What is perfection?

I have sitting on my desk at home a postcard I picked up somewhere along the way that reads:

“Avid shell seekers know that some days they’ll come away with nothing but a lesson in patience and perseverance.  Other days, their faith will be rewarded with more than they’d hoped for.”

~Jodee Stevens~

I don’t actually remember when I first started to walk a beach gathering shells but I do remember how much my perspective changed about those walks and about what I looked for and found.

It used to be the shells I sought were perfect and unblemished by their rough and tumble journey to the shores, perhaps much like how I envisioned the ‘perfect life’ to be- free from scars, free from broken-ness, fully intact and no parts missing.  But as I got older (and hopefully wiser) and the realities of life came my way, I wore more courageously my own scars and scabs ( some of which were picked open again and again) and saw  light shine more clearly through the jagged pieces of my heart, soul, and mind something interesting happened.

These shells and bits of sea glass and driftwood challenged my idea of perfection and these bits of marine life invited me to pay closer attention to what those cracks and holes really mean for them and for me.  As a reward for having survived the voyage sharp edges were often replaced by smooth and rounded textures.  Those very things I thought had no value because they were broken really were symbolic of strength and transformation and that because of and  not in spite of them we are all those glorious creatures who made it to the shore, sometimes over and over again.

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”

~Antoine de Saint-Exupery~

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about journeys and symbols we use to mark our places along the way, to say perhaps, “I was here” or to mark the path for travelers and pilgrims behind us.  Building a cairn is at once a meditation and an exercise in patience and trust.

Gathering the rocks we’ve collected along the way-getting in touch with their very nature as we work gently to stack them in a way that both honors their shape and how that shape is meant to support the rock on top and beneath.  Playing with them, stacking and taking apart until the balance is just right.  Sort of how we take the components of our own lives- the bits and pieces  of emotions and energies, joys and sorrows that don’t always seem to fit together  but somehow we emerge standing stronger than it would seem possible.

I have a little cairn just outside my front door.  They are rocks I collected from a favorite beach on Cape Cod.  They stand just so through the seasons and only come apart when my grandsons visit and take it apart but I don’t mind.  Sometimes Matthew especially will play with them awhile and put them back together in a different way.  Sometimes I sit on the steps after they have gone home and hold them in my hand for awhile and offer a prayer of gratitude for a place, a person, a memory that took me one little step further in my journey to wisdom, wholeness and healing.  They never go back together in exactly the same way but somehow they stand together as a reminder to me that there is always another way to be.

“How could we tire of hope?

-so much is in bud.

So much is unfolding that must

complete its gesture,

so much is in bud.” 

~Denise Levertov~

Last year in the course of re-arranging some perennials in our front garden we moved a ‘bleeding heart’ plant from one location to another.  I was not convinced it would survive the transplant and for the past several weeks I have been paying close attention to it as its leaves started to come to life and now seems to be flourishing and getting ready to bloom.  Even some of the plant that we had unintentionally left behind in its previous spot is coming back to life-hope seemingly multiplied when at first I was expecting so little.

I love those ‘bleeding heart’ plants because they were one of my dad’s favorites and he was always fond of saying, “Dove c’e vita, c’e speranza” (where there is life, there is hope) and he believed that until the day he died.  I’d like to think I am as hopeful a person as he was- not always easy but certainly do-able especially on days when I can see the buds on a plant beginning to grow, when the days get longer and the light is brighter.

The possibilities of the things that call our hearts and hold us in hope  are as endless as the situations that lift our minds in anticipation, bow our heads in prayer and bend our knees in gratitude.  We seem never to get tired of hearing and being encouraged by stories of survival against all odds, of stories of the lost and forsaken who have found their way back.  I believe that speaks to our common humanity that, like love, “…hopes all things, bears all things, believes all things, endures all things.”  (1 Corinthians 13).

It’s a question I ask myself on almost a daily basis..sometimes as basic as when I get in the car with a list of errands to get done and trying to decide where to go first that will keep me from going in circles ( which I am pretty good at doing!).  I have not gotten lost yet although the temptation is often there to just take off for awhile in my car, especially when I am driving past Newark Liberty Airport when I might say to Steve to let’s just park the car and get on a flight somewhere ( I might have to start carrying my passport with me in my handbag).  I do always manage to get home safely and I am grateful for that.

But on a deeper level, the reflection that has come to be known as “The Prayer of Thomas Merton” is always playing itself in my heart and soul and does beg the deeply spiritual question of ” where am I going?”  Am I getting close, Lord?  Am I on the right path, Lord? Sometimes, Lord, I am not feeling you next to me  though I know you are there.  Sometimes, Lord I want to be walking faster or slower and You keep changing my mind and my pace and it takes awhile to figure out that I need to let go even more and more of my ego, to be softer and open my stubborn heart even more….sigh…

Part of Thomas Merton’s prayer is:

“My Lord God, I have no ideal where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you…”

So yes, Lord, most days I am trying the best I can to live the life you meant for me that will bring you the most honor and glory- it’s not really that hard most days to be thoughtful, to say a kind word to another ( even a kind word to myself), to be simple and small- other days are more of a challenge but as a good friend once told me, “Angela, get out of God’s way and let God do what He needs to do.”

Today the Church celebrates the Feast of the Annunciation… the time when Mary said ‘yes’ to God.  This year the Feast was moved from it’s date of March 25 to today because it fell during Holy Week.

I have been thinking a lot lately about all the ‘yes’ moments in my life and where they have led me and where that ‘yes’ has sometimes led me astray.  I am much more cautious nowadays about saying ‘yes’ than I used to be when the word just rolled off my tongue before I could even blink.  I am much more protective of my personal time, less impulsive to jump into the fray and I am not necessarily happy about that and maybe that is why I have been thinking about it and wondering what that is all about.  Still have not figured it out.  What about you?  How do you respond?

I think about Mary today, a very young woman, who has been invited to partner with God in the incarnation of the Christ child.  I think about her ‘yes’ and how her life changed in an instant and it seemed she never looked back-she only asked how can it be and then responded, “Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord.  May it be done to me according to your word.”

Would that I  had the courage and faith of Mary to not count the cost, to not be afraid and to look forward and not back and to enter into each opportunity with joy and faith that God never leads us where he will not protect us.  To say ‘yes’ to the changes that life brings, ‘yes’ to journeys that take unexpected roads, to the people we least expect to come into our lives and who change us ( and perhaps we them).  Psalm 40 tells us, “Here I am, Lord, I come to do your will.”

“It is the nature of this world to share its burden with you.

And it is my nature to remove it from your back.”

~Hafiz~