I know someone who is a perfectionist. It means in practice that every task seems to take twice as long, and then at the unveiling it’s never quite right, although it looks fine to me. A beautiful stairway, which entailed much mathematics, is nevertheless half a centimetre out. But it’s his way and it comforts him to seek perfection. In the realm of spirituality, on the other hand… including the practice of contemplative prayer… perfectionism is not a smart idea… not least because perfection is unattainable and we have difficulty knowing what it is anyway, it’s usually unnecessary, and expecting it is to squander spiritual energy. So Fr Laurence Freeman writes about the virus of perfectionism… meditators for instance worrying about whether they’re doing it right. We need only to point out the obvious, the central problem with perfectionism, that it’s the ego speaking.. “I want to do it right”. Seeking perfection is likely to be about me, what I expect, what I hope other people see, but also (with some) what I assume God demands of us – Be perfect, Jesus is reported as saying in the Sermon on the Mount[1]. So people make a virtue out of correctness. Of course there are many situations in which accuracy is essential, and it is proper to pursue it, improper not to. But, as wisdom seems to find, this may be best done by people who know in advance their own flaws and fallibility.
One confessed perfectionist is Fr Richard Rohr… who is a Number One on the Enneagram. Fr Richard writes, inter alia: The search for perfection is the specific temptation of Ones, and it rules their lives. Ones are always frustrated because life and people are not what they should be. Ones are conscious of duty and responsibility… there’s always something or other that could be improved. Above all, Ones are disappointed by their own imperfection.
Prayer however is reborn in us when we see how we come to prayer never as experts, always frail and fallible, empty-handed, never in talent or accomplishment, or status. Meditators know therefore that this is a time, brief enough heaven knows, in which, with great relief and our fears set aside, we can be deeply truthful and fully present.
And so there is the gift of stillness and silence. We have stopped talking, and stopped rushing around. We have stopped measuring, calculating, estimating, predicting. So far as we can, we have stopped asking, imagining, remembering, regretting, planning, visualising… so far as we can, which as we well know is often not very far… we return to the bare simplicity of the mantra, repeating, waiting, resting, listening, having no other agenda. We have mercifully laid aside perfectionism, as inappropriate, surplus to requirements. God sees our hearts, and the love and the yearning there. I don’t have to be perfect, I have to be present. I don’t have to dress up or pretend or impress God in any way, as though there’s something good about me God didn’t notice before. I track down the Yes which is found waiting at my deepest levels, and that in its simplicity is my prayer.
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