The Spirituality of Imperfection

Phil Humber pitched a perfect game for the Chicago White Sox six days ago. For those of you who are not baseball fans, a perfect game is when a pitcher retires 27 straight batters without allowing any hits, walks, or errors. To put this achievement in perspective, there have been 300,000--400,000 opportunities for a pitcher to pitch a perfect game over the history of Major League Baseball, and this was just the 21st time this feat as been accomplished. The perfect game was six days ago. Last night, Humber returned to the mound for his first start since his perfect game. Needless to say there was great excitement about this moment. Humber had become an overnight sensation and people were excited to see how he would follow up his perfect game. No one of course expected another perfect game, but I'm also pretty sure that no one expected what ended up happening last night in his outing against the Boston Red Sox. Humber gave up nine earned runs in five innings pitched. If you don't know baseball, it's hard to imagine two such great extremes in a pitcher's performance within the same week, going from a perfect game to giving up nine earned runs in just over half a game.

This is what I love about baseball! It is a game that regularly reminds us that we are all imperfect. After all, a player can have a Hall of Fame career having only hit the ball thirty percent of the time. That means the player is "imperfect" seventy percent of the time. And even the best players can make errors on routine plays from time to time. Now that's something I can relate to!

There is a wonderful book called, "The Spirituality of Imperfection," by Ernest Kurtz. Here is a favorite quote from this book: "Spirituality begins with the 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."

What Phil Humber went through this week in is journey from perfection to imperfection is something to which we can all relate. One day we are loving and gracious to our partner and the next day we are irritable. One day we are patient with our children's behavior and may even find some humor in it, the next day we are annoyed with the very same behavior. One day we are in the "flow" at work--focussed and productive. The next day we are distracted and hardly get anything done. One day we practice great habits as we strengthen our physical or spiritual wellness. The next day we are lazy and don't feel like practicing our physical or spiritual disciplines at all.

Accepting that fact that imperfection is a natural part of our lives is not to bless it, or use this an excuse to not try and improve. Major league baseball players are always trying to improve their performance and consistency, and so are we. Accepting our imperfection allows us to stop being so hard on ourselves. It allows us to have a sense of grace and forgiveness about our "errors" so that we can move on to the next "game" and keep doing our best. Accepting our imperfection also helps us to realize that we are all in this together and that we need to make room for each other's imperfections as well. If you are having trouble accepting your own imperfection right now, you might want to get in touch with Phil Humber--I'm sure he could relate to your experience.

Baseball, like life, really is the perfect, imperfect game!

You Can't Hurry Love

One of the things my wife and I really enjoy doing as marriage and family therapists is offering classes to people of all ages, both single and coupled about the keys to building and sustaining healthy relationships.    We especially love to offer them to teens and young adults so that they can recognize and use  effective relationship skills as they begin to experiment with their first romantic relationships. When the movie Titanic was first released in 1997, my wife and I  began incorporating the movie into our relationship skills classes.  The movie was described then, and continues to be described today, as “one of the greatest love stories ever told.”  Now that the movie has been re-released we are grateful that we can once again incorporate the movie into our discussions.

What may surprise you is the way in which we use the movie Titanic in our relationship classes.  Rather than seeing it is a great love story, we argue instead that it represents everything that is wrong with the messages that popular culture presents about love.  Referring to the relationship between the fictional couple Jack and Rose, the young couple in the movie, as “love,” is misleading and dangerous.  These two people  met on the ship and knew each other for three or four days.  Granted, those few days were full of incredible passion and excitement, but a relationship that lasts a few days can hardly meet the standard of authentic, mature love.  Jack and Rose really barely knew each other, and if Jack had lived they would have eventually faced many challenges that would have had to be addressed for the relationship to continue and flourish.   Now if this or any movie actually told the story of a couple who spent several years addressing  their differences and in the process build a strong foundation for their future, that would indeed demonstrate  a great love story.  Just as three great at bats don't define a Hall of Fame career for a baseball player, three days of passion don't define a great love story.

The confusing message that popular culture gives about love is that love is primarily a feeling, and that it is especially associated with the intoxicating feeling that accompanies the very first stages of falling in love.  In our relationship classes we teach that real, mature love is just as much a decision as it is a feeling and it takes time.  Love is an act of the will, an expression of our deepest core values and beliefs, as well as being a feeling.  We teach that feelings ebb and flow in any love relationship, and that what sustains love through hard times is not feelings, but core values and commitment.

