worldview and perspective on Perfection

The mystery of perfection as an aspect of beauty is its transcendence. It points to a glory beyond itself. I knew that when I held my children, I didn’t simply cradle flesh and blood. I held a living ...

The mystery of perfection as an aspect of beauty is its transcendence. It points to a glory beyond itself. I knew that when I held my children, I didn’t simply cradle flesh and blood. I held a living ...

Loving father, there are times when it feels like we never get it right. We compare ourselves to others and we don’t measure up. It seems like we can never get our act together and live up to the stan...

Perfectionism is not a way to avoid shame. Perfectionism is a form of shame.

Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person.

Leader: The mighty one, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. People: Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth. Leader: Our God comes...

Almighty God, we take pride in our self-sufficiency while we look down on the weak who cannot provide for themselves. We praise others for their efforts, yet we demand perfection from our own families...

In The Seven Storey Mountain , Thomas Merton describes his life of sin and his eventual turning to God in his early years. He despised and ridiculed the word virtue, which had come to mean “prudery p...

Spirituality is not a formula; it is not a test. It is a relationship. Spirituality is not about competency; it is about intimacy. Spirituality is not about perfection; it is about connection. The way...

When one has once fully entered the realm of Love, the world—no matter how imperfect—becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for Love.

A Christian should constantly seek ... highest standards and employ the most demanding comparisons for [his self-] evaluations.

Maturity is the ability to joyfully live in an imperfect world.

I am abashed, solitary, helpless, surrounded by a beauty that can never belong to me. But this sadness generates within me an unspeakable reverence for the holiness of created things, for they are pur...

Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.

J.M. Montgomery’s novel Emily of New Moon has a passage that conveys the attractive and terrifying aspects of the mystery of God: It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, th...

In this excerpt, musician and author Ginny Owens shares a childhood exercise that only makes specific what all of us as human beings struggle with, the desire for wholeness: I wish you could know my ...

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

Like the eye which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all. While we are looking at God we do...

The end we ought to propose to ourselves is to become, in this life, the most perfect worshippers of God we can possibly be, as we hope to be through all eternity.

“He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before—this sleek, sinuous, full-...

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

Paradox has been defined as “Truth standing on her head to attract attention."

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will percei...

God of the Impossible – Father, Son and Holy Spirit: There’s nothing too hard for you to do, Nothing too complex for You to understand, No place we go that You’re not there, No sin too heinous tha...

You can’t, except in the lowest animal sense, be in love with a girl if you know (and keep on remembering) that all the beauties both of her person and of her character are a momentary and accidental ...

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

Sin comes when we take a perfectly natural desire or longing or ambition and try desperately to fulfill it without God. Not only is it sin, it is a perverse distortion of the image of the Creator in u...

Imagination “completes the picture” by transcending the actual memories and provable facts.

Our godlike beauty is hidden beneath curtains of shame.