I like perfection. I want things to be just so-so - ducks in a row, plans detailed and plain, everything smooth and easy. No muss. No fuss. No wrinkles.
No wrinkles.
Here's my problem: life is wrinkly.
Like a sharpee (the dog, not the ink pen).
Like my shirts (at least when I do laundry).
Like my Grandma Courtney's cheeks (as a very young boy, my little brother once informed our grandmother that her cheeks were soft like rotten apples. He honestly meant it as a compliment. I believe she took it as such - once she stopped laughing).
Smooth. Like velvet. Like a new stretch of freeway. Like pudding.
Like pudding.
Not old-fashioned cooked pudding. That stuff's lumpy. Too much startch.
Like pre-made, factory-plopped pudding-in-a-cup.
What I am slowly accepting is that writing and art are wrinkly as well. And God being gracious and wonderful as He is has been showing me this in gentle little ways. On our recent outting to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, I had an opportunity to study a few paintings up close. (Actually, a little too close. A guard kindly told me to step back so I wouldn't accidentally flick a booger on Gerrit van Honthorst's Denial of St. Peter. Evidently, snot is niot easily removed from 384 year old oil paintings.)
It was a painting by an artist whose name escapes me - a photo-realistic painting - that caught my attention. This huge painting looks just like a photograph.
Until you get up close.
Then you see the paint.
The very minor imperfections.
And I was reminded that everything is imperfect.
Every painting.
Every writing.
Every song.
The beauty comes from what pours forth from the heart and the mind, not the technical proficiency of the artist.
Wrinkly is okay.
Just not too wrinkled.
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