The Beauty of Imperfection

While I was studying at the University of Toronto in the late 1980’s there was a Professor of Philosophy who was fond of saying, “If something is worth doing, than it is worth doing poorly.”  He wanted to unshackle his students from the tyranny of perfection.  In his view the aphorism, “If some is worth doing, it is worth doing well,” meant that many never tried to do it at all; they were oppressed by either the fear of failure or the burden of the task.  The quest for perfection can mutate into perfectionism which robs a person not only of the joy and pleasure in what they do but can even stop them from making an attempt at it.

Instead it is often better if the quest is to discover the beauty in imperfection. The commentator Linda Johnson said:

We are bombarded daily with images of 'perfection' - the perfect body, the perfect relationship, the perfect car, house, job, health, bank balance, family and so on. We are led to believe that once we reach these ideals we will be fulfilled, so we aspire to things outside of ourselves to make us happy.

And yet when we look inside ourselves we are often confronted and taunted by our imperfections.  Our failure to rise to even our own best intentions can cause us to lose hope and stop trying.  Beauty is a very difficult concept to define.  In the same sentence I can say that my grand-daughter, my daughter and my wife are beautiful and yet I know that the beauty I find in each of them is experienced differently.

I mentioned recently that some years ago I was on a five day retreat at the Anglican retreat house in Cheltenham (which no longer exists).  Through the window of the dining room I could see an enormous oak tree in the courtyard.  The tree was gnarled and scared from a hundred years of pruning.  I remarked to one of the other people on retreat what a beautiful tree it was; that the scars seemed to be a thing of beauty showing the long and fruitful life this tree had lived.  The other retreatant looked at the tree and said, “Um, pretty old thing, maybe they should cut it down.”  The response surprised me but it reinforced in me the notion that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

The Song of Songs is a book that introduces the reader to an intimate relationship between two people.  It speaks of the physical beauty of both the Bride and the Bridegroom.  Chapter 4:1 states:

How beautiful you are, my dearest, how beautiful!

Your eyes are like doves behind your veil,

your hair like  a flock of goats streaming down Mount Gilead.

Your teeth like a flock of ewes newly shorn,

freshly come up from dipping; all of them have twins and

none has lost a lamb.

Now these are not the images that we might choose to speak of a woman’s beauty, but in the nomadic culture of ancient Israel, doves, flocks of goats, ewes and lambs were the most valuable things they had and so they are pressed into service to describe this woman’s beauty. For all we know she may have been a very average person, but through the eyes of her beloved she is transformed into the essence of beauty.

Beauty is not an absolute, nor is there such a thing as perfection.  The love of beauty teaches us that beauty is something we appreciate with the heart, rather than the eye and the heart is always accepting of life’s imperfections.

Christopher

My Grandmother’s Wisdom

My grandmother died twenty years ago last week. As a small boy, it always seemed to me that my grandmother was wiser than my parents.  I had no objective facts to prove that, but intuitively I believed it.  I knew that my grandmother wasn’t as educated as my parents.  She had finished her formal schooling at grade four.  But that didn’t matter there was something in the way she treated me that seemed to communicate that she was a very wise woman.

My sister and I spent school holidays with my grandmother, while my mother cared for my three younger brothers at home.  I never realized at the time what a privilege it was to have the undivided attention of my grandmother for six weeks each year.  She would do the usual things one does with school aged children - trips to the pictures, visits to the Myer toy department and my favourite, dinner in the Myer cafeteria.  As a child I couldn’t imagine a more mouth watering meal than a meat pie with sauce, mashed potatoes and peas served on a plate with the Myer emblem at the top and accompanied by a strawberry milkshake with double ice cream.

My grandmother would walk everywhere.  She never owned a car and buses were only for long distances.  When my parents insisted that I walk to the local shops rather than being driven, I would complain.  But strangely, walking with my grandmother was not an imposition, but rather an adventure.  Her wisdom was what I would call “kitchen table wisdom.”  She had little time for the sophisticated discussions that happened between my mother and her children.  For my grandmother, the centre of life was care for and service to those she loved. And she was a woman of routine.  The washing was done on Monday, Thursday and Saturday; the carpets vacuumed no more than once a week for fear of wearing them out; Breakfast at seven, lunch at twelve and dinner on the table at five-thirty. 

Meals were times for conversation and stories.  Her stories, as she emptied her second pot of tea, told us who we were and where we had come from.  They were liberally spiced with family faults and failures, but equally they recounted the triumphs and small victories of our forebears and relatives.  Through my grandmother’s stories I heard the deeper voice of identity and integrity.  She never preached, moralized or criticized and yet I knew what she regarded as important in life and what she valued for her grandchildren. I am sure that it was from her that I gained my appreciation of stories, not primarily as entertainment, but as access into the real world - the world of hope and despair and the world of courage and failure.

My grandmother probably wasn’t that much wiser than my parents.  It just seemed to me as a small boy that her simple love for me and her uncomplicated view or the world was a goal that I wanted for my life.  From my innocent perspective she never seemed to be unhappy, angry or sad.  But the truth is she probably was, but she never showed it to me.  Perhaps all of us can seem wise to other people when we only have a little knowledge them.

