our neighbors as ourselves. I have always understood this to mean that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves. We should wish for them the same things that we have or wish or wish to have for ourselves: love, community, good health, adventure, challenging work, abundance, etc. This is hard to do sometimes, as we don’t see our neighbors as we see ourselves. We see our “insides” – all of our thoughts, wishes, fears, insufficiencies and inadequacies – but only their “outsides” – their accomplishments, the face that they turn to the world. 

And vice versa. They don’t know our vulnerabilities, our failures, our insecurities. They only see the face that we show the world, the face we don to protect ourselves. I wonder how we would react to the “us” that others see? So Robert Burns writes “oh, the gift that God would give us to see ourselves as others see us.” Or to love ourselves as others love us. Because sometimes we find another person who seems able to penetrate our defenses, to see through the walls we use to protect ourselves. Someone wo can see beyond the face that we turn to the world and see right into our wounded hearts. What a rare grace that is, a communion that can feel God-given, to have someone see us as we really are and to love us unconditionally.  

In Margery Williams’ classic children’s tale “The Velveteen Rabbit”, a stuffed rabbit became a real rabbit both metaphorically and literally. It happened because he was truly loved. It’s the metaphoric transformation though, that is usually quoted when referring to this work. “He didn’t mind how he looked to other people, because the nursery magic had made him Real, and when you are Real shabbiness doesn’t matter.” I believe that this is the love that we all seek. 

Another way to understand “Love our neighbor as ourselves” is to understand it to mean that we should love our neighbor as our true selves. As who we really are, not not as someone or something else. Not as who we want to be, or as who we want others to think we are, or as who they want us to be, or as they see us. But who we really are: imperfect, gifted and flawed, trying our best, trying to do better, trying the patience of others. 

In order to do this, we must open ourselves to others. We must show them the “insides” that we normally protect. We must become vulnerable. In becoming vulnerable we also become real. In becoming vulnerable, we invite others into the place where we truly live. We open ourselves to having the love we offer our neighbor returned, giving the possibility of a communion of souls that (as we see above) is rare. 

What do we need to do to love our neighbor as our true selves? How can we do this? We need to be able to sit in the fear and vulnerability that come when we let our walls down – not an easy thing. How can we as Quakers create a community where Friends can do this? What in our meetings signals that it is safe (or unsafe) to let down our walls? What in our meetings needs to change for Friends to be able to be their true selves? 

How can we create the sacred space that lets us love our neighbor as our true selves, a space where we can be who we really are, warts and all, and still feel loved? A space where we can become our God-loved selves? 

The Cult of Perfection

It’s time to give up the cult/illusion of perfection, which keeps us from achieving our spiritual potential.

We are told that master carpet weavers purposely introduce an error in their pattern because only God is perfect, and to weave a perfect carpet would be an affront to God. 

So much to unpack here. The first thing is the problematic reasoning that says that only God is perfect, and so I have to be sure to be imperfect. This totally ignores the fact that if the first is true the second is not necessary. If only God is perfect, why do I need to be sure to make something imperfect? COULD I make something perfectly if I am not God? Presumably not. 

So why do we have to go out of our way to make something imperfect? Is there not a kind of hubris, a sort of spiritual showing off that requires us to wear our peity as a shining garment of forced imperfection? 

Then there is the question of why God would need for us to be sure to not be perfect. Is God that jealous? It seems to me to be a form of pettiness that is very human and not Godlike at all. We continue to imagine God in human form, with our own imperfections. Which means that the God we imagine cannot be perfect after all. 

But for me there is a deeper question. Given that we are created imperfect, what if God sometimes needs for us to be perfect? What if one day we have this amazing gift to have a perfect day or to do one thing absolutely perfectly? In the context of our imperfection, one shining example of perfection would be such a gift. Why would we intentionally foul it? Why would we want to not accept it? What does this mean for our relationship with God, with the world? 

What happens to perfect people? Do we really know any? Perhaps a better question is what happens to the ones who are most like Jesus, who try to bring the love of God to the world by working for equality and justice and (e.g.) civil rights? What happens to the ones whose work threatens the power structures of the world? MLK, Rosa Luxemburg, Gandhi. 

And yet none of these were perfect. We hear stories about our heroes that illuminate their feet of clay. That prove to us that they were not perfect. Often the response to this is to withdraw respect for them and their work. Why are we so reluctant to admire someone who has faults? What if we could understand that they did this amazing work in spite of these imperfections? That even with feet of clay they could practice the commandment that we love one another? 

Because if they could do their work without being perfect, perhaps we can too. Our imperfections, our feet of clay, should not prevent us from doing the work we are called to do. I believe that it is our imperfections which force us into relationship with others, which completes us. 

When my weakness is supplemented by another’s strength in the same area, we both become complete. To make this happen, we need to understand and accept (even appreciate) our own weaknesses as well as the strengths and weaknesses of others. When we can see how these complement each other we can do things together that neither of us could do alone. It’s only when our imperfections are completed by the gifts of others that we become complete. Not I, but we. 

It’s time to give up the cult/illusion of perfection, which keeps us from achieving our spiritual potential. 

Forgiveness

We all carry around resentments, wounds that impair our ability to function as a whole person.

Forgiveness. Who doesn’t seek it? Who doesn’t need it? Who doesn’t crave it? How do we get it? We all carry around resentments, wounds that impair our ability to function as a whole person. 

There is a story that the author Corrie Ten Boom was asked to forgive one of the Nazi guards from Ravensbruck, the prison camp where she and her sister were imprisoned and where her sister died. She found that she wasn’t able to do it. She prayed to be given the strength, and at the moment she committed to making the effort she reported that she was filled with a healing warmth that she called the love of God.

In The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare tells us “…in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation. We do pray for mercy, and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy.” In that prayer we ask, “forgive us our trespasses AS we forgive those who trespass against us.”

This can be understood as meaning ‘in the same manner’ as we forgive others. To the extent that we can completely forgive someone else we can be completely forgiven. If the best we can summon up is incomplete and grudging forgiveness that’s what we find for ourselves. Our forgiveness of others is a prerequisite for being forgiven ourselves.

“AS we forgive others” can also be understood as meaning ‘at the same time’ as we forgive others. It’s a simultaneous process of healing which we initiate. Francis of Assisi is credited with saying “it is in pardoning that we are pardoned” I think that this is what Corrie Ten Boom experienced.  It’s an interlocking action. Or is it the same one? Is forgiving others the same as forgiving ourselves?

The moment when we are able to give up our identity as the wounded one is the moment we are made whole. 

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