Perfection – September 11 2019

Perfection – September 11 2019

Nobody’s perfect. We’re all just one step up from the beasts and one step down from the angels.

Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses

Perfection is not possible in the relative world.

The word perfection means, originally, “completed.” So by definition, if you’re still alive, it’s not possible for you to be perfect.

We want our teachers to be perfect. But our teachers, all of them, are human. Some would say “flawed.” But the proper term is “human.” One more man or woman moving from birth to death, and in that passage learning to love and to be loved. Some enlightened in a broad sense, some rather more narrowly. Some more, some less. The best of them allow their humanity and don’t spend time trying to appear to be something they are not. They fall down in some way, then they stand up and make corrections in their behavior, in their approach, in their point of view, and they use their experience as a part of their teaching from then on. 

This is perfection. The perfection of a human proving her or himself utterly human, while moving toward the ideal of utterly divine, and in full acceptance of the mess and the beauty that path implies.

Today I will take time to see myself as filled with the divine, and forgive myself for not always knowing it.

Keri and Christopher, 7×7″ tintype, backyard fig tree