Less Than Perfect

Recently Fred and I have returned to the world of group meditation.

Who am I kidding? Recently we have returned to the world of meditation--group or not. Since June was born the days of one-and-a-half hour morning meditation and yoga have gone by the wayside, as is to be expected. Or maybe that's me justifying it all. Nevertheless...

We've returned. After discovering a Zen center near us that also has a kids program (a rare occurrence here in the land of the Midwest), we were excited to check it out. The space was warm, the silence inviting, the people who lead the kids' program energetic and sincere. Sitting down to meditate in a group again felt like coming home.

While I appreciate and, in certain ways, still relate to my Lutheran upbringing (when the shit hits the fan, I still pray; not meditate, but pray), I no longer feel like I belong in a Lutheran church. I love the Garrison Keillorness of it all--the monotone singing voices, the tempered emotions, the Puritan denial of the body and the concurrent obsession with it. There is something so heartbreakingly stoic about it all that crushes me in the best possible way. But it feels surreal. Jesus was a great human being, and that's about all I can feel about it these days.

The Zen center feels more comfortable, like they're speaking my language. So when we returned, it felt right, sincere. There we sat, forty five minutes of blissful silence, a rare commodity in life with a small child.

When the meditation session had finished, everyone shifted on their cushions and eyes wandered around the room, including mine. Then, something interesting happened. I had a thought--one that seems obvious, benign; one that perhaps I should have had years ago. But before I tell you the thought, I have to preface it a bit.

This has been a difficult year. I won't go into the details of that, being fully aware that difficulty is something that we all face and is not something unique to me. This difficulty has brought with it an increasing sense of my being Never Quite Good Enough and my somewhat narcissistic tendency to blame myself for all the ills of the world (okay, that's a bit extreme) growing even more intense. I am a perfectionist. This perfectionism has caused me to quit many things before I've even began. This perfectionism has been a lame sidekick.

So, here we were, sitting session done, people shifting around, and as I looked from person to person--some large, some small, most old, some young, some beautiful, some homely--I had the thought, "Ahhhh...I see. No one is perfect."

Again, like I said, this thought isn't terribly original. It isn't profound. But--oh!--it felt profound. It was profound to me. Suddenly I saw how idiotic my perfectionism was, how I was doing myself a disservice by disliking myself so much and for so long. It was as if my heart and mind just opened up and were replaced with a mountain's worth of fresh air. For a moment, everything was perfect in its imperfection.

Now, that moment was a Moment. Since then, I've had as many moments of hating my wrinkles and hating my impatience and hating the fact that I waited until I was 37 to do what I really want to do with my life. But now, there are as many moments of This. Whatever this is, it is fine. Whatever is happening is fine. Whomever I am, it is fine.

And there's really only one thing I can say about it:

It's been heavenly.