A couple from Texas–they know cowboy boots–comments on my own boots.
“We love those boots!” they exclaim.
The man leans over to look more closely to examine them and says, “They’re perfect because they’re not perfect. So many boots are too shiny and too fancy. Your boots are perfect.”
I lean over to my friend and say, “Did you hear that? They’re perfect because they’re not perfect.”
Imperfect things reflect a certain glory. The more ordinary and comfortable (I wear them all day long), the better. These boots are 25 years old. My mother wore them. They were put together perfectly by an expert maker.
Perfect!
I just have to end with one of my favorite poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins:
Pied Beauty
| GLORY be to God for dappled things— | |
| For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; | |
| For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; | |
| Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; | |
| Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; | 5 |
| And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. | |
| All things counter, original, spare, strange; | |
| Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) | |
| With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; | |
| He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: | 10 |
| Praise him. | |
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I just love the perfection of imperfect things. Don’t you?