F ³: In Defense of Imperfection

 

You may have seen this floating around on social media.

Everybody's longing for community. We long to be part of a village. We long to have people come over and help us.

But when's the last time you've hosted something? When's the last time you helped somebody move? When's the last time you picked somebody up at the airport?

Priya Parker, Author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, on building community

I know people who are tremendously good at this. I am not. For the first time in many years, I am beginning to make progress in learning. A large part of what holds me back, I believe, comes from being raised that there were only two ways to do things: my mother’s way and the wrong way. It’s not surprising that I grew up to believe that 1) there was always a perfect way to do something and 2) I was probably not going to figure it out.

A great recipe for paralysis. 

I raise this now because our days are both horrifying and bleak. I think I am seeing other people out there experiencing what I have known my whole life. 

I need to do something. It must be the perfect something. I don’t know what that is.

What do I do?

I spent a lot of time yesterday listening to Kelly Corrigan’s interview with Father Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries. She’s doing a series called Super Traits. The topic for this interview was humility. It wasn’t at all what I expected it to be. 

People think that the task of humility is to put themselves down and say I'm less than. It's not, you know, the insignificant moment where you are conscious of that relative to your own mortality into the world is supposed to propel you. It's not supposed to keep you saddled with a sadness that I am nothing, which was always an issue I had with kind of the church's sense of holiness, which was these people who just knew how to beat themselves up.

And that was the humility we had settled for. I don't even want to say humiliation exactly, but it was I'm nothing. And then even relative to God, I am nothing and you are everything.

And you just go, gosh, how could that ever be an agenda item for the God of love is to make sure that you know you're nothing. The point of it is to propel you out because the joy is in the other. The joy is in loving, in being spacious and expansive and extending yourself to other people.*

In the end what was most important to me was how clearly he challenged all the binaries, both the ones the world throws at us and the ones the church has built up over centuries. Father Boyle’s faith and works feel deeply rooted in community care and respect for what is healthy and what he calls wholeness. 

It’s not about who is perfect or ticking off the right behavior boxes. He is firm in rejecting that framework.

I was briefly a Roman Catholic but it did not take. (That’s another story altogether.) But for a variety of reasons I have come to a point in my life where I am wary of what The Church will say or do. Father Boyle’s conversation with Ms. Corrigan stunned me. In a good way.

Honestly it’s not what I would call religious. It’s more about observation, experience, and how we see the world and our fellow creatures. When it was done I felt more confident about being imperfect and being brave enough to try to create community in in an imperfect world. I also felt a sense of relief in hearing good people talk about what it means to be thoughtful and caring and that those are the values worth cherishing.

A moment of respite. Rest for the weary. Have you had any moments like that lately?

Let me know.

Village Green/Town² Comments

*From Kelly Corrigan Wonders: Deep Dive with Father Greg Boyle on Humility, Jan 13, 2026

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/kelly-corrigan-wonders/id1532951390?i=1000744963474&r=542

This material may be protected by copyright.