Honoring our Imperfections

Quite a few years ago I was offered the opportunity to complete the sentence, “I am so imperfect I…..”  At the time, the mother of two in their early teen years, my response was something like “I even allow my children to drink Coca Cola!”.  It was the most horrific thing I could imagine and it yielded satisfying gasps around the assembled circle.  Thinking back I have to chuckle.

But, taken more seriously thinking about our imperfections is a pivotal question.  Perhaps our imperfections shine a light to point out the direction of our learning?  To borrow from Leonard Cohen, “there is a crack in everything/that’s how the light gets in”?  Perhaps our imperfections are the cracks; those pieces of our history or parts of ourselves that we might wish we could erase that actually point out our path towards our healing.

Like Kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold, our imperfections make us more beautiful that any flawless mask we might try to wear.  They are our mirror, showing us our truly human face as we travel along a path towards a deeper beauty. Sometimes we crawl forward and other times we fly, but opening to our imperfections, we keep on going.

All those years ago, the biggest imperfection I could imagine was compromising my values to please my children.  Today, when I look at the vast array of imperfections within me, I see a many-cracked and patched vessel that allows in the light of possibility.  Each patched crack tells the story of another opening, another painful time or experience on the path towards healing.

I wish you many cracks and beautiful mendings along your way