Perfection

Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

there is none righteous, not even one;

there is none who understands,

there is none who seeks for god;

all have turned aside, together they have become useless;

there is none who does good -

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

for by grace… and not of yourselves…

Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.

I think, growing up, I grappled with the idea of perfection all the time. I was, and am, something of a perfectionist when it comes to my being. If I sacrifice time and effort into an activity meaningful to me, I expect nothing short of excellence, of perfection. My competitive spirit always found comparison with those performing better, or those persons who were smarter, faster, stronger, more able.

Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

My perfection was an odd one. If an activity meant little to me, perfection was (is) unnecessary. With homework assignments, or games that I disliked, I rarely tried harder than what was necessary to do “well” or “above average”. But how does one spiritually acquire perfection? We’re constantly showing our efficiency at failure, myself in particular.

I remember once having an argument with myself about what perfection even meant. It means a life without sin, no? And sin means “falling short”, and its original use was in archery when the draw fell shy of the target. Sinning isn’t overshooting, or hitting the target and just failing to hit the bullseye – sinning is knowing that your arms simply aren’t broad enough to reach the target; the distance is behind your ken.

My argument was, could I simply lock myself into a room, and quarantine my iniquity from the world, and live a perfect life in seclusion? But I always came around to the idea that sin, and lack of perfection, wasn’t simply *not failing* but also striking the target. You cannot live perfectly by refusing to draw the bow in the first place.  “But I never even shot an arrow – how could I have fallen short?” It was an argument that always left me a bit miffed; a “damned if I do, damned if I don’t” sort of frustration. It was a catch-22 (thanks Heller), no doubt, and I felt the fall like a cancer within me.

Grace is a miracle. But it doesn’t make me perfect. I’m feeling particular imperfect lately, having been sick, and looking at my writing and wishing it better, and noticing all those places in my life where I feel like a spectacle of imperfection. We all are, perhaps, but that doesn’t relieve the feeling that we’re in glass houses, and everyone is witness to our weakness.

Heliotrope

If I allow myself, the kaleidoscope of life might easily carry a negative image, a half-empty glass symbology. When I am thankful, I might feel guilty over those suffering, and when I cry out for help, I could feel shame at not considering all God’s providence. 

heliotrope

charioteer of gold

a solar snail solipsizing

over a cold and needy world:

shell out some warmth

along your sticky way -

rah the phoenix fire,

flimsy green necks turn

purple faces at your arcing egg -

boil us over easy

Heliotrope is my new favorite, though that may change in the next ten seconds. The sun turner, like a tiny sun-saint anchored and devoted: deep green your spades, digging through beams of light and sweetening the air.  But it’s the purple petals, the golden anther to the sun like an offering, an obsequious mirror, though you are none so shy or coy. 

Vineyard Picnic

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/08/vineyard-picnic/

Can we just remember this is a beautiful world? For a moment? Tonight, we went to a Shakespeare production in a park, beautifully backdropped by the harvest vineyard, rolling hills of green and golden earth, and the ridges of chehalem mountain and bald peak at our backs. The oaks hovering over our heads were sparse, but offered the perfect shade for an evening show, and the clean country air: perfect – pluperfect, perhaps. Metaperfect, superperfect, extraperfect.

Just because man sinned does not mean God’s creation invariably became un-good. I witnessed a piece of its marvel today. And Shakespeare was an exquisite accent on the bountiful blessings of our landscape, showcasing the creativity of the creation itself. Who spins words as that, since?

It can feel wrong to revel in such things when, around the world, people endure, and are contemporaneously enduring, agony, pain, sickness, angst, suffering. As my best friend and his wife attend to her mother who, even now, lies on what may be her deathbed; as malnutrition drags children to their knees, and injustice psychologically scars thousands and is not punished, remedied, or healed; as people die at the whims of country leaders sitting in comfortable chairs – how can I be so insensitive and admire this world, sighing at its grace, form, color, and clever creativity? This world that has, too, inspired a million poems, countless plays, dances, celebrations, relationships, love, painting, music, sports, books, and a thousand thanksgivings – can I cherish so simple a thing as a sunset over a vineyard, tonight? Can I feel the Spirit moving over the hills, and smell the heady wines in the air and the sugar grapes at their vines, and can I wait on the Lord, and be still in the wooded grove, listening to the whispering world sing praise?

If not I, then who? And so I must, and though I remember (or try) all their pains, the glory is here, also. I am thankful for that. God is not gone, and never was. But sometimes, I’m hard of seeing, poor of hearing, and dumb of speech, and the country is the perfect remedy for this disease. Lord, oh let me just be at peace with this beautiful sky full of stars for a little while, and the poplars brushing with the breeze, and the orchards thick with the redolence of green, and the apples collecting on the sidewalks and thick in the branches, and the plums plump in the leaves, and the blackberries bulbous on the vines, and the comfort of friends forever close, and the patience of a picnic in the crook of the hill – I’m a lamb in the pasture, forever by still waters and thick grasses lead, and let me follow, please.

