Perfection

From Joan Chittister – Uncommon Gratitude: —

[T]he vagaries of life give us all a chance over and over again to do today what we did not do last year or in another place or yesterday. Life, however interrupted, is one long moment of coming to be the best we can be. Life, we come to understand, is simply the process of growing into God.  But the growing is not linear. It is at best a process of stops and starts, of moments apparently without meaning and times that test the fiber of the soul. Growing into God is not so much, then, the process of becoming perfect. Perfection is a human ideal, an arrogant one at that, but it is not a human state. Perfection is not ours to have. On the contrary, to aspire to perfection is to doom ourselves to the kind of failure that can lead either to depression or to despair—neither of which is healthy, both of which only distract from the real purpose of life.”

Whew!  That takes a load off.  “Perfection is not ours to have.”  Rather, it “is a human ideal, and arrogant one at that.”  I’ve been arrogant for quite a while, and you’d think after so much time and effort at perfection, I would have come to this conclusion on my own.  Of course, that’s where the arrogance comes in.