“Perfection”

The Rev. Carol A. Huston, Community Unitarian Church at White Plains, New York, September 30, 2007

Reading: from a Coming of Age Credo by Nick Cutsumpas

In my eyes, there is no one supreme God that holds the universe within the palm of his hand. I believe that God is composed of the perfect things found within every person. Everyone in the world has something perfect about him or her, and when you put all of these perfect pieces together, you’ve got God. Whether you have a perfect voice, a perfect curveball, or a perfect pinky finger, all of the perfect characteristics and talents we possess serve as the molecules of God. This belief has taught me to try and see the best qualities in people, because although it might be hidden, somewhere deep down there is something perfect in every person.

Sermon:

Not all of us here are perfectionists, but I think that all of us have some experience with both the disappointments that the image of perfection can bring us. Perhaps in your life there has been a presentation that really needed to go perfectly. Before the event you ran it in your mind and ran it in your mind and knew how it was supposed to sound. But after the fact you could see all the places it went wrong.

Or perhaps you planned how your perfect new kitchen was going to look. The image was in your mind, down to the shape of the hinges on the cupboard doors. But when you began looking in the real world for those hinges and those cupboards, they found that did not exist – at least in your price range.

Or you started the “perfect job,” certain that this job was so suited to you, in such a wonderful place, that it had to be all your dream. But then you started work and learned that this was to be a job like all jobs, imperfect in its own way, with tasks you could not quite fulfill, people who were not easy to be with.

Or you had a baby. We always want to be perfect parents, don’t we? But when the daily pressures and the messiness of life meet us, we wind up very imperfect, the only hope being that most children do quite well with imperfect parents.

We swing on a pendulum, with the perfect vision encouraging us forward and disappointment dragging us back. A human being creates images of the perfect in his or her mind. At least we tell ourselves that we can picture “that which is so good that nothing else could be better.” The artist, the athlete, the technician holds the idea that there is perfection out there, and the closer we can some to it the better we are. It is the beacon in the future, luring us to keep trying to emulate it.

Georgia O’Keefe once said that the hardest part of painting a picture was making the first stroke on the canvass. I think I understand what she was saying, at least in part. That first stroke marks the moment that the perfect picture in your mind must begin to be realized in the world, in reality -- and that can be a great disappointment. That first stroke, none of the strokes are quite as perfect as the image in your mind. My sermon-writing process has just that twist to it each week. The sermon in my mind at mid-week is pure perfection. Clear, precise, illuminating. You would love that sermon. Of course it is only in my mind, and then I have to start putting it into words on paper. I delay that moment, as Georgia O’Keefe probably delayed the first stroke of her painting. I know that the imperfections will arise as soon as I start to write the words. The amazing sermon in the mind has been translated into a reality that is far from perfect.

I think it is one of the roles of philosophy and religion to help us cope with this fact of life –that the mental images we hold are so much better than what we realize in the world. I was discussing the idea of perfection with a group of cultural and religious Jews recently, and they were clear that their religion had taught them that it was blasphemous to think that one could be perfect – only God could be perfect. In his essay, “The Blessings of Imperfection,” G. Peter Fleck calls our attention to the fact that the Hebrew bible’s story of creation avoids the perfect. On each day, the Genesis writer tells us, God looks at what has been created that day and declares that it is good – and finally very, very good. Perfection was not needed, not attempted, not possible.

Christianity, on the other hand, had to cope with this saying of Jesus: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Only one gospel tradition remembers that saying – the writer of Matthew, and the Jesus Seminar circle of scholars believes that this is not an authentic saying of Rabbi Jesus. Those scholars also point out the context of that statement. Jesus had been talking about generosity, about “Caring and Sharing” work like our committee offers, and so Jesus was actually calling his followers to be perfect in generosity and concern. But Christian theologians ignored the context and through the ages Augustine, Calvin, Theresa of Avila, John Wesley and many others used lots of ink trying to figure out what Jesus meant in calling for absolute perfection.

But there’s another quotation that I had in my mind, but I was glad when someone called me with it. “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” The words are from Voltaire, and I had not found it yet when I got the call. “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” The image of the perfect does not always spur us to good action. Sometimes it keeps us from being satisfied with the good, from seeing the benefits of the good. It can lead to soul-wrenching dissatisfaction with yourself and your possibilities. It can lead to dissatisfaction with family, with love, with government, none of which will ever be perfect, but can be good.

The essence of the real problem with perfection lies in its original root in the Latin. “Perficio” actually means “to finish, to bring to an end.” Something that is perfect is complete, whole – I like that. But that which is complete is also ended, unchanging, suitable for framing. There is power in that which is merely good, because it can grow, progress, evolve.

Peter Fleck’s essay about “imperfection” holds up the idea that imperfection is in fact built into the whole mechanism of evolution. If DNA always made technicslly perfect copies of itself – 100% matches – we would still be just fantastic one-celled creatures. Humanity would not be here, nor would the great and beautiful diversity of creation around us. It is because the DNA replication is imperfect that evolution has happened. Each little imperfection that appears in the DNA is a possibility for better adaptation, and that is the heart of evolution. Imperfection is the essence of life, and hope.

But what are we to do with the striving for perfection that lies somewhere in most of us? I liked the solution that Nick’s credo offered in the brief reading I used this morning. He reminds us of the cultural idea that God is perfect, but his own suggestion is that this perfection is an accumulation of all the little bits of perfection that human beings might possess. He listed “the perfect voice, the perfect curve ball, the perfect pinky finger.” Even those categories might be too large. That perfect curve ball might escape you when you particularly need is, as has been happening with one of the local teams recently. But the suggestion is good. Be ye perfect – in some small way. Be ye perfect – whole, finely crafted, complete – over some tiny area of life, and then let the rest go. If you sense your own bit of perfection, it will have the benefit, as well, of encouraging you to look for that little bit of perfection in others. We won’t need to compete, we will need to cooperate, not necessarily to form the face of God, but to form a functioning community using the bits of perfection and excellence it needs to bring – well -- goodness to the world. Those little bits of the perfect can serve the good as long as we keep our expectations under control.

Imagine a man who found an old axe out in the forest The head of the axe was mottled and dark, and the blade itself was chipped and dull. It was a useless and ugly old tool. He took it to a blacksmith who had quite a reputation for what he could do with his iron-working tools. The man asked the blacksmith if he could fix the axe, and the blacksmith said, yes – I’ll make it perfect for you. Some days later the man was back at the blacksmith’s shop. The axe now had a beautiful edge, gleaming, sharp, precise. But the rest of the axehead was still pitted and mottled and dull. It looked worse somehow, in next to the sparkling blade. The man said to the blacksmith, “I thought you were going to make this axe perfect. Why didn’t you shine the remainder of the head? “I could have done that,” the blacksmith replied, “but is it really necessary? Shine rest of the iron if you wish, but don’t expect to finish soon and if you ever want to use the axe, the job will never be done.” The man understood. The perfect axe did not need to be gleaming all over. It was enough that just a small part was good.

So be it.

Closing Words from the poet, Wallace Stevens