sweep sweep

sweep, dust, vacuum, cough, wipe. Trying to get back in the blogging mode; up next are a few more autographs.

Perfection?

As one who struggles with needing to have everything be perfect, I ran across something in the recent Ministry of Money newsletter (issue 154), on perfection.

Jan Sullivan (co-director) quotes an email from Richard Rohr's Center for Action and Contemplation about how Navajo rugs have imperfection woven into the rug, for that's how the Spirit goes in and out of the rug. I already knew that as any reader of Tony Hillerman would know.

However, what I didn't know was that the Eastern mind (Jesus would have been closer to that than our Western mindset), understands perfection not as eliminating imperfection, but as a way to include imperfection. Perfection includes, involves imperfection, and does not strive to eliminate it. Chaos and control (oblique reference to the upcoming Get Smart movie this summer), yin and yang, etc.

Visioning

We interrupt the ongoing environmental posts for me to share one of my all-time favorite quotations, by Frederick Buechner (Wikipedia):

"Listen to your life, see it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom & pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness; touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and the hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace." (from Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons)

Perfect thoughts for our current visioning process, eh?

Here's another one for good measure:

"A vision is like a lighthouse, which illuminates rather than limits, giving direction rather than destination." James J. Mapes, Foresight First