by Roger Mock
The other morning, while looking through some pieces of music I had collected for possible future use, I came across an amusing little round for four voices with these lyrics: “Though I know my voice is only mediocre, I will sing to the Lord, because they say with God it’s the thought that counts!” That could certainly be my motto! When I was nine years old I tried out for the choir with the other fourth graders in our Catholic grade school. We were marched up to the choir loft where the aging organist (undoubtedly younger than I am now) played a note and asked each of us to match it. I did not match it and was immediately excused. A few years later I took up the guitar, joined the church “folk group” and, well, you know the rest.
A couple of hours after discovering that little song, I happened to watch an interview with a spiritual writer who has recently come up on my radar, Mark Nepo. He was talking about how the word “perfect” originally meant “to be thorough” (rather different than “to be without flaws”). On top of that, the King James Bible quoted Jesus as having commanded, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Even given that original meaning of the word “perfect,” it still remained a flawed translation. The meaning of the word in the original Aramaic was “whole-hearted.” Let’s hear the corrected passage: “Be ye therefore whole-hearted, even as your Father which is in heaven is whole-hearted.” Do you feel the weight falling from your shoulders? Consider that Christians have, since the early 1600s, been trying to live up to the King James translation. It explains a lot…
Nepo commented that Jesus did not ask us to be without flaws, but to inhabit our humanness and reveal heaven on earth through being thoroughly human. It matters not if we make mistakes or if we stumble; what matters is that we do it with a whole heart. It’s about presence, not performance. In fact, the mistakes are kind of essential. There is an understanding in Tibetan tradition that the spiritual warrior (one committed to a life of transformation) always has a crack in their heart. That, says Nepo, is how the mysteries get in. I’m guessing he was also thinking about my favorite stanza from songwriter Leonard Cohen, “Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Cohen, after all, is a longtime student of Zen Buddhism.
So let the song of your life be sung full-throated and full-hearted, caring not for any apparent lack of perfection in your delivery. With God, it’s the heart that counts.