Buried Treasure

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/buried-treasure/

in the staggering steps of night

a trite, yet honest, man, speaks:

standing upright means less than once.

brushing back the cobwebs of summer

as a brawl laced with liqueur -

ah, he stutters, whittling at a stone

he clasps tight between his fingers,

war is a brutish adze we claim carves

figurines, or a hammer for sewing doilies -

he sips his soup carefully, balancing

each broth drop on his sharpened blade.

true marble sculpture, he tells me,

requires just the right sort of scythe;

and then he dies laughing, and night goes on.

I live in a world where everything that merits nothing demands my attention, and those things that deserve my notice are drowned in the clamor. Today, I received five piece of mail that all said: “urgent, please reply as soon as possible”, and each soon found a new home in the recycling bin. And there are those tiny advertisements from charities, demure, tentative, knowing that each cent must be well spent and spread thin over a vast territory. But these are the silent questions, the dumb mendicants and lepers who shame us with their neediness.

Anyone can laud the fashionable, the showy, but it takes a great deal of courage, heart, and patience to love the derelict and the wretched. But everything, almost without fail, asks for some semblance of notice. It may be an obscure misdirect, or an embarrassed request, or a gaudy sign that leaves no doubt of intent, but we’re not eternally solitary, aloof creatures.

There’s a lot of life, yet, to live; I see this in myself. But I must also engage in vying for that life in others, so that their joy, too, may be complete. Often I set that precedence so blithely, and blindly glance over the wounded ones, the lepers, the untouchables – those who need more than anyone else in the world the touch of divinity. Can I be love’s hands and feet?

La la lune

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/la-la-lune/

Of what does the other moon dream?

That half whom we never might see

Does it face the stars complacently?

Knowing the sun its other side feels?

it pulls at tides on a world unknown

oh, olwen, I’m following the heart of thee

as a doe lightly leaping over still waters

my heart quickens – I loved the darker half last

la la lune, la la lune, what do the shadows see?

You can spend every moment of every day studying the facets of spiritual love, and be completely baffled at its prisms on a twist. “You can learn all that there is to know about their [love’s] ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they [love] can still surprise you at a pinch. –Tolkien (with Ben interpretations and additions).

I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”

― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

What is it, Olwen? It is the quilt of snow over the trees and fields, the cirrus clouds on summer days that look like cracked ice drifting over a tropical sea, it is in the sunflowers and snowdrops in their seasons, the tulips in the moment, and the cold snarl of the mother bear; it is the dance of sun and moon, the clasp of a warm hand when yours is chilled to the bone, and it is being tucked under a mighty wing, wide as the heavens and closer than your own heart. 

When I can't

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/when-i-cant/

when I can't

the holy spirit ties my shoes

double knot, just so, snug

and my hair loose, arms out wide

whispers catch the cat of nine

the trees slap at my knees;

turning aside the burning nib

that pens in hateful words

onto my parched and parchment soul -

muse and music, wine and time

for lying by Elijah dining

on the gifts of ravens,

where the world is an empty

deserted place without any water

I am lifted on the wings of eagles

sipping holy water and unraveling

the spiritual knots so I might

wander heaven's pastures, bare of foot

On difficult days, more than other days, the second string steps up to play. I’m falling on useless legs like a world-cup stumbler, praying for a foul, a little grace from a biased referee. And when my knees break, shins crack, and I curl into a little helpless quaver on the thin green grass, the stretchers come to carry me into the wings for a rest. There is nothing wrong with the bench, nothing I couldn’t anticipate. Oh, and how those who wait want to run. How could you not, sitting on heaven’s shores, waiting for a little chance to soar?

These Hands

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/these-hands/

As I lied, I lied

tears shook your shoulders while you cried:

please stop, and hide the truth no more -

A ghost, poltergeist, an echo at most

left behind when you’ve carved out hope

replacing dreams with ash and lime;

traipsing down the somber street side

blithe and blank with an empty face

no matter the distance down aching lane

turn around and you’re home again

beside a hearth-whole fire

safe inside these walls

It’s amazing how little distance you must travel to find people hurting. We assume missions are necessary to Africa and Eastern Europe, or dangerous places for Christians like China or the Middle East, but plenty of hurt sits next to us on the bus, at the dinner table, or even on the church pews - perhaps especially on the church pews.

