Tag: Perfection

Editing

Rita Sommers-Flanagan14 Comments

Few writers love the editing process, but it’s a necessary tedium. The English professor on my dissertation committee marked ninety-three comma errors in my first draft, but as my co-author, God rarely has the patience to look for comma errors even though the need remains. She excuses herself, citing the liberating Japanese philosophy of Wabi Sabi: the mistake, the flaw, the imperfection becomes the passageway to a deeper understanding of perfection. I don’t like it. There are things I need to articulate, and I could use some skilled but kindly help to do it well.

The grandchildren visited for the weekend. The youngest fought the haze of sleep while I sat on a stack of pillows, providing what safety I could. In a voice softened by the mystical quality of those entering the other realm, she murmured her final conscious thought. “I want my mommy,” she said.

It wasn’t a full-throated protest or a ploy to stay awake. It was the final whisper that defines us all. Her eyes closed, and her body relaxed. My heart ached as I watched her sleep. I want my mommy, too. Not my real, deceased mother—the one who tried hard but sometimes failed. No, I want the perfect mommy.

“But what about me?” God said as she slipped into my head. “Am I not the mother of which you speak?” She was joking around like people do when they’re sure of themselves.

“No,” I told her. “No, you’re not.” I felt mean as I said it, but honestly, I have no time for this.

She might be perfect, but the way we interact is not. Her editing is whimsical, her grip on reality questionable, her motives often unclear. Not the mothering I imagine at all. “It’s complicated,” I hastened to add. “It’s not entirely your fault.” But it was too late. Her indignation seethed, and a torrent of grief swept over the face of the earth. Sea levels rose, and the dark wings of the birds of prey covered the sun. A bitter ending was palpable on the near horizon.

“Wait!” I said, “I’m sorry. I meant to say that you’re not what I expected, but you’ll do. You’re a pretty decent mother as mothers go. You’ll do.”

“But you can imagine better?” God countered, eyes boring through my body to the eternity at my back.

Ah, what to say. What to say. What to think. Could I imagine better? Was this a trick question? Was there any way out? I froze.

“C’mere,” God said. The waters receded. “Enough. You need some rest.” She motioned me to a soft, dark place.

I don’t know what I whispered as I fell asleep, but I know God stayed awake, sitting uncomfortably nearby. And honestly, what more can I ask?

Is you is or is you ain’t?

Rita Sommers-Flanagan5 Comments

For the past 45 minutes, God’s been following me around while I fuss and mutter my way through the large piles of rocks in our house. It’s time to clean and sort. Smooth, thin, striped, white, broken, odd-shaped, heavy, pointed, round, speckled, flat, agate, sandstone, granite, petrified wood. I’m blessed with an inexhaustible supply of rocks. It’s awful. Blessings always come with a dark side. In this case, I have to sort and judge my rocks. Which stay? Which go? Sheep or goat? Precious or plebeian? In or out? Evil or good? Worthy or worthless?

I’ve been lazily indiscriminate about rocks, but there are limits. Life demands at least some discernment, and as we all know, discernment easily slides to judgment. Humans have many sayings about this.

  • One person’s treasure is another person’s junk.
  • Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. …And of course, there’s this one:
  • Do not judge, or you too will be judged. In the same way you judge others, you will be judged.

I hold an amber crystal and a friendly river rock in my hand, overcome with doubt. What makes anything or anyone precious? What makes anyone or anything worthless? Who or what belongs anywhere?

God sighs. His jazz band materializes and sets up in the kitchen. God positions himself on a stool, and in his sultry, seductive voice, begins singing that old Louis Jordan classic: Is you is or is you ain’t my baby? He sips bourbon. I’m afraid he’s planning to light up a cigarette. Clearly, he’s in one of his sarcastic moods. I briefly consider throwing the bum out.

The mood fades. The band packs up, leaving the kitchen littered with peanut shells and shot glasses stained with oily lipstick. God lingers and watches me clean. He’s smiling. Humming. Waiting. I’m a little put out, but God has cleaned up after me more times than I can count. And he’s always done a stellar job.

He’s unpredictable, unruly, unjudgable, stereotype-proof—but whatever God does, he does well. I know because I have a memory of perfection. An infinitesimal fraction of me was present when God and his jazz band crooned the Universe into being; when stars burst out of their atomic skins, when the planet I call home began to cool. In fact, we were all there—which puts us in the same boat—which makes judgment futile.

I wash the last glass; God sweeps the floor and opens the north facing window to a blast of late-November air. I endure the chill while I search through the rocks. I’m on a mission.

God laughs. “I don’t need a rock,” he says, accurately reading my mind.

“I know,” I say. “But I’d like to give you something anyway.” I feel nearly desperate to find the perfect rock.

“Okay, baby,” God says. He holds out his hand.

The Pockmarked Rock

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

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Sometimes God looks at me with big soulful eyes that say “I know what you know and I know that you know I know so why bother to hide?” And I say, “You know why.” And God nods. And I say, “Why do you bother?” And God says, “With what?” And I say, “With pockmarked rocks, knots in wood, burned out doctors, and the achingly slow evolution of the human spirit.”

There are tons of rocks in our house. Found, acquired, given. A few approach perfection, worn so smooth it would be hard to imagine anything smoother or rounder. Most have their reasons, but some are a mystery. How did this ugly, misshapen rock make its way into the collection? It is irredeemably ordinary, commonplace, without any distinction other than the irregularities it has not overcome. I don’t like this rock. I want to take it to the river and throw it in, but I can’t. Once a rock crosses the threshold it is beyond me to push it back out.

Without another word, God wraps strong fingers around the pockmarked rock, and it begins to glow and shimmer. Then it melts, and the demons escape, screaming into the haze. They form an astonishing acapella chorus, their screams subside into a river song, and the rock wants them back. God laughs.

