Good Enough

Rev. Peter A. Friedrichs

May 6, 2007

As children often do, when my daughters were little they would ask me all sorts of questions. If you're a parent, you know the kind of questions I'm talking about. "Why is the sky blue?" "What makes a car go?" "How big would our wings have to be so we could fly?" They're the kind of questions that, these days I suppose, you'd tell your 6 year-old to look up on the internet and let you know the answer. But in the BG era, that's "Before Google," your kids would actually expect you to know this kind of thing. And I guess I had a feeling that parents were supposed to be wise and full of knowledge, ready to impart it on a moment's notice, and I didn't want to let my kids down. So when they'd come up with "Why is the ocean salty?" I would tell them. I would tell them something…anything…anything that sounded remotely plausible. I'd spin out a tale about minerals in the mountains and erosion and evaporation until they seemed satisfied or their eyes glazed over. I think I got this trait from my parents, who once delivered a treatise to me on ignition, combustion and radiation when, as a young boy, I asked the question, "How does heat start?" Ten minutes later, when they had finished their dissertation, I clarified my question: "No," I asked them, "what letter does heat start with?"

Regardless of where it came from, I felt the need to have all the answers where my kids were concerned. I needed to be infallible, all-knowing. I didn't want them to believe that there was anything I hadn't figured out or didn't have a handle on. In a word, I wanted them to see me as perfect. As my girls got older, the questions got more complex and my explanations grew increasingly outlandish. Like the graph of increasing demand and diminishing supply, at some point their questions (and their suspicions) outstripped my creative abilities, until one day I uttered those three dreaded words, never spoken by Dad before: "I don't know." "But Daddy, you know everything!" came their response, only partly in jest. That first admission of not knowing, and the look in my daughters' eyes, felt just like I'd let all the air out of the balloons at their birthday party. They were deflated and disappointed. Now that they're grown, my outlandish answers to their childhood questions have become a running joke in the family. And my kids pretty much don't believe a thing I say anymore, even when I can verify, with proof from the internet, the truth of my assertions.

Whether it's with our kids, or our partner, or our teacher, or our boss, or even our congregation, we all want to be, or at least be seen to be, perfect. As Nancy said in her opening words today, we all want to be, and we want our children to be, straight A students, both in school and in life. We strive for perfection, even though we know that it's ultimately unattainable. From an early age we encouraged to try harder, study longer, focus more. To live up to our potential. And each step of the way we're graded. Whether it's with a letter grade, or through acceptance to college, or by getting the job we seek or the raise we need, by being able to afford the house we want or that shiny new convertible, our performance in life is constantly being evaluated. Do we measure up? And if you're like me, your harshest critic is the one you never escape, the one that's inside of you.

This desire for perfection is, of course, perpetuated by our popular culture. We are led to believe that we can be perfect. Remember the old commercial with the beautiful, thin woman in a business suit and an apron? "She can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let you forget you're a man." We are bombarded with images of perfect homes surrounded by weedless lawns, across which cavort beautiful children with perfect teeth and purebred dogs. In their pursuit of the perfect body, Americans spend more than twelve billion - that's "billion" with a "b" - twelve billion dollars a year on cosmetic procedures. Botox injections, liposuction, face lifts. Let me put that in some perspective: the amount Americans spend on procedures like having their noses fixed and unwanted hair removed each year is more than the gross domestic product of many sub-Saharan African countries. Our pursuit of perfection takes other forms as well. We work insane hours and strive to stay productive and connected through our Blackberries and cell phones. Just this week ABC News reported that there are an estimated 11 million email addicts in the United States, people whose lives and families are adversely affected by their need to incessantly check and respond to email. Is anyone out there texting while I'm talking? If they're not now, I know it's happened in here before! If you can't bear to turn off you cell phone for the hour you're here in the service, you may have a problem.

It's hard to say where this striving for perfection comes from. Even if we blame our parents, as we often do, they likely got it from somewhere themselves. I'm inclined to say that it goes back to our foundations in the Judeo-Christian tradition. In the first chapter of Genesis, after God has formed the earth, the seas and the land, after he has populated it with animals of all kind, "God said 'Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.' So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." (Genesis 26). If we are created in the image of God, and God is all-knowing and perfect, aren't we thus called to be perfect ourselves? Between these religious values and our cultural norms, our perfectionism is, in some very real sense, hard-wired into our very beings.

Our Unitarian tradition even supports our drive for perfection. The great Unitarian preacher William Ellery Channing was a staunch proponent of the perfectability of humankind. It was Channing who said "Our supreme good is the perfection of our being... Nothing can make us truly happy but our perfection." Rev. Kelly Crocker, minister or Religious Education at First Unitarian Society of Madison points out, Unitarians made matters worse by essentially abolishing the concept of original sin. We are not, we say, flawed or tainted when we are born. We are born perfect. From that perspective, I suppose the only way we can go is down, but not so claimed the Unitarians. Kelly writes:

I would submit to you that this belief in the perfectability, if not the perfection, of humankind is perhaps the most glaring imperfection of our Unitarian Universalist faith, as well as our modern American culture. And it is a disease that infects every part of our lives. Our pursuit of perfection is insidious. It can, in fact, ruin our lives. Perfectionism puts a tremendous strain on our systems. It puts us in a constant state of fear. Fear of not measuring up to our own ideals or those we suppose others place on us. Like a juggler straining to keep 4, 5, 6 balls in the air lest they all come crashing down, we strive to do more, to do better, to do faster. And in our doing, we deny our being. We conceal ourselves behind our tasks and we identify ourselves by our outcomes. If we're not careful, in our pursuit of perfection our authentic selves become overshadowed by the work we do and the roles we play.

