This week I began reading The Spirituality of Imperfection by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham. It is a book my clergy support group has chosen for an upcoming retreat. I am really only a few pages into the book and already can see that this is going to one that is marked mightily with my pen and highlighter. Sentences like: “Spirituality teaches us, or has taught most of us, how to deal with failure. We learn at a very young age that failure is the norm in life……..errors are part of the game, part of its rigorous truth.” And “Spirituality begins with acceptance that our fractured being, our imperfection, simply is: There is no one to ‘blame’ for our errors-neither ourselves nor anyone nor anything else. Spirituality helps us first to see, and then to understand, and eventually to accept the imperfection that lies at the very core of our human be-ing.”

And all that is only in the introduction! In beginning this book I was reminded of a not too distant time when then word ‘spirituality’ used in mainline churches made people quite nervous. What did it mean? How was it different from religion? What did it look like to be spiritual? How was what happened in church spiritual…..or not?

But over the years even the most mainline of mainlines have come to a certain comfort, if not out right acceptance, of the word spiritual. It now shows up in most church newsletters and may even creeps into a sermon or two. While its definition may still be elusive to some, there is a sense that being spiritual is simply something we are. Something we are in all our imperfections not in spite of them.

As humans we have this bent toward pursuing perfection. It is present in so much of our culture and drives the advertising that engulfs us. Perfect bodies, perfect relationships, perfect jobs, perfect homes. This list goes on and on. Indeed, United Methodists speak of ‘going on to perfection’ a statement woven into our fabric by our founder John Wesley. The fact that he was speaking of wholeness often is lost on the hearer given how ingrained that pursuit of perfection is in our common language. Just talk to any therapist and it will become obvious how deep the chase for perfection runs within us.

Yet every morning we each awake with the failures of yesterday painted in our cells and dripping off our skin. It is simply a fact. Some of us carry more paint, more drips than others. But no one, no one is immune. And someplace in that drippy paint that covers us, we can, if we choose, come to know the Spirit that moves in it all. The Spirit that does not expect us to be perfect but to be a human be-ing. It is a vulnerable place to be, a vulnerable relationship to develop. But in truth it is, I believe, the only way to move through the world. Daily wearing our vulnerability, our humanness, our imperfection like the images of God we are.

The authors of The Spirituality of Imperfection include in their introduction a small story I have heard often and love more each time I hear it. It originally comes from a work of the great theologian Martin Buber: “Rabbi Zusya said, ‘In the coming world, they will not ask me……’why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me…..’why were you not Zusya?”

And so it is. Perfection, however we define it, in whatever way we pursue it, is not really our work. Our work is to embrace the fullness of our imperfection with all its gifts and failures. Our work is to become the fragile, fractured human we are. It is joyful and painful work. It is spiritual work.

Be gentle with yourself this weekend………