Contemplating Perfection

After five tedious months, Asherel has completed her entry for the NRA Wildlife Youth Art Contest. She has spent 5-7 hours a day on it for the past two months, while I have read her school work to her. She spent several hours a day during the three months prior to that. It has really been a monumental effort. She knows that the judges will not care that she devoted 1/28th of her entire life on earth to this wolf, however, and she will be judged on the merit of the final outcome. And of course, that judgment is subjective, and may not go the way we hope it would. For now, she is just relieved to have finished it.

Now after all this time, the last thing she must do is name it. After five hard months of effort on a piece of art, it deserves a stupendous name.
I matted it for her and then held it up in all its finished splendor.
"What will be the title?" I asked, filled with expectant wonder.
"How about Wolf Standing on Rock?" she said.
I lowered the painting, "Can you think of something more poetic?"
"Wolf Standing on A Rock?"
"Let's just go all out and call it The Wolf Standing on A Rock."
Or maybe even The Wolf Standing on A Rock with Grass in the Background.

She was tired. The wolf was supposed to be done a month ago, we thought. And each night she told me it would be done the next day. But the level of detail was excruciating, and she refused to lower her standards so the wolf genesis crept along more slowly that the gestational period of real wolves.  I suppose there is no name that would give proper justice to how much struggle, time, effort, despair, and delight went into the wolf. I came out this morning and stood a long time looking at the picture. Maybe obvious is the best choice after all. What does one title a picture grasping so ardently for perfection?

When Ezekiel goes before the people of Israel to confront them with their sin, how short they fall from the righteousness of God, he uses the Temple as a goad to their conscience. He tells them to look upon the beautiful temple of God, designed in exact conformation to God's plan. He tells them to consider all its exits, and entrances, and the laws contained within. It was constructed exactly as God required, and it was described by Ezekiel as Perfection.  There are only 7 times the word Perfection is used in the Bible, and most are from Ezekiel. In every case, however, except the Perfection of the temple, the word was used in paragraphs that showed how perfection on earth was always temporal, always limited, always vanished in the end. There would be no lasting perfection made by man. However, the seventh time the word perfection is used is in the book of Hebrews. The author of Hebrews tells us if perfection could have been achieved by the old order of human striving and sacrifice in repentance when they fell short, then there would have been no need for Jesus. But humankind always would fall short, would never reach perfection, not on their own.

I stood in front of the wolf picture, marveling at my daughter's use of form, light and dark, design, color and especially the incredibly detailed rendering of every hair on the wolf in a very difficult medium. He has a pensive look on his face, as he stands atop a rock, looking out over the beauty of God's creation. How about Contemplating Perfection for a name?

Psalm 119: 96
⁹⁶ To all perfection I see a limit,
   but your commands are boundless.

Overcoming Limitations

The tennis ball lobbed back and forth, baseline to baseline of the court. I stopped and watched, amazed. Normally, tennis on our nearby courts doesn't transfix me, but this little game did. Both contestants were in wheelchairs. How on earth are they getting the power to smack the ball so hard when they are unable to use any power but the strength of their arm? I put my whole body momentum and force behind my shots! And how are they able to zip around the court quickly enough to reach the shot in the first place?

One man saw me watching as he paused to retrieve a ball. I waved. He waved back and returned to his game. I walked on, inspired. Never succumb to limitations. So many can be overcome.

That afternoon my trebuchet team gathered at Josh's house again. They spent four hours brainstorming and tinkering.
"When we go to Nationals," began Josh.
"Nationals?" I said, "We have to win at States to do that."
"I know," he said, "I intend to. Well at least to medal."
Now I know that means their trebuchet has to fire projectiles three times, if not four times, further than it currently is.... but I had the vision of tennis players in wheelchairs that stilled my pessimism.

They came up with ingenious ideas which I cannot divulge in case the spies for teams throughout the world are hitting the blogosphere. They spent four hours. Darkness descended, and we were still firing the trebuchet into the night while the little sisters begged us to go home so they could go to bed. I don't know if all the effort made significant changes or not. But I do know that something special had happened to my team that had just missed medaling in this event at the regional competition. They realized how close they were to victory. And they were perhaps even seized by the scientific fever, the desire to understand, to explore, to figure out, to find the elegant solution that had eluded them....well ok. Maybe not. Maybe it was just the allure of round shiny medals on satin hung around their necks. But someday, they would look back on it all and realize they had learned something too, and that was the more valued prize of the whole shebang.

