“The Imperfect Sermon”

A sermon given by Rev. Tricia Brennan at the

Westminster Unitarian Church 

October 17, 2010

My husband, Chuck, has long talked about his desire to write a book called “The Perfect Day”. The book would have suggestions for local day trips- not just one-stop destination of beach, bike path or museum- but a whole book-load of start to finish perfect days: the local diner for breakfast, where the best ice cream is sold, the hilltop from which to catch the sunset, the hidden gem of a jazz joint. A book of perfect days- one after another- awaiting the reader. Sometimes when we’ve had a nice family outing we ask ourselves- do you think that was good enough to make it into the book?

Chuck being Chuck he just might compile such a book- if you want to see your idea of a perfect day in print, by all means send it to me and I’ll pass it along. I think we’ve all had them- those wondrous days when everything just seemed to go so perfectly. I bet you can remember a few. Maybe you were in love, and the day seemed charmed. Maybe it was as simple as the kids go along so well that day. Maybe you were working too hard and you didn’t realize how much you needed a day off in nature till you were there.

A day that comes back to me was some 20 years ago. I was with close friends Karen and Al at Walden Pond on a sunny warm summer day. We had plunked ourselves at one of those little nooks on the water’s edge, swimming, reading and eating our picnic lunches. I played for hours in the water with Al- some game we made up of hiding a ping pong ball we’d found- you would have thought we were two six year olds. We fantasized taking a few days off from the work, the three of us, and continuing the fun- but we didn’t do that. We did end the day at a restaurant that we came upon by chance, with wonderful food and wine and prices from some earlier era. Later that year, on New Year’s Eve, that was the day we all recalled as the best day of the year, a wonderful day, a perfect day.

Despite my husband’s desire to capture such perfect days in a book, part of the wonder of these days is that can’t really be scripted. They are instead some unpredictable combination of mood and happenstance, of traffic gods looking our way, sunlight breaking through the clouds and often, the kindness of strangers. Perfect days are a gift.

I don’t think I’ll tell Chuck that. I want him to go on scheming these great outings of which I go along for the fun ride and for which I’ll get mentioned in the credits.

But we know, don’t we, that those wondrous days- and I trust we’ve all had them, maybe as recently as yesterday- those days are sweet in part because they are ephemeral. They last but a day, they delight us only when we are attentive to marvel of the moment, and then they end. The memory remains, full of detail and delight, but the day, the perfect day, is past, and even if we try to recreate it is never quite the same.

Keats expressed that tension between permanence and change, ideal and actual, waking and dream in his poem Ode to a Nightingale. Here are the final verses:

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep

In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

Well, with all this talk of perfection you’d think the title of this sermon was in Praise of Perfection, rather than In Praise of Imperfection. And on second thought I could have just as well called it “The Imperfect Sermon”. Because, perhaps like some of you, I struggle with wanting to be perfect- which means for me that my sermon must be stunning, my hair has to look good, my child must be perfect and prayer life must be disciplined, my bank account in order and taxes paid on time and well we aren’t even going to start on what the house looks like and my what my body mass index ought to be…..

There’s an awful lot of pressure in our culture to be perfect and it can make us crazy. It makes us control freaks, it makes us afraid to act for fear we’ll get it wrong.  It stifles creativity, makes us harsh and competitive, makes us afraid to take risks- “I go directly to perfection or I go nowhere” as the poet wrote. It can make us sick, actually sick.

Lots of us, I think, let go of that expectation to be perfect- most of the time, and in most parts of our lives, yet we retain the expectation of perfection in one area.  One friend with whom I spoke this week said in so many places in her life she could look upon mistakes as a path to learning, but not in her work. She is newly trained as a bookbinder- and there, even though she is still a beginner, she is very hard on herself, noticing her errors so much more than what she does well.

On our saner days we can see that the pressure to be perfect is both impossible and unhealthy, and on our more perceptive days we can see how insidious is that message of perfection in our culture. More is better than less, new is better than old, youth is better than age is the underlying mantra- not less can be more, old holds the stories, and aging is saging. The messages we get- in school, advertising, from our parents at times, in our economic systems, is that being perfect is a worthy goal. And so for many of us, in those places where we feel most vulnerable, we allow that impossible standard to reign. Maybe you acknowledge imperfection in all areas of your life except feel you must be a perfect parent because you love your children so much, or maybe the perfection you hold onto is that you must always be nice and never get mad at anyone, or perhaps you can allow that you will make mistakes except that you can never get fired from your job, that would be true failure, to be avoided at all costs. For me, I think it is that I must never let people down- now there’s an impossible expectation to live by- but when I listen closely to what I value most- and one of those things is trustworthiness, then letting someone down seems like a violation of that- even though it is of course inevitable. It is around those things that we hold dear or sacred that we are most likely to ask the impossible of ourselves and others.