Another dark side to perfectionism is that it also leads us to play it safe in circumstances when risk-taking is called for. When we pursue perfection, we fear failure. So we try to maintain control at any cost. We minimize the chance that something won't turn out the way we want, and in doing so we miss out on opportunities. Opportunities for learning. Opportunities for growth. It is a fact of life that some of our best learning comes from our failures, so when we play it safe we may be stifling ourselves while we kid ourselves into believing that we're getting closer to perfection. The author Kathleen Norris puts it this way:

Perfectionism has another insidious effect. When we expect perfection from ourselves, we can easily fall into the trap of expecting it from those around us. And when others don't measure up to our standards of perfection, we devalue, degrade and perhaps even dispose of them. Our children don't behave as we think they should, so we punish them. Our partner doesn't live up to the ideal we had when first we met, so we divorce her. Our boss doesn't have the good sense to recognize how great we are, so we quit. Our pursuit of perfection in others can become a storm cloud that blocks out the sun and casts a shadow across all that we see.

They say that ministers preach the sermon that they most need to hear themselves, and I'm here to tell you that I am as guilty as anyone, and perhaps more than some, when it comes to perfectionism. I've already told you about my pursuit of perfection, or the perception of perfection, with my children. I've spent a lifetime trying to live up to the expectations of others, which don't even come close to my own expectations for myself. And I've spent this past year trying to be the perfect minister for all of you. And let me tell you, it's not easy! I'm reminded of how hard it can be by a tempest that's brewing in Unitarian Universalist ministry circles right now. It seems that some of my colleagues have been borrowing rather liberally from sermons that are published on the internet without giving credit to the original authors. In fact, the newly-settled minister at First Unitarian Church in Providence has just resigned under a cloud of alleged plagiarism. I can certainly understand how the pressures of this job, and the pressure to be perceived not just as good, but as holy and perhaps even perfect, could overwhelm him. It saddens me to think that he didn't have a relationship with his congregation that enabled him to say to them, "It's been a really tough week, and my well is dry. But I discovered this sermon by Rev. so-and-so on the web. I found it inspiring, and I hope you do too."

But this sermon isn't just about me, as I approach the end of my first year of ministry. I've also had conversations with many of you who feel that you aren't doing enough, that you should be able to hold things together better than you are, that you shouldn't have to say "No" when someone asks you to volunteer for a committee or a project at church. Although you know in your heart that Lake Wobegon is a fictional town, still you measure yourself against this standard where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average. I won't ask for a show of hands, but my guess is that there are more than a handful of perfectionists in the Sanctuary today. But here's the reality, folks: No matter how well-intentioned we may be, no matter how we may have convinced ourselves that we can approach some ideation of perfection if only we work a little harder, exercise a little more, drive our kids to one more activity, or keep our homes and ourselves camera-ready just in case we get that knock on the door from Publisher's Clearinghouse, we never will reach that particular promised land.

So, I'm here today to release us all from the tyranny of perfectionism. I'm here to proclaim that "good" is good enough to get us through. A few years back the comedian (and now Senatorial candidate) Al Franken played a character on Saturday Night Live named Stuart Smalley. Stuart was a deer-in-the-headlights type of self-help guru, with a self-affirmation that we all can use now and then to remind ourselves that we don't need to be perfect. If you remember it, say it together with me: "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me."

I thought about ending this sermon on that note. That's good enough, isn't it? But then I got worried that some of you wouldn't be satisfied to hear that the message of my sermon is a quotation from a character on a late night variety show from ten years ago. So in my pursuit to make this sermon "good enough" for everyone, I'd like to offer you something more. While preparing to write this sermon I came across an Eastern outlook on perfectionism that I thought was enlightening. Nathan Woodliff-Stanley, Minister of Social Responsibility at Jefferson Unitarian Church in Golden, Colorado, tells of a Japanese phrase that he has learned: "Wabi Sabi." Although the phrase is difficult to translate into English, Nate explains that "Wabi Sabi" is the recognition of "the beauty of the imperfect, the impermanent, and the incomplete. Wabi Sabi, he says, describes our lives perfectly. Imperfect, impermanent and incomplete, but nonetheless beautiful. Wabi Sabi. Our spiritual challenge, I think, is to rest in Wabi Sabi. To trust in Wabi Sabi. To live in Wabi Sabi. We must begin to recognize when we are good enough, when we have done enough, when we have achieved enough, no matter how far it is from the ideal we or others set for ourselves. And to find contentment, satisfaction and beauty in that place. So today I offer Wabi Sabi as my gift to you.

I would like to close with a story from my past, a moment of Wabi Sabi, if you will. Nearly 15 years ago, Irene and I were walking on the beach in Florida. These were dark days, as we both struggled to hold on through the depression I was suffering through. My condition had clouded my view of my life, and I was dissatisfied with everything and everyone around me. My memory is that we were walking separately on the beach, each lost in our own thoughts. Irene was some distance ahead of me, and I was intently focused on the sand at my feet. Every once in a while I would stop and reach down to pick up a shell that caught my eye. Time and again I would toss each shell back into the ocean. Irene stopped up ahead, and must have been watching me, because I caught up to her and she asked what I was doing. I told her, "I'm looking for the perfect shell." In a moment of stunning clarity, she said to me simply, "You know, all the time you're searching for the perfect shell you're missing out on the beauty that's all around you."

So today, let us remember to see the beauty of the imperfect, the impermanent and the incomplete. This day, and every day, I wish you the peace of Wabi Sabi. Blessed Be and Amen.

Closing Words:

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

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