All Embracing Thanksgiving

I have two subjects in mind today; thanksgiving – because it is the Canadian Thanksgiving, and perfection which I have intended to write about before I realized it would be Thanksgiving Monday today (not great planning ahead but there you go).  I hope I will be able to connect the two topics in a reasonable, if not meaningful way.

I have been interested in the issue/topic of perfection for a while now and wrote an article about my encounters with perfection – which I have dabbled in over my life.  The issue of perfectionism, or the drive for perfection, came into my awareness and consciousness some years ago when I was attending one of the intensives as part of my training as a dream group facilitator with the Haden Institute.  Here is the passage from that article which I want to share with you:

While I was at the Intensive, I found a small book at the Kanuga bookstore, or I should say, it found me. It is entitled A Prayer for the Cosmos by Neil Douglas-Klotz.  This little gem is a translation from Aramaic sources of The Lord’s Prayer and other sayings of Jesus. One of the passages that the book addresses is from the Gospel of Matthew chapter 5 verse 48, that is traditionally translated, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” However, the translation by this author reads, “Be all-embracing, as your heavenly Father is all-embracing.” I felt my discovery of this book and this passage to be a physical gift from the Divine.

The gift of this book came after a dream which challenged my desire for perfection which I had not recognized consciously.  I had, for many years been uncomfortable about the commandment by Jesus that we should ‘be perfect’ so I was very grateful for this different interpretation of Jesus’ words. 

One of the impetuses for writing about perfection this week was that it was the theme for Richard Rohr daily missives last week.  Here are two excepts from his Daily Meditations:

Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness—mine, yours, ours—need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.

On one level, soul, consciousness, love, and the Holy Spirit can all be thought of as one and the same. Each of these point to something larger than the self, shared with God, and even eternal. That’s what Jesus means when he speaks of “giving” us the Spirit or sharing his consciousness with us. One whose soul is thus awakened has the “mind of Christ” (see 1 Corinthians 2:10–16). That doesn’t mean the person is psychologically or morally perfect (my emphasis), although such a transformed person does see things in a much more expanded and compassionate way. Ephesians calls it a “spiritual revolution of the mind” (4:23)—and it is!  Our outer world and its inner significance must come together for there to be any wholeness—and holiness. The result is both deep joy and a resounding sense of coherent beauty.  Richard Rohr 

To emphasize the selection of this topic for today, when returning from a family gathering in London today, there was an interview with Thomas Curran, the author of a book about perfectionism in our society, The Perfection Trap: Embracing the Power of Good Enough.

So, what has all this perfection have to do with thanksgiving and Thanksgiving?  We can be thankful that we are who God created us to be in all our strengths and weaknesses – I know that those weaknesses are the ghosts that visit me in the wee hours of the night.  However, they are what make me who I am as do the strengths. They are what makes me who God created me.  Now if only I would truly believe that in the depths of my soul all manner of things would be well – that would be good enough but not perfect thank be to God.

May we be thankful for all that God has given us on our journey.