Beauty, Imperfection and the Divine

Complexity can feel like chaos. It requires imperfection. Human beings are complex. Therefore, we are also awash in chaos and imperfection. We can strive for lofty goals, but we have to embrace our flaws and the certainty that we will stumble from time to time - more often than not. We need to find beauty in the stumbles. We need to find beauty in the complexity. Perhaps they are the same thing. Maybe imperfection is complexity, and complexity is beauty. Life, the world, and humanity are not unblemished models of perfection. They are beautiful, flawed riots of complexity.

Striving for perfection has its own kind of beauty. Once in a while, we glimpse perfection, and those glimpses deserve appreciation. Their rarity lends them a special kind of beauty - our brush with the unattainable divine. They remind us what is possible.

Just as we appreciate a variety of flowers in the garden, so we can embrace and celebrate many forms of beauty - the fleeting beauty of perfection, the gorgeous lopsided-ness of imperfection, and the struggle and dance between the two. Each has its own kind of beauty, defined and judged on its own terms, as each of us should be.

"I am a mortal, and liable to fall."

Scrooge and Christmas Past, in performance

When in Dickens' classic Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the first of the three spirits, the Ghost of Christmas past, and the spirit beckons him toward the window, he is reluctant. "I am a mortal, and liable to fall," he says. And the spirit responds "Bear but a touch of my hand and you shall be upheld in more than this." I've always focused on the spirit's response, but this Christmas season, I've found myself noticing Scrooge's words and their wider meaning.

Like Scrooge, I am a mortal, and liable to fall. We all are, all the way back to Genesis. We humans are liable to fall. In fact, you might argue that it's what we do best. It's part of what separates us from angels and from God in fully divine form. We are so liable to fall that, in the days of the Old Testament, we made it a regular point to make offerings and sacrifices to God to make up for all our falling. And somewhere along the way, God decided enough was enough. We were so liable to fall that we really needed something much more powerful to bridge the eternal gap between the infallible divine and ourselves. Hence, Jesus.

When the angels fall, they get a full-fledged and eternal punishment. We humans are given ways to make up for all our screw-ups. Why? Maybe it's because since God created us, he's pretty aware of our essential nature, and part of our essential nature is that we're liable to fall. The point of interest is how we respond, and how God responds, when we fall. He knows it's in our nature, and so he's prepared to forgive.

If only we could accept our essential nature more in the same spirit that God does. If only we could stop trying to be perfect on our own and accept that we are neither God nor angels nor demons. We are mortals, liable to fall, and the power lies in reaching out for the divine hand, in whatever form it is extended to us.