The Landscape of Perfection

I had imagined myself walking down a road marking the key times with stakes. As life progressed, these stakes became the chapters of my personal story; when quite unexpectedly, I found myself floating down a river letting the poetry unfold.

Rivers have been rich teachers in my life. Their symbolism is fertile and now my clothing was caught on a branch growing from the river’s bank. But in my actual life, nothing in the external was holding me back, so why was I stuck? I did not find the answer easily.

By tugging and pulling on my jacket, hung on the branch, I realized that I had spent much of my life categorizing things, situations and people as good or bad, right or wrong. Even when I could embrace the “bad or wrong” in love, still I thought in opposing or dualistic terms.

I kept trying to take off and to put on. I wanted to change, to get rid of or to smother what I did not like about myself.

Finally, I began letting people and circumstances into the negativity that striving for perfection was stirring within me. I invited the uncomfortable feelings to rise and speak on behalf of my True self. To my surprise, I found something Sacred very deep within.

God became so much bigger than I had ever dreamed, because Love included, not particular parts, but all of me.

When I finally sat in naked honesty with the whole of me, I found a greater truth, God living inside. Not just in the holy places, but smack in the middle of my most imperfect parts.

In looking back, I realized that at times, I wished that I could have grown without the struggle; but it was there in the striving that I found an acceptance of the imperfect in myself and in others.

The most troubling snags of my life have been key to my morphing story. The gift to myself was letting the rhythmic verse flow. The gift of Spirit was unconditional love. Both gifts evolved through the challenges that held me captive until I could slip out of the jacket of my vision of perfection, so that I could see through the sacred lens of Love.

Sacred Ruminations*