Connect: The Artist’s Way: Recovering a Sense of Strength
November 21
Just a reminder, we will meet on TUESDAY, November 26 at 2 p.m.
This past week The Artist’s Way provoked us to think about how the quest for perfection can become toxic or just a mask for the ego. How easily culture lures us to unreasonable ends with airbrushed images and perfect scores. Damaged self-images or unethical actions are only two of myriad responses. (Just this week another parent was sentenced in the college admissions scandal for fabricating an image of a more perfect child.)
Cameron writes that seeking perfection may be more limiting than fueling for our creativity.
“Perfection” and “perfect” have become so toxic that the very words have become off putting—at least for me. For this reason, I cringe at Jesus’ teaching in the Gospel of Matthew: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48 NRSV).”
Even Jesus is calling me to be perfect?
Yes—but in the loving way Jesus calls us to our best selves.
The newest, scholarly, translation of scripture, The Common English Bible, offers the verse I find so troublesome as “Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete.”
The root meaning of the Greek word translated as “perfect” means to be undivided, whole, complete.
To be perfect is to love in the way God loves, to practice the way of compassion, and give of yourself as God has demonstrated in Jesus. This perfection is geared toward the way you encounter and remain connected with others and has nothing to do with the concepts of perfection of the individual as celebrated in the media or our culture.
Our Artist’s Way journey invites us to open ourselves to God. We become complete (perfect) in our ability to create when we let go of trying to do it all ourselves and let God.