Aspiration Toward Inspiration

I think Life is more beautiful than we can possibly imagine. Its flaws make it even more gorgeous. What good is a sunset if it’s not so painfully awesome that it brings you to tears?

I think sometimes we want God to be our idea of perfect. Sunshine, rainbows, cupcakes, and world where no one ever dies, no one ever suffers. Yet every truly beautiful moment comes from some source of pain, some kind of identification. Every great work is derived from a brokenness… and every work of complete beauty, such as is only found in the “perfection” of Nature, or of Love, is so beautiful that it brings pain.

I think what I am trying to say is that there is no such thing as perfect—not really. There is no such thing. It is a figment of the human mind, which ever strives to better itself and can only do so when it has something to strive for… such striving is easier when we have a rigid definition of perfection—blonde hair, blue eyes, size C, 95 pounds, never letting a cuss word slip out, eating a balanced diet, raising 2.5 children with Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome. It’s easy to strive for perfection when you can define it (so why is everyone’s definition different?).

If there is no perfect, if perfect is as absurd an idea as I think it is, then what am I really trying to get at? What should I be striving for?

God.

God is not perfect. If you can excuse how blasphemous that sounds, I think it is real. Perfect is an absurd idea (in the true meaning of complete absurdity) which is truly meaningless in its purest form. If we could truly define beauty, it would be a completely un-unique concept. It is the diversity of creation that gives it beauty. Beauty cannot exist within lines of a standard—it exists in its ability to stop our minds for a moment and stupefy us. Beauty, at its best, makes us strange and uncomfortable in its presence… in our surprise and inability to react appropriately… and then submerses us in comfort as we understand the ways which beauty completes us and we it. If a tree falls in an empty forest, does it make a sound? Does it matter? If a tree falls in a forest, the sound only matters if there is someone there to hear it. Nothing can every be beautiful on its own. “Perfection” is a meaningless idea, ultimately. What is perfection compared to an awkward first kiss or chordal dissonance that captures an emotion you didn’t know you had?

God is Creativity, and Life and Love and those things which can never be perfect because it is their messiness that brings passion. I want a God who spins in circles with me in my moments of joy and cries with me in my moments of sadness. I want a God who was in the pain of Christ at the crucifixion. I know that God exists because I feel God in those moments.

That is why I love God so much. If God were not in every ounce of pain and joy that all of us feel, God would be cold. A promise of “dessert later and brussel sprouts now” that is so simplistic a two-year-old understands it? That is not the God I know—not a God that lets suffering happen, that hands out “justice” as if it is black and white, but a God that suffers with me, laughs with me, bleeds with me, sings with me, Loves with me, Lives with me, and says “It is good.”

God knows the pain and joy of everyone and everything and knows that it is good so long as we understand that God is living in ALL of us and part of serving God is understanding that… it is bringing laughter, health, happiness to people… keeping in mind the greater good… understanding that serving God is serving Humanity because God is alive in all of us and feeling all of us.

Oh my goodness, I don’t understand God; Oh my goodness, that’s a beautiful thing.

The profundity of existence is more than we will ever be able to wrap our heads around… and yet trying is part of what makes it so beautiful.