It's All Practice

A series of conversations and events in the last week or so have reminded me of the most annoying fact: humans are messy.

And not just cluttered, books and papers and toys and miscellaneous things scattered about kind of messy. (Although also that, she says, as she looks at her too cluttered dining room table.)

Humans are all round messy - thoughts, memories, emotions, ideas, to do lists, all scrambled about in our heads. Made even worse by the traumas and horrors of current events. We are craving order, something to make sense of the chaos.

So we go to therapy, we straighten the mess, we write down the to-do’s, we commit to actions that counteract the authoritarianism knocking on our doors, we do our spiritual practices, we try to eat right and get enough sleep.

We do the work and think everything’s going as well as it can…

…and then we interact with another human being, perhaps as messy as we are - maybe more, maybe less, but still human, dealing with all the messiness of their lives and experiences too.

But somehow we forget that. We expect them to behave perfectly and not like they just read about a mass shooting in Australia, shootings at Brown and MIT, the murder of one of our most significant film directors, and more and more horrors from war zones and the White House. Plus whatever they’re already carrying because life happens and we lose beloveds and get sick and worry about money and deal with troubling family interactions and preparations for the holidays and and and…

… and our interactions are frantic, and testy, and some of us feel slighted and others of us don’t feel heard and still more of us are wishing projects would get moving or that things were more transparent or we had more people joining or our religious education programs were more vibrant or or or or…

…and we get tired of other humans. And ourselves. We expect our own reactions and behaviors to be perfect (and that’s never going to happen), and we expect others to be perfect too (umm….).

But humans are messy. And what we do in our interactions, our congregations, our homes, our minds and hearts, is all practice. Being human is a life-long practicum, without a specific goal in mind. It’s in the doing.

Meanwhile, the doing can be messy. Yes.

That’s why there is grace. The reminder that no matter how messy we get, we are still worthy of love and held in love. If this were a sermon, I’d head into Universalist theology and Hosea Ballou’s understanding of a loving divine for everyone. But it’s not (well, not really).

Today, it’s just an admonition to look at the damn calendar (we are in the middle of Hanukkah, Solstice is in five days, and Christmas is in a week, y’all) and let go of your expectations of perfection - from others, from your congregation, from yourself.

Breathe. We’re never going to be perfect, so let it be what it is.

But keep practicing.