The wonderful thing about my grandmother was that even in her last years she never tired of telling family stories.  And remarkably she could tell the same story over and over again and never change a word.  We sat, listened and treasured those moments with her - waiting with glee for the often heard punch line and the glorious laughter that followed.

Christopher

The Inarticulate Speech of the Heart

I had very sad news this week.  A good friend told me that her daughter had delivered a still-born baby boy at 26 weeks.  The tears welled up in my eyes as she told me. The words to say at such times never come easily to me and any words that do come seem so ineffectual and inadequate and seem that only the inner and outward sigh is in anyway authentic.  After a time I finished the conversation saying to my friend that in my morning prayer and meditation I would draw her daughter and husband and all the family into my prayer where my longing for them would be comfort and support and that I might be present and aware of their great suffering of which I can be only a friend or perhaps a companion.

For some time now I have found morning meditation an important part of my day.  For years I struggled with forms of personal prayer that I found unhelpful and dare I say, inadequate and inane.  The notion that prayer is about me talking to God was formative in my Christian development, but over the years the words increasingly got in the way of my deepest longings.  Then a couple of years ago I discovered meditation.  Through the careful instruction of a meditation teacher and a monthly gathering with a rather secular Buddhist meditation group, I found a deep stillness and openness with in me.  The simple practice of lighting a candle, breathing slowly and attentively, being aware of my body and the life within, has become a liberating experience.  Nowhere to go, nothing to do and most importantly, nothing to say has become for me the door way to true prayer.

Meditation has brought me back to prayer, but a prayer of the heart, prayer that listens, and practices stillness and wonder, much more the prayer the Apostle Paul speaks of in his letter to the Church at Rome, “we do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.” It’s strange that groans and sighs can be more articulate in prayer than a litany of words; words and words and more words.

I think we’ve got prayer wrong in the Christian church today and it is imperative that we start to get to right. This may not be the view of many Christians, but I’d suggest that the deepest longings of the human soul are not expressed in theology, philosophy or doctrines and beliefs; they are expressed in the inarticulate speech of the heart, in sighs and groans too deep for words and in awe-filled silence.

Perhaps the first posture of prayer must always be humility.  Again from the letter to the Roman’s Chapter 8, “those who search their hearts know the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for others in accordance with God’s will.”  When I am confronted with someone’s pain and suffering it is not for me to assume I know what is best for them.  It is presence, my presence and attentiveness that is most needed.  Yes some simple words can be helpful.  But being truly present and opening my soul to the other is the essence of true prayer.  And I believe it’s in this place that we encounter the real presence of the living God.

The next morning after the conversation with my friend, I light a candle, slowly breathed in and out, became aware of my body and my place in this world and I imagine a circle, at its centre was the loving presence God and there in God’s presence I named my friends daughter and her husband and the little one they had lost.

Christopher

Still Thinking – Soulfulness

This week the Age Newspaper had an article on Docklands, one of the newest of our planned precincts in Melbourne. The article suggested that in eight years the population has grown from almost nothing to over 50,000 people who, “walk, exercise, eat and socialize – or try to” but in an environment with, “no trees, no birds, no grass, a lack of community but a plethora of structures.”  The view of some is that this suburb only 2km from the central business district lacks soul.  I suppose it is the difference between a house and a home, a house provides physical shelter, whereas, “home is where the heart is.”

In the last few years the word soul has popped up in unexpected places.  It is common to talk of the soul of an organization and it doesn’t mean the part of the corporation that lives on after death.  Soul and soulfulness is a way of describing the innate force or energy of life that is a part of every human being and even corporations. So, being soulful means living one's life according to a deeper meaning that brings a commitment to self-reflection and exploration.

The Bengali poet Sri Chinmoy, suggests that the stance you should adopt toward the Holy is one of soulfulness.  He writes, “Do not try to approach God with your thinking mind. It may only stimulate your intellectual ideas, activities, and beliefs. Try to approach God with your crying heart. It will awaken your soulful, spiritual consciousness.” Of course our minds are always involved in our approach to God, nevertheless to draw deeply for the well of the sacred means our emotions and feelings must be engaged and that is the work of the soul.

In contemporary thought the soul is not a part of us that is primarily associated with religion or the spirit.  The Jungian psychologist, James Hillman suggests that “by soul I mean, first of all, a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing itself. . . .Between us and events, between the doer and the deed, there is a reflective moment - and soul-making means differentiating this middle ground.” Perhaps it is better to speak of soulfulness rather than “the soul.”

Allison Moir-Smith a Canadian psychotherapist says that to live with soul is:

•   to live reflectively, deeply, and imaginatively,
•   to come into relationship with your deepest self and to live in connection with it,  
• to live courageously in the present moment, with respect for the past and with your eyes firmly focused on who you are becoming.

Perhaps that’s what is missing from Docklands.  The buildings are all there (well no quite, the article also notes that there were at least 8 cranes working on various structures in Docklands) but something is still missing. A town, a suburb needs a history, a community, and a degree of messiness and that’s were soulfulness comes in.  Like creativity the work of the soul does not happen in straight lines. Too much tidiness gets in the way of a soulful life and a soulful suburb.  The soul needs to wander, dream and to engage the imagination and the emotions.  Soul always wants to feel and that can be feelings of sorrow, sadness, joy, melancholy or exuberance.  And the soulful life honours all this emotions as pathways to the full and rich life – and suburb.

Christopher