Perfection, Perfection???

 

Four years, eleven months and one day ago (May 23, 2016) Rabbi Jeffrey Leynor and I published a blog about a poem Krista Tippett published in her book. Ms. Tippett is a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster and New York Times bestselling author. Her book, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living, includes a story about Father Kilian McDonnell, the monk of St. John’s Abbey. He became a globe-trotting theological ambassador after growing up in the backwoods of South Dakota. In his seventies, he became a fairly successful published poet and it was one of his poems she included in her book (pp. 20-21).

 

I wish I had recorded this discussion with Jeffrey. However, if you knew Jeffrey, you can probably be able to imagine his “lively and emotional reaction” to the title of a poem I handed him -- “Perfection, Perfection.” Any comments about “humans achieving perfection” usually triggered a response like -- “Yeah! Right! Not as long as humans have ‘human nature.’” However, the first verse grabbed his attention and he loved it!

_______________________________________

 

Perfection, Perfection

By Father Kilian McDonnell

 

I have had it with perfection.

I have packed my bags,

I am out of here.

Gone.

 

As certain as rain

will make you wet,

perfection will do you

in.

 

It droppeth not as dew

upon the summer grass

to give liberty and green

joy.

 

Perfection straineth out

the quality of mercy,

withers rapture at its

birth.

 

Before the battle is half begun,

cold probity thinks

it can’t be won, concedes the

war.

 

I’ve handed in my notice,

given back my keys.

signed my severance check, I

quit.

 

Hints I could have taken:

Even the perfect chiseled form of

Michelangelo’s radiant David

squints,

 

the Venus de Milo

has no arms,

the Liberty Bell is

cracked.

_______________________________________

 

Krista Tippett followed the poem with these comments.

 

“Father Kilian and his community taught me the magic of rooting words about meaning in the color and complexity, the imperfect raw materials, of life. Profound truth, like the vocabulary of virtue, eludes formulation. It quickly becomes rigid, gives way to abstraction or cliché. But put a spiritual insight to a story, an experience, a face; describe where it anchors in the ground of your being; and it will change you in the telling and others in the listening.”

 

As Jeffrey would say, “Choose Life, Do TOV!”

Jim Myers

 

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