And how do you address such pains, the problems not of meals and poverty, but of internal poverty and spiritual starvation? How do you address depression, anxiety, loneliness, anger, despair, a lack of self-confidence, doubt, pain, or stress? These things our individualistic society has told us to bury deep within our psyche until they are embedded in our personality, entrenched in our existence, when a person cannot separate their identity from stress, pain, and the horrors of ill-relationship.

And I’m an introvert, tentative with hands of healing, shy with words of comfort, timid with grace and mercy, wordless with exhortation, bashful with blessing, hesitant with hope and helpfulness. How do I extend hands that are stuck in my pockets, and how do I open eyes that are self-consciously staring at my toes, and how do I love when my heart hides in my sleeves?

Holy Spirit move in me; a susurrus of wind and wave that washes me from head to feet, and dresses me in neat white linens, and sets me free to serve and be, and be wholly loving.

These hands that have taken, let them give; these feet that have wandered, set them true; these eyes that have judged, let them cry with mercy and grace.

Entitlement Rant

Our culture has really adopted, and swallowed whole, a sense of entitlement. In Christianity, we say a few words and claim an entitlement of love, grace, protection, hope, and kinship with the creator of the universe; in friendship, we imagine our contract of mutual care ensures an entitlement of mercy, grace, forgiveness and love, even when we grossly overstep our bounds without remorse.
I hate this word, and equally I despise its connotations. Sanctification does not come from an empty proclamation of faith, but from an abiding belief. If your personal convictions of immorality and choices are stronger than your belief in the divine, your faith is empty. Are you not Judas, trading sanctity for coins? If your desire to sin, to cross the line, to ignore the laws of righteousness are stronger than your faith, what IS your faith in? Yourself or Christ? And if God does not grant you justice, can you really blame him? If you decide morality, surely you can impart your own justice? If you have set yourself up as your own god in life, aren’t you to blame for its misfortunes?
Friends, too, do this same thing. “I don’t mind lying, betraying my friends by abusing their trust and kindness, but I consider it a personal affront if my friends return the favor.” Entitlement then conceives an anger, a bitterness like that Blake spoke of in the poem A Poison Tree.
Let’s say for a moment you’ve made a mistake with someone whom you love, or claim to love. There are some options: confess the mistake and root out the mistake before it flowers and grows, or conceal it, nurture the mistake and water it until a poisonous tree grows up betwixt the love, and when it is noticed, your entitlement claims it is the other party’s fault, or tries to conceal it again. You see, those people will find out those things eventually, whether you will it or no. Perhaps you’ve chosen to conceal it, and when they find out, you pretend that you thought they knew all along, and so you initiate another lie to replace the first. You are the Johnny Appleseed of Poison Trees.
So, who are you, then, having planted so many poisonous trees amidst your relationships, to claim entitlement in these relationships? Perhaps if you had behaved respectably yourself, you might merit a little grace, a little forgiveness, a little kindness, but having behaved atrociously can you expect the other party to protect your abuse of their love?
As a simple example, if you lied, can you really feel entitled to know the truth your friends carry when you’ve lied? If you haven’t kept a secret, can you feel entitled to be told them? Entitlement is foolish, but I’ve seen it so many times throughout my life, often coming to the fore in passive-aggressive self-righteousness.
I know that as a friend and someone who loves, it is my job to forgive and love, even if I’m hurt. But there are limits. If a friend lies to me, or betrays my trust, even having forgiven them, I’m less likely to trust them in the same capacity, the same circumstance as before. And if I’m betrayed twice, or they justify their betrayal, doubly so.
If you were a knight and betrayed the knight’s code, can you really expect the all-knowing monarchy to protect you when you find yourself in trouble? Especially if you are unrepentant of your trespass, and perhaps continue to break the code daily (without remorse)?


On the flip side, there are many around me with enduring kindness, endless selflessness that I cannot help but return. Love is contagious. When a friend hugs me, I want to pass on that hug to the next person I see. When a person shares a truth with me, heals me, listens or speaks reassuring words, or comforts me in pain or sorrow, I can’t help but be a prism for that light.

If I'm hurt, this doesn't mean I'll deliberately be vindictive and full of vengeance, either. I hope I'm the very opposite. But it does mean I won't leap into making the same mistake twice.

I was thinking about entitlement today, and just was disgusted with its use. I think passive aggressive natures are my least favorite, and I’m no stranger to acting them out myself. So this was a bit of a rant. And so on.

But I know that in the end I need to be more forgiving, more graceful in reply. It's a vicious cycle otherwise. Instead of repaying with vindictive hate, anger, revenge, or petty cruelty, I need to be loving and patient, even especially when those who have hurt me know what they've done, and may even continue to exacerbate the circumstance. But even as I love them, I'll likely protect myself from future pain; even as I love them and extend the grace of God their way, if I choose not to return to them first when I need comfort or love, it is this, the poison tree, that stood in the way

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/entitlement-rant/