whole, not perfect.
One of the funny moments of my life happened on a plane in the early 1990’s. My parents were living in Washington DC at the time and I was on my way to see them from Southern California where I was in school. It was spring break time and the plane was loaded with eighth graders on their way to DC to learn about American history. I got assigned a seat next to one of these eighth graders. I chatted with her a bit and she asked me where I was from. I told her I was from California. She looked at me with shock… “Were you BORN in California?” “Yes,” I answered. “But you’re so white!”
I smiled at this tan So Cal teenager and said wisely, “I was born in NORTHERN California.”
And she nodded as if that explained everything.
Our expectations around how life should look are pretty funny. It IS a bit unbelievable to be living here, in one of the most iconic places in the world. Since I had the encounter with this girl on the airplane 25 years ago, Northern California, and particularly, the Silicon Valley has become one of the most desired and imitated places on the planet. People become millionaires or billionaires by 30, you don’t have to dress up for work, geeks are in, the food is local, healthy and fresh, people are constantly exercising and it’s 74 degrees in February! No wonder!
So how does it feel to be the envy of the world? Is your life perfect, your skin flawless, your body sculpted, your bank account flush, your marriage passionate, your children well-rounded, your exercise regime rigorous, your daily meditation practice on point at 5 am, your intelligence unsurpassed, your house tastefully but comfortably decorated and clean, your diet an ideal balance of carbs, fat and protein?
I don’t know about you, but I have to admit, I often measure myself against this ideal of perfection even though I am from Northern California!
We think our lives should be perfect, planned, strategic and efficient.
This is a particularly American disease. We are geared to win and to be perfect and to make a straight path to success.
And, we project this onto God as well.
If we can’t be perfect, then God must be perfect.
If we don’t have a plan, then God must have a plan.
If we don’t know the point from here to there, then God must have the perfect strategy laid out.
Now, I’m not necessarily saying God isn’t these things but I do thing we project our ideas of perfection onto God.
But what if God wants more for us than perfection? What if the authority, brilliance and efficacy of God is not around an idea of perfectly executed action but being in the mess with us, moving and flowing and responding with the movement of life?
What if God wants us to not be perfect but to be whole?
“ As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.
That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.
In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons. ”
This text from the first chapter of Mark has Jesus wandering around a bit. He is casting out demons, teaching in the synagogue, healing Peter’s mother-in-law, getting up early to pray, out in public healing but encouraging people to not tell anyone what he’s doing, and moving quickly from town to town. I always thought that Jesus had some sort of a master plan for saving the world, being God and all, but it seems like he is improvising. Trying this, responding to that need, spending time in prayer, using his power to heal but not wanting to make that the point.
If the point of Jesus’ ministry was to heal everyone that he could, he would’ve stuck around longer and asked others to share the news. Instead, he seems to be willing to heal but at the same time, he is frustrated that they are focused only on what he can do for them in an instant, not the whole person, whole world transformation that he is after.
I was privileged to hear Stanford physician and professor Abraham Verghese speak a few months ago. He is a needed voice in our current medical community. He speaks of the different between curing and healing. If a physician is there to cure a disease, then the focus is the disease. If a physician is there to heal, the focus is the person with the disease. Curing combats sickness and healing promotes wholeness. These are subtle shifts but they completely change the orientation of the medical staff. It changes how a medical professional walks into the room, how they interact with the patient and what the outcomes are. It becomes about so much more than just fixing the problem and more about becoming whole.
I think this is at the heart of Jesus’ struggle in this passage. He wants to free people of the sicknesses that are incapacitating them and to be freed of the demons that keep them locked away. That is important work. But he knew that it only was a part of the story. The totality of their lives - their relationships, their souls, their sense of meaning mattered even more to him. And beyond that, he longed for the wholeness of society - to find a way to live together that was just, where everyone belonged and we moved beyond our tribal divisions.
Jesus’ refusal to just make everything better by curing everyone confronts us with our own desire. We often want the cure - just make the pain go away, just give me the shortcut to perfection, just let me be successful. And none of those things are bad, but God is more interested in our healing, in our wholeness, in transformation.
So what does this have to do with waging peace? Peace in our world, in our souls, in our relationships is not a 3 step plan. Peace is not an arrival point but a way of living. Peace is not something that happens outside of us but something we participate in. Peace not about absence but presence.
Leaning into this requires a total reconfiguration of our orientation in this world. We can put down the script of our journey to the perfect life and start becoming improvisational actors who can respond to each day’s unfolding with nimble souls. Instead of focusing on what’s next on our calendar, we begin to trust there is a bigger story the the one that can be contained in 365 boxes on a piece of paper.
We can follow Mary Oliver’s advice to “let the soft animal of your body love what it loves” and to hear God “over and over announcing your place win the family of things (from the poem "Wild Geese").