Now let’s be clear. There is a difference between 100% perfection and giving 100%, a difference between perfection and precision. Precision is what got 33 Chilean miners out of the mines a half-mile into the earth. Precision in that effort meant the international sharing of information so the best equipment could be used and the best process designed. Precision was the great attention to detail in carrying out the rescue plan.  Precision and 100% efforts carried the day.

In contrast, to use another example from the world stage- perhaps perfection is what, on some subtle level, liberals and progressives expected of Barack Obama, and why there seems to be a great deal of disappointment with regards to his presidential performance to date. He entered office carrying so many people’s hopes. The culture of perfection that is alive in our country can cause us to expect unrealistic things from our leaders and blind us to the need for systemic change, and new ways of thinking and living that go beyond what any one person can achieve. Perfectionism breeds harsh critics; missing is the language of forgiveness, patience, humor and the big picture.

You heard one story, the story of the cracked pot that I read earlier. I am told that that tale finds it way into recovery work- where such a core piece of healing has to do with the addict or alcoholic’s acceptance of brokenness, and the realization that from the place of brokenness, more beauty and healing can come.

We are all cracked pots, and we are all broken healers, aren’t we? Think for a moment- when you need a lift, a way back to yourself when you’ve taken a wrong turn- do you go to someone who you think has it all together- or do you go to someone who will make you feel better because he or she can listen from a place that quietly understands because they’ve been there too, and they’ve come through it.  I’ll take the humble soul over the know-it-all any day.

The Japanese have a term that you may have heard- wabi-sabi-

that a strong philosophy in their culture.

Wabi means humble and sabi can be understood as the beauty that comes with the passing of time. Together wabi-sabi is praise of imperfection, a loving appreciation of what endures,  an honoring of the authentic. It is a concept that can be a little hard to wrap your mind around- it’s the blue bowl of your grandmother’s that you’ve held on to and used to make cookies in even though it is chipped and faded. It is a flea market, rather than a mall; it is the beautiful lines in the face of someone you love. Even though there are now books on how to wabi-sabi your home, much like all the books on feng-shui, wabi-sabi is more an approach to life than a recipe or aesthetic. Wabi-sabi teaches that imperfection is part of life’s perfect plan; that authenticity is more essential than appearances; and that the effects of time are to be embraced, not shunned- to quote Shari Danielson. (1)

One person tells of how after stroke, and her face now a bit askew, mouth drooping a bit, it was the concept of wabi-sabi that gave her strength to accept her now forever altered face. (2)  Perfection is not what it is about, wabi-sabi teaches- rather it is the humble beauty that comes over time, the self-acceptance that accompanies that truth, and even the wistfulness that we can feel about what once was- be it a former face or a perfect day gone by. The tinge of remembrance is part of the present beauty, contained within the imperfection.

Perhaps this short account can explain the concept a bit more:

“According to Japanese legend , a young man named Sen no Rikyu sought to learn the elaborate set of customs known as the Way of Tea. He went to tea-master Takeeno Joo, who tested the younger man by asking him to tend the garden. Rikyu cleaned up debris and raked the ground until it was perfect, then scrutinized the immaculate garden. Before presenting his work to the master, he shook a cherry tree, causing a few flowers to spill randomly onto the ground. To this day, the Japanese revere Rikyu as one who understood to his very core a deep cultural thread known as wabi-sabi... the art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in earthiness, of revering authenticity above all.”(3)

I like to think of imperfection as embracing wholeness and I like to think of our churches as places where our whole selves can be honored. I like to think that UU churches, in particular, with their honoring of tradition, their stated openness to all, and their willingness to engage in the always less than perfection process of democracy, can support the living of imperfect and vital lives. I like to think that this church can do so.

Is your church caught up in the pursuit of perfection? Honestly, it doesn’t look that way to me. There is a roll with the punches feeling here, a more or less healthy tolerance of one another, quirks and all that I observe. You’ve been able to roll right into this new space, appreciating its good points, accepting what is less than ideal, recognizing that this too will pass. This year is demanding so much adaptation and resourcefulness of you, asking you to live in that in-between time, when little is permanent and nothing is perfect- and you seem able to do that, with grace and good humor. I commend you for that.

The year, however, is still unfolding and it is a long road from now till when you are back in East Greenwich with a new settled minister. It will be stressful and under stress we can all revert back to less healthier ways, including the rigidity of perfectionism. Eventually you will be in a lovely new building, fabulous it will be no doubt- yet even it will not be perfect. Nor will your new minister be perfect- and I know you know this but I say these things because we have to say them to each other so we can grow together into acceptance of our lovely imperfections.

What water leaks from your cracked pot? What do you nourish by accepting imperfection in yourself and others? What flowers will bloom between Coventry and East Greenwich because this congregation understands that brokenness is part of the human condition?

With these questions, my friends, today’s imperfect sermon comes to an end. Let us live into those questions together.

1. Shari Danielson, Writing Blindly blog, “Perfectly Imperfect: Lessons from a Wabi-sabi way of life. July 29, 2009

2. from an article I read years ago but could not find, I believe in the Utne reader

3. Robin Griggs Lawrence, Utne Reader, May/June 2001