Perhaps the greatest words ever written about love appear in the Bible.

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13).

Note that this description is not a a list of feelings, but rather a list of decisions that a person who loves makes day in and day out.  The feelings of love will then flow from the commitment to live out these values and traits over time in a relationship.

So if you go and see Titanic I hope you thoroughly enjoy it.  My wife and I certainly did when we saw the original fifteen years ago. It makes for a great movie and at the same time provides some great teachable moments about what authentic love is and what it is not.

New Buds

In Wisconsin this year, as with many other areas of the country, spring has come  much earlier than usual, with record temperatures in the upper 70's recorded in early to mid March.  There was even a period here of seven days in March during which a new record high temperature was established each day.  This early gift of warm weather has triggered an early blooming of our spirits, along with an early blooming of our trees and flowers.  Daffodils and forsythia along with cranberry bushes, cherry trees, and plum trees have bloomed a full month ahead of schedule . As wonderful as this early warmth and early blooming has been, it has been accompanied by a new anxiety.  The early budding of the flowers and trees has made them especially vulnerable to being injured, or even destroyed, if temperatures were to drop below freezing.  A cold front, which is not unheard of in early April in Wisconsin, could wipe out millions of dollars of farmers' crops across the state.  The unseasonably  warm weather that caused the buds to develop much earlier than usual, has made them vulnerable to being hurt by a sudden change in the weather pattern.

In a few days, Christians will celebrate Easter which is of course a celebration of resurrection and new life.  Jews will celebrate Passover beginning tonight, also a celebration of new life.   It strikes me that there is a great lesson about resurrection and new life to be learned from the experience of the early budding of our trees and flowers here in Wisconsin.  When you and I risk experiencing and living into resurrection in our lives, we are like the early buds in that we find that there is great vulnerability in the beginning stages of this new life.  We are vulnerable to being hurt if the conditions change suddenly, if a cold front were to suddenly blow in to our lives. Here are some examples of what I mean.  Two people begin to fall in love, and as exciting as that feels, they also experience a new vulnerability related to the possibility of being hurt.  A young person leaves home for college, work, or military service full of excitement about the budding possibilities, but at the same time worries if things will go as he/she hopes.  Two people who have been estranged from one another begin to take steps toward forgiveness and reconciliation, leaving them feeling both hopeful and scared.  A person who has been through a “dark night of the soul” experience of grief, depression or addiction and is just beginning to recover and now feels a combination of new life and vulnerability.

The experience of moving from bondage to freedom, from death to resurrection is always mixed with great hope and vulnerability.  If we find ourselves in the early stages of new life, of new budding, we need to seek out the warmth of friends and family to sustain us.  And if we know someone who is in this vulnerable place we need to surround them with plenty of warmth in order to help their budding new life continue to blossom.  Families, friends, and communities of faith are at their best when they create the warm, loving conditions necessary to nurture new life. Happy Easter and Happy Passover to all of you.  May your celebrations be filled with the buds of new life, along with plenty of warmth.

Making A Great Entrance

Entrances are important.  This is why hotels, restaurants, businesses, houses of worship, and other public gathering places give special attention to creating entrances that are warm, comfortable, and inviting.  We tend to do the same when it comes to our private living spaces as well.  We know, intuitively, that an entrance often sets the tone for the rest of the experience that a person is going to have following their entrance.  Entrances really are that important. This Sunday, Christians around the world will celebrate and remember an importance entrance.  Palm Sunday celebrates Jesus' last entrance into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, surrounded by people waving palm branches and shouting, “Hosanna.”  His entrance is remarkable for its humility.   If a Roman official of equal notoriety had been making an entrance into Jerusalem at that time, that official would have most likely been riding in a chariot pulled by majestic stallions, surrounded by hundreds of armed guards marching in perfect formation.  Jesus' entrance set the tone for what was to follow.  He came in humility, without arms or armor, open to facing the truth of what was happening with authenticity, and transparency.

You and I have the chance to practice our own entrances on a regular basis.  The kind of entrances we get to make on a day to day basis are seldom public or dramatic, but they are of great importance, none the less.  How we enter or begin our conversations with a friend, our spouse, child, other family members, and colleagues sets the tone for what will follow in those conversations.  With the holidays of Passover and Easter coming, families will reconnect and reenter each others lives.  How we enter into those gatherings will set the tone for all that follows there.  How we choose to enter a new stage of life or any important transition in our life will have great effect on how we experience that change also.