Asherel and I are studying the book of Philippians, and she asked me about a portion of a verse that puzzled her.
"What does it mean in Phillipians 2:10, that every knee shall bow to Christ, even those under the earth?"

I love Asherel's questions. They are often about phrases I have glossed over in my own reading.
"Well, if you look at the whole verse, it says at the name of Jesus, all will ultimately worship him, whether in heaven, on earth, or under earth. I presume it means hell. Ultimately, even those who rejected Him and turned their backs on Him will see that He is indeed who He claimed to be. They make a conscious decision to reject Him, but even in the torment of Hell, the further torment of seeing the truth of the One they did not want to believe in will perhaps be the worst torment of all. But no one ends up there that doesn't want to be there. God desires that everyone would come to Him.  So if we believe that, what is the message for us today, in how we live?"
"We should tell others," she said.
"And even further, what should we do to be able to tell others well?"
"We need to be gracious," she said, "And prepared."
"And that is what this whole life of education is about," I told her, "You never ever know when something you have learned will be useful. So learn all you can, absorb all you can, while you are young and your brain that is so strong and gifted can do so. You never know when some fact, some experience, something you learned may make a difference."

Maybe my team is just finding out about how to pound out every imperfection of a flinging machine. But maybe, just maybe, they are also finding out how to squeeze every bit of knowledge out of an experience that someday they may be quite unexpectedly called upon to use.  You just never know where life will take you and what strengths or wisdom or character you will have to have developed to follow the path you will need to follow. You never know when some idea, or fact, or experience, may tip the scale and usher someone from a descent into Hell the other way.  I closed my eyes and saw tennis players in wheelchairs, laughing in the sunlit court.

Philippians 2: 9-13
 ⁹ Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
   and gave him the name that is above every name,
¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
   in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
   to the glory of God the Father.

 ¹² Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, ¹³ for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

Be ye Perfect

I was working on the wedding portrait of my son and his bride to be, and flinging my brush with disgust every few strokes.
"OH NO!"
"What's wrong?" asked Asherel, glancing up from her math book.
"I ruined Karissa! It at least looked like her before. I don't know what I did to ruin it and now I don't know what to do to make it better."
Asherel who has an excellent artist eye, looked carefully at it.
"Her teeth are too dark and the shadows around Matt's eyes are too dark. And his nose is too long."
She left the room.
I went back to work on it and then stepped back.

"Don't do anything else!" cried Asherel returning.
"It does look like them all of a sudden, doesn't it?" I smiled.
"Yes," she said.
And if it doesn't look like them to them, in twenty years it won't look like them anyway and they will look back fondly on those days when they looked so young, so in love, so beautiful, so hopeful.  The strange thing is, I don't know what small change, what small dab of color transformed them from strangers to familiar faces. I am convinced that God got sick of waiting and just grabbed my hand and guided me.

In my art class yesterday, one of my most gifted students was drawing a portrait. I showed him where his line was off by miniscule centimeters.
"This may sound picky," I said, "But if you are off at all in a portrait..."
"It won't look like them!" we said in unison. It is gratifying to have someone who so completely gets it.

My friend Danielle is an agility handler. She is a lovely and unconsciously humble soul, comfortable in her own skin. Her husky is in the running for being one of the top agility dogs in his breed. She just finished a trial where she placed three times, with 2 seconds and a third. She found this a disappointing result.
"In my level," she told me, "You can't make any mistakes. You must be  perfect."

I seem to be bumping up against this message of perfection, time and time again. I am a perfectionist, or used to be. Until I got tired. I looked around my house with the bathroom that hasn't been scrubbed in....well, a long time..... and the dog smears on the windows, and the dust bunnies hopping in the corners. I would never have allowed that a few years ago. I also seem to be wearing stretchy polyester alot all of a sudden. Slowly, comfort and ease seem more alluring, and reaching for impossible standards less so.

