19 May 2017

Perfection Not Required

I was driving around with my son and another driver or a pedestrian did something that was ill-advised right in front of us. There was no major problem, my son is an excellent driver and very aware at all times of what is going on around him on the road. (It is one of many reasons why when we go places together, I let him drive us.)

The incident led to him grumbling about the other person's lack of good decision making (perhaps not in so many words). I mentioned that people doing random things is one reason to build slack into any system. Tolerance for errors helps a system be flexible.

Yesterday, I was reading a friends Facebook post where she mentioned that she would be getting new prescription lenses from her eye doctor because she needed to move to progressive lenses. I wrote back that progressive eye-glass lenses were like a miracle you could wear on your face. Mine allow me to drive, or watch TV or knit, or many other things that I would not be able to do with out them.

That got me to thinking about how humans were not create perfect. We may be made in God's image but apparently perfection was not something God felt should be included. Instead God gave us brains and creativity so that we can find ways to both work around our own imperfections and help others do the same.

I've needed glasses since I was 10. Hundreds of years ago a human figured out that a transparent lens could bend and focus light. Other humans figured out that this bending property could be used to bring things into focus for people with weirdly shaped or aging eyeballs. A miracle made by humans for other humans to wear on their face.

Flexibility in the system allowing me to function without perfect sight.

This evening I was driving home from my adventures visiting parts of Puget Sound that I had never been to before, and I stopped for food before heading home.

At the restaurant I misunderstood what the cashier was asking me and got charged less than I should have for my meal. After I was done eating, I realized what happened and tried to pay the remainder. The cashier thanked me but didn't accept my money. I suspect that is in part because the accounting software isn't really set up to deal with that situation and honestly. The fact that the cashier had the flexibility to deal with the situation meant that I feel affection for the restaurant and will certainly be back (and now that I understand the system, pay full price).

All of these encounters with flexibility contrast with some of the things I have seen in the news lately about systems being allowed to run amok with no apparent flexibility built in.

It reminds me of Jesus taking the Scribes and Pharisees to task for following rules but not the spirit that may have originally engendered the rules.

When people follow rules blindly and forget about the reasoning behind the rules it can lead to terrible disasters, to injury and death, to wounds that will never heal. I think that God built imperfection into humans, animal, and (as it says in the Book of Common Prayer) the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.

Imperfection and flexibility go hand-in-hand. When humans begin to believe they (or their rules) are perfect then their is no room for humans left in the system and it can grind us up-- using other people as the grinders.

In order to avoid being either the grinder or the grindee, God has give us a great gift. The gift of Grace. The gift to be messy and imperfect. The gift to make space for others to be messy and imperfect.

It is out of the mess and imperfections of our lives that some of the greatest love, inventiveness, and creativity can come.

We may long for perfection-- but that is not what God gave us in our incarnation. We are born imperfect and we die imperfect and if we let that bother us we lose sight of the messy flexibility that is our birthright.


Quotations are from 2007 PDF edition of the Book of Common Prayer, page 370.

This essay was originally published at the Episcopal Cafe in May 2017.

06 May 2017

Humility and Hubris

It was a combination of a television show and a novel that started me thinking this week.

I have read and listened to the Lord Peter Wimsey novels by Dorothy L. Sayers more times than I can count. Her writing is exquisite and Ian Carmichael's narration of many of her books is the only thing that got me through a past health crisis.

Back in the early 1990's my husband and enjoyed watching The Father Dowling Mysteries. Recently I discovered they had been released on DVD and decided to buy a set and see how they held up after nearly 30 years. While they are definitely a product of their time, the first few episodes at least are still enjoyable to watch. The series features a Catholic priest, his nun assistant, and the vicarage housekeeper who work together to solve murders. The thing I remember liking about the show back when I first watched it was that the show at least touched on some religious themes and complications of being an active Christian (which was and still is usual for prime time TV).

In Unnatural Death Lord Peter talks to a vicar (Mr Tredgold) about his involvement in pursuing a murderer and what his ethical and moral duties are in this case. He is concerned that in investigating a death he has stirred up the murder to take action. After Lord Peter has left, the priest thinks to himself:

" I wonder what brought him here. Could it possibly be--No!" said the vicar, checking himself, I have no right to speculate. He drew out his handkerchief again and made another mnemonic knot as a reminder against his next confession that he had fallen into the sin of inquisitiveness.

This action of the vicar's, to call attention the way his thought were straying speaks of a mindfulness on his part.

When I first read the book, I was struck by how seriously Mr Tredgold took what I considered to be normal curiosity on his part as a transgression. The desire to know everything is such an all-consuming drive in our modern culture that the contrast of the vicar's self-enforced reticence to pry into another persons affairs (even in the privacy of his own mind) to our modern 24-hour news cycle where rumor can rapidly be reported as fact and where their seems to be no pause for thought before the 'publish' button is pushed.

This never-ending cycle of news, rumor, and speculation gives the illusion that we can know everything that is going and, further, encourages that thing which most of the ancient Greek plays warn against, hubris. If we begin to believe that we can know all, then it is easy to slip in to the idea that we should be able to influence and control the world around us.

When that illusion of control breaks down because we are confronted with illness and death, with injustice and greed, and with disasters that bring us up short our inflated sense of control is punctured and not only do we feel despair, we feel that we have in some way failed.

When I was watching the first episode of the Father Dowling Mysteries, I was struck by a quiet moment of prayer. Father Dowling is praying in church after witnessing a man seemingly commit suicide right in front of him. He had been trying to talk the man off of a ledge and was distracted for a moment and looked away. The nun comes in and chides him for taking the blame for the man's death on himself.

While she does not use the word 'hubris' it becomes clear that part of the point she is making is that Father Dowling is falling into the error of believing that he could control the actions of another person.

It was in this moment that something I've been struggling with for years came into focus. When I was growing up in the church, it felt like a great deal of stress was always laid on the idea that humility was a virtue. Between the be-attitudes in the new testament and the teachings in Sunday school, the importance of being meek and humble seemed to be everywhere--especially if you were a girl.

My mother, from my early teen memories, was determined that I would be able to take advantage of rights that women had only gained in her lifetime (and some in my, then young, life). In particular, I remember her telling me that I should always have my own credit and bank accounts because it was only in the 1970's that women could have their own credit cards independent of the men in their lives.

Needless to say the idea I was getting from the church that girls should be meek and humble was in direct opposition to what my mother was teaching me. She stressed the importance of being independent to stand up for myself. As a result of this conflict and aslo of the churches own abuse of the 'Mary meek and mild' stereotype to keep women in their place, humility, as a concept has been contaminated for me. I was never able to see it as a good thing.

What I realized through the fictional exploits of Mr Tredgold and Father Dowling is that humility can protect us from hubris.

It is so very easy to slip into the idea that if we just know enough we will be able to have some measure of control over our lives.

Jesus comes to tell us to put down that burden. Only God can know all. We are imperfect and so our understanding is also imperfect and prone to error.

It is one of the reasons we say the Confession of Sin every week. Our own imperfections combined with a sometimes misplaced enthusiasm can lead us astray.

Embracing the idea that we can not know all, that we can not be all, and that we definitely can not control anything but our own choices is my new working definition of humility.

Like Mr Tredgold, I hope to go forth with knot in my handkerchief to remind me of the protective qualities of true humility.

As the celebrant says during the Great Thanksgiving: In him, you have brought us out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, out of death into life.

May we always choose to be brought out of error into truth.