Another way in which we get to make choices around entrances, is when we have the chance to welcome someone into our lives, either for the first time, or at a time of reconnecting.  Be it a new relationship or one that is reentering our lives we have the opportunity to make that entering warm, comfortable, and inviting.  Reaching out to welcome a person in the neighborhood, at work, or in a group that you are already a part of, can make such a powerful difference in that person's life.  Who among us doesn't remember with great fondness someone welcoming us into a new group when were still a stranger?

Making or providing a gracious entrance is of course most challenging if there has been past tension or conflict between ourselves and the person with whom we are reconnecting.  If we are not being careful and mindful, our entrances at times like this can be guarded at best, and openly tense or critical at worst.  We can learn from Jesus' final entrance into Jerusalem when he would have had every right to bring arms and armor, but chose not to.  Like him, when we enter or reenter difficult relationships or situations, we can choose to do so with grace, authenticity, and transparency.  How we choose to enter will make all the difference regarding what follows.

Entrances really are that important.

The Power of Prediction

Last week I wrote about the power of hope, and specifically about my secret hope for perfectly predicting the winners of all sixty-three games in the NCAA men's basketball tournament.  As I write this column on Friday morning, there have been 52 games played in the tournament so far.  I have correctly predicted the winners of 32 of those games.  My wife, Holly, has correctly predicted 36 of the winners--a fact that she does not have any hesitancy sharing with me on a regular basis.  And as if it's not painful enough to have her playfully gloat about how far ahead of me she is in our pool, she often concludes her gloating with this question:  “Didn't you do your research on the teams before you made your picks, sweetheart?”  Based on her research she correctly picked Ohio to make the second round and Lehigh to upset Duke.  I would gladly share with you her research sources and methods, but she refuses to divulge this top secret information with me! Attempting to predict the future behavior of other people is always challenging.  This is true not just in college basketball, but in all aspects of life.  Even though we may be aware of how challenging it is to predict the future behavior of others, it's still what we do.    This is nothing more than harmless fun when it comes to March Madness, but when it comes to the rest of our lives, and especially the important relationships in our lives, the way in which we predict the future behavior of others can have very important consequences.

Take parenting for example.  Parents are predicting their children's futures all the time, whether they are consciously aware of this or not.  Think of the different impact these two predictive statements would have on a child:  “I know you are struggling right now, but I just know that you will figure this out,” and, “I can't believe you are struggling again.  Sometimes I wonder if you are ever going to get your act together.”  Two very different predictions that create two very different effects on a child, whether that child is five years old or forty years old.  I remember someone in their fifties once telling me, “As I was growing up I felt like my father was always telling me in one way or another that I wouldn't amount to much.  I spent my twenties proving to him that he was right.  But then I got help and turned my life around and have been proving him wrong ever since.”

Predicting the behaviors of others can also be harmful in our relationships with our a spouse, friend, or other significant adult in our life.    We have all probably been guilty of not sharing a new idea for positive growth and change with a spouse, friend, or colleague because we just “know” they will reject our idea.  In fact when two people are fighting, they will often say something passive aggressive like, “I was going to do something really nice for you, but I decided against it because I knew you wouldn't appreciate it!”  All relationships form patterns over time.  If we predict that these relational patterns are incapable of changing, we will usually be right.  However, if we predict that these relational patterns are capable of changing and growing, and if we are willing to make the commitment and effort to do our part in helping the change and growth occur, we will usually be right as well!

So what future predictions (conscious or subconscious) do you have for yourself and those you love right now?   Are those predictions hopeful and life-giving, or are they negative and life-draining?  Be honest.  If your predictions are hopeful and life-giving, good for you--and good for the people you love!  If your predictions are negative and life-draining, then I encourage you seek out the help of a friend, a counselor, a spiritual leader and/or a faith community to help you turn things around.  Doing so will be a wonderful gift for you and the people you love!

When it comes to predicting the winners of a basketball game, our predictions have absolutely no influence on the outcome of the game.  However, the predictions we make for ourselves and those we love, will have great influence on what comes to pass--in fact they make all the difference.  That's my prediction and I'm standing by it!