Sunday, October 14, 2012

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good

The first time I heard this phrase, I had no idea what it meant. Sort of like when I heard the phrase, "A stitch in time saves nine." I imagined someone stitching up the space-time continuum of the universe, and wanted to know what kind of needle they were using!

But I frequently let my inability to come up with the perfect plan stop me. It is my excuse, perhaps, to do nothing. And it is so easy for me to do nothing. If I have any doubts in my head about what I am doing, it is not getting done.

Right now I am looking for a church, and so I am not going to any church. I want the perfect church, but I know the church I want doesn't exist. My problem is that I love the music and the intense spirituality of some of the more fundamentalist churches- but I am not fundamentalist in my beliefs. And that type of worship just doesn't exist in less fundamentalist churches.

I have gone to Pentecostal services a few times. They know how to do religion! And if you are going to do religion, then do religion! I once went to a Unitarian Universalist service and it just seemed like the minister was tying so hard not to say God or offend anyone's beliefs, and it seemed totally empty. Like we might as well have all stayed home and no one would have been offended.

 I went to this one church a few times- trying to ignore their messages about end times. And then I read their literature and found out that I wasn't even baptized per their rules- because it was not by immersion. I was just "sprinkled."  Like the Quakers, I think we are baptized by the Holy Spirit, if we are baptized at all.

It is not that I don't think that humanity has some really rough times coming up ahead- I think that it does. How we are going to manage peak oil and environmental degradation and the huge populations that we have- all at a time when we have access to advanced weapons and weapons of mass destruction- I don't know. But I think that Revelations is a really lousy guide as to what is in store for us.


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