“See, little one?” God says. “You already knew that story. It’s a grand one, isn’t it? One of my favorite plots.”

“You mean the inextricability of imperfection and perfection?” I ask. “Or are you just reminding me how ordinary I am?”

God takes my face into her hands, her palms under my jaw, those same strong fingers winding up the sides of my skull.

“Don’t bother,” I say. “The demons will just come back.”

“Yes,” God says. “But they always come back singing.”

I nod.

What the Worms Know

Rita Sommers-Flanagan6 Comments

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Clear sky. Clear blue sky. Warm sun. Dark, wet soil. Worms at work underneath. Fat worms, translucent. Harmless. Grass. Green and growing aggressively. Dandelions with long roots. Grass with longer roots. Mint and iris, competing, roots and bulbs and a very blue sky. Me with a shovel. Me with dirt. Rich dirt, fully alive with whatever creatures live in dirt. Hello, creatures. Hello sun. Hello God. The backyard, dancing a circle dance, hands joined, feet first, collapsing into the arms of spring. Laughing. Not menacing, not hysterical, not messed up. There’s always rain in the forecast, blight on the horizon. But Now is perfect. Cautious, but perfect.

“Not quite,” God said. She was digging. “Drop the caution. Therein lies perfection.”

“Wrong,” I said. “Therein lies foolishness. Therein lies disappointment. Therein is falling on my face. I prefer a bit of caution with my Nowness.”

“Sorry to be insistent,” God said. “But I’m right on this one. Perfection exists only without caution. Let it go.”

“God,” I said. “Look at this worm. Have you ever seen a fatter, happier worm?” I didn’t want to keep arguing. God either wins outright, or my day gets all tangled up. Avoidance is an excellent strategy.

God took the worm in her hands and examined it. “No. Or at least hardly ever.” She gave the worm a holy kiss and ate it. “Thanks,” she said, licking her lips.

“Gross,” I said. “Why do you have to do things like that?”

“Protein,” God said. “Pure protein.”

“Yeah, but why not a nice charbroiled steak?” I said. “Or at least rice and beans? There’s something twisted in you, God. Very twisted.”

“YES!” God said, twirling around the raised beds, her skirt flaring, her eyes flashing fire. “Twisted. I am a twisted, uncautious dude. Therein lies my perfection. C’mon.” She held out her hand.

I was tempted. Sorely tempted. Overly tempted. The dirt was warm and welcoming. The melody, ancient, familiar. I took the hand of God and we joined the circle, dancing like folks at the end of a wake, loosened by liquor, sorrow, and song. It was a wake for all that is dead, all that is dying, all that will be born anew. It was my own wake, and I was dancing. It was a wake for what I’ve known and destroyed. We danced more and more frenetically. God and I. It was beyond. We were somewhere and nowhere. I couldn’t let go. I won’t let go.

“Fall,” God said. “Fall on your face.” I hesitated. She wasn’t taunting. She was serious.

“Okay,” I said. I was delirious. Intoxicated. I fell in the mud, naked and without excuse. I rolled in rotten leaves, ate the bitter buds of dandelions–and I was saved! Just like that. Saved.

 

Random and Small Redemptions

Rita Sommers-Flanagan8 Comments

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Lately, I’ve been having the weirdest experiences ever. I call them God, but they freak me out. Little serendipities. Parallel visions of fire. Random and small redemptions. Good things happen. Are they God? Bad things happen. Are they God? Can you pray yourself into an astounding win? Can you pray yourself out of a fatal car wreck? No wonder people yank God down into manageable formulas and comforting, though wildly implausible, explanations. Believing into an open, infinite God is hard.

“Oh baby,” God interjected. “I so hope you’ll grow up a bit more before you die.”

“So do I… And how would that happen exactly?” I said, somewhat sincerely. And then things came completely apart. The chains fell. Static and then silence. The call dropped. The line went dead. The station went off the air. The grid went down. My familiar body was suddenly defined by subzero isolation, white noise, and emptiness turning in on itself. Eternal nothingness. No self. No one.

“Can you hear me now?” God whispered. The words froze in the air and shattered. I forced my fists to splay into fingers and asked my bones if they still were there. The familiar rattle reassured me. I inhaled, filled what I assumed were my lungs, fell backward into oblivion, and flailed until I’d created an imperfect angel. Then I burrowed home on hands and knees, knowing the way instinctively.

“You crack me up,” God said as I emerged from my self-inflicted plummet.

I struggled for footing in a nonexistent present. “And obviously, you crack me up. But not in a good way,” I mumbled through unfamiliar lips.

“Emptiness is a good way,” God said. “Think about it. The fullness of time is the end of time.”

We sat for a while, breathing shared and splendid air. “Sometimes, I dream I’m weightless,” I said. “And I can fly.”

“Yes,” God said.

“And I can see forever and hear every beautiful sound ever made,” I said, lying.

“Nice try,” God said. “That’s not the kind of growth I was hoping for.”

“I know,” I said. “But you like it when I crack you up.”

“True,” God said. “There’s that. And I guess you realize you can’t really lie to me.”

“Yeah” I said. “But you let people lie all the time. I hate that. You don’t swoop in, smite them, or even clear things up.”

“True,” God said. “I just wait.”

“Okay,” I said. I’d had enough sparring for a while. “I’ll wait with you.”

“Promise?” God said, with a resigned, lonesome look.

The question didn’t surprise me, but my answer made me incredibly sad. “You know I can’t.”

God’s head dropped. I knew he was crying. I took him in my arms and said gently but firmly, “I can’t promise you anything, God. But I’ll try. I’ll really try.”