And then God sent me the wedding portrait.

I sat in the car last night waiting for Asherel to leave youth group at Church. The minutes stretched on. So I pulled out my Droid, and started sketching the moon and the limbs of the tree against the sky. You may think all I was doing was killing time, and at first, that is what I thought too. But then I realized that a still, quiet voice in my soul was whispering, "If you reach for the moon, you may fall short, but if you don't reach for it, you will certainly never touch it."

Psalm 18:30
As for God, his way is perfect: The LORD’s word is flawless; he shields all who take refuge in him.

Isaiah 26:3
You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.

Matthew 5:48
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Sketches of Magnificence

Our country is a beautiful place. I bicycled across it with my husband 30 years ago and saw the slow unveiling, spoke by spoke, of gorgeous mountains, sprawling plains of waving grass, rolling hills. Alongside vista after glorious vista of natural beauty, we met a people that overwhelmed me with kindness. It was that experience that made me love my nation.

There are many many stories I could tell of that journey, and as God calls them to remembrance, I will. But the story today is an overview.... a sketch. All along that 3,000 mile journey, I carried a sketch pad, and sketched my way across the country. Most are just incomplete snapshots of scenes we passed, and not well developed, but when looked at in totality, do give a picture of an amazingly beautiful country.

I know what you want to ask about that trip, because we were asked it probably 20 or 30 times every single day over the 3 months. Here are the answers:
1. 3 months
2. 50-100 miles a day
3. 3,000 calories
4. camping, and yes, it is all carried on the bike
5. about 50 pounds of equipment
6. mostly on the "Bikecentennial trail"
7. 3500 miles
8. yes, we are nuts

I was not yet a believer, a God-follower, when I biked across the country. I hate a good bit of who I was at the time, but with the advantage of hind sight, I see now that I was searching. I didn't know what I was looking for, but I thought surely it is somewhere in the 3,000 miles from sea to shining sea.

I didn't find it.... not on that trip. I found clue after clue after clue. Like many people have discovered who are far wiser than me, what most of us are longing for can be found without taking a step. We want to be loved, and we want to love. We want to be good, and we want to please those we care about without sacrificing who we are deep inside. We want to be useful and to know we have purpose, and meaning, and relevance. We want to ponder the deep and impossible questions of the universe, and share them with others who take the time to listen, and not mock our inevitable ignorance. We want eternity, but not if we have to face it with jiggling thighs and sagging turkey necks.

What I discovered many years later was I was searching creation for the Creator. The first moment that I honestly believed that God was real was when I gazed upon my newborn son. I was utterly convinced that this life was not a great cosmic accident, a serendipitous mingling of mindless chemicals. That was when my sketch of a search began to develop to the Masterpiece I had been longing to see.

1 Corinthians 13:9-10 (New International Version)

⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.

The Table is Turned

For years, my sisters have refused to discuss hair with me. They say I have an obsession. They cover their ears and say "Lalalalalalalala" when I bemoan the state of my hair.
"Should I just cut it all off?" I ask.
"Lalalalalalalalalala"
"Or does it look better in a classic bob?"
"Lalalalalalalalalala."
So then I turned to Asherel and started asking her advice, but even she soon wearied of the quest for the perfect haircut.
You can imagine the glee with which I approached my response when my sister Amy emailed this morning with several haircut choices, and asked which she should choose for herself.
First of all, sending links like that to me is like giving an alchoholic a gift card to the nearest ABC store. I was drooling as I perused the links, as Amy is far more gifted than I in finding classy haircut sites. Second of all, this was a Golden opportunity to practice the Modified Golden Rule.... I was about to do unto her as she had done unto me. I was just getting ready to type "Lalalalalalalalalalala" , when something overcame me. I would like to think it was the restraining hand of the Holy Spirit, but in reality it was a coughing fit. It gave me time to consider my actions.

