Flawed

- from The Faces at Braga by David Whyte

...If only our own faces
would allow the invisible carver's hand
to bring the deep grain of love to the surface.

If only we knew
as the carver knew, how the flaws
in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core,

we would smile, too
and not need faces immobilized
by fear and the weight of things undone...

If only we could give ourselves
to the blows of the carvers hands,
the lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers

feeding the sea
where voices meet, praising the features
of the mountain and the cloud and the sky.

Our faces would fall away
until we, growing younger toward death
every day, would gather all our flaws in celebration

to merge with them perfectly,
impossibly, wedded to our essence,
full of silence from the carver's hands.

~~~

One of the recurring themes in the amazing poetry of David Whyte is that of flaws. He contends that our flaws or imperfections are essential to the person we are becoming or were created to be; they are necessary for our final confrontation with this thing called life. The Sonny of that Cher, then, is a needed sense of self-compassion for the ways in which we are made. And if only we could live this way -
If only we knew
as the carver knew, how the flaws
in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core,

we would smile, too
and not need faces immobilized
by fear and the weight of things undone...

Some people will have a theological field day with these thoughts. That's alright; some folks need things to do. But I urge you to ponder flaws and the possible outcome of a sense of self-compassion: smiles.

Amen.