I chose the cutest one, and also bookmarked it for my own future use, then sent her the sage wisdom of the Uber General of the Perfect Haircut Battle. See, I understand that a haircut can be much more than a haircut. In a world filled with uncertainty, inability to control events, seemingly random horrors occuring right and left, a haircut is one thing we can control. Sometimes cutting hair straggling in your eyes and pasting against a hot flashing forehead can change your entire perspective. Sometimes turning a completely new look to the world can make you realize there are endless new tomorrows where the world and you will be better.

There is of course an easier and less expensive route to this awareness. I guarantee my friend Joy is already typing the verses.
"His mercies are new every morning....great is thy faithfulness." Lamentations 3:22
and "I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you." Exekiel 36:26
"Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation" 2 Corinthians 5:17

This is all true, and every morning I do spring out of bed, with joy in my heart and my hair sticking out in all directions, frizzy and grey, shouting, I am a new creature in God! Who needs the perfect haircut!!!? Beauty and youth is SO yesterday!
OK, so I am not there yet, but I am going to meditate on those verses in between salivating over the haircut pictures Amy sent.

Count it All Joy

A pervasive lesson in our homeschool, usually in the form of strong admonition, is that Asherel joyfully and willingly and completely obey and do what she is told. I have to constantly remind her that "partial obedience is NOT obedience", and "grudging compliance is not compliance."

Over and over again until I am blue in the tongue from all its wagging, I remind and beg that she endure the trials of school with joy, and contentment, and excellence. Lesson after lesson, story after story, I try to convict her lovely spirit that you reap what you sow, you get what you put in, you cast your net and gather the fish.
This morning, as in all mornings, I said, "Now I would like you to do your math."
This morning, as in all mornings, her jaw dropped open and her face registered horror as though I had just asked her to behead her dog.
This morning, as in all mornings, I then said,"Immediately and willingly, please."
But this morning she responded, "Oh I AM willing! Actually, my eyes were bulging with happiness."

I love the book of James, which I will paraphrase here:
Hey dude, if you dare call yourself a believer then why are you sitting back and so selfishly just trying to grab all the cookies in life? Life is tough, and it isn't about you, turkey. If you claim to love God, then do what He tells you. Love others, do good, and do it without complaining. I will be sending you alot of curve balls, and I don't expect you to just be standing around waiting for the pitch you like. Get in there and swing for all you are worth, and prove that you trust me. That is the only way to win the game.

So it may have been in jest, but I consider it progress, and my eyes are also bulging with happiness.

The Lizard in the Living Room

Have you ever noticed that when a dog is in, he wants to be out? When a dog is out he wants to be in. When my hair is short, I want it to be long. When my hair is long I want it to be short. When it is summer, I long for the cold. When it is winter, I long for warmth.

Last night, when I lay down in bed and settled in my nice warm covers to read, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a little head. The last time this happened, I ended up with a copperhead snake in the hallway, so I jumped up and looked around. I must have been seeing things. I went to bed, but not without trepidation.

This morning I was going about our typical homeschool day doing ten thousand things at once, and went racing into my room, then screeched to a halt because the little head from the night before was looking right at me. There in the middle of the rug was a little anole lizard. Its little head pivoted to gaze peacefully at me. I slowly backed out of the room and then ran to get a plastic container, hurried back, and popped it over the lizard. Then I scooped it up, and after showing it to Asherel who found this much more exciting than quadratic equations, I let it go outside. I opened the container next to a large bush, and it slowly crawled out onto the branch. It was very cold so I scurried back in.

"Are you sure we can't keep it?" asked Asherel, "It is so cold. Will it be ok?"
"I am sure, and yes, it will be ok. It hibernates." ( I hope and pray it does anyway.)

I thought about how like that little creature I am... always longing to be where I am not. Our Bible study today was from Romans 7:15, where Paul laments , "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate....I do."

The lizard thought it wanted to be warm and inside our house. However, there was no food for it inside our house, and ultimately it would die, or be eaten by our ever prowling dogs. It belonged ouside where it was cold and it did not want to be cold. I could totally relate to the lizard's conundrum. We both longed for some perfection that was unattainable.... at least here on Earth. The longing was good, I think, planted in me, in Paul, and in the lizard so we would remember to strive for something better. But in a sense, we were still out in the cold.... and shivering til Heaven let us in.