This morning the blogging has been interrupted by cats. One at my ankles, wanting attention, and one dumped on my chest because it decided one son was a scratching rail and the son does not really want to go to school marked up: besides I’m wearing a couple of layers while the son is trying to get his tie on.

If anyone thinks life is perfect here, or that I am perfect, I have another word for you: you are wrong. Christ was perfect, and most people could not stand being around him.

For true goodness is terrifying.

As he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!” But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”

When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, “This generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

“No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.”

(Luke 11:27-36 ESV)

But we seek perfection: not in ourselves, but in those things around us. We want to be seen as perfect, and have that perfect, neat, tidy life. Well, most of life is not like that. It is not the garden, the hedge at the side of the road, but the industrial dump behind it.

Just as women need the comforts of home and hearth more and will end up trying to turn the office into a home if their natural homemaking impulses are deranged, men will easily be content with a lean-to and a few handfuls of nuts and berries if they have no chance for a family or membership in a properly ordered male collective. Pro-family is usually going to be pro-male provision. Even in societies where getting food is easier, the men still provide things like the primary family buildings or fortifications. So it’s not really an exclusively modern or capitalist notion, again, as some try to claim. Men build the grass huts even if women are growing much of the food.

Given this requirement, promoting marriage without pursuing goals for male employment at all income levels is a hollow gesture.

Well, I photograph nature. But I also photograph those very huts, which are abandoned on our farms, and the dumps around Dunedin. One plays with light: one finds beauty within the imperfections. One does not look for perfection.

Now, within the church there is always work to do[1]. And there is work for all: some of us bear witness in our work or our families, others serve by cleaning. Lewis once berated himself for being angry that he was distracted by a woman scrubbing the floors of the church: for her prayer was her work, and it could be far more righteous than his was.

Those of us who are intelligent and verbal are not more righteous than those who have a simpler faith, and qualifications are not a sign of sense or holiness.

[And, speaking as a bloke, can my female co workers keep their pinterest projects at home and not at work? I appreciate feminine crafts and have seen them move to the quality of high art at times, but I do not want you touching my work space. It’s a complete mess, but when I file things I lose them forevermore].

None of us has been promised a perfect life. None of us has been promised a tomorrow. And it’s not as if this world is all there is – not for any of us. Someday I’ll have a mansion… and maybe our Lord will put it on a windswept moor where I can stomp ’round the heather with my faithful dog rampaging somewhere in the distance…. or maybe He has something better. I’m not tied to a life that is merely mortal, and “as good as it gets” is not up to me.

If I were to die tonight…. the regrets I would have are the times I totally flubbed my Christian witness. The people I left thinking, “Hypocrite”. I would care about the work left undone in my children’s lives, and leaving my husband to mourn. I would be sad about those folks that I hadn’t yet witnessed to, and those I had somehow offended.* But that’s it. The last breath in this world is the last breath I take in hell. I’m looking forward to the rest of eternity.

So – today I’m here to remind you (and me) that our purpose is for today. To do the good work that is before us with the strength in our hands and the joy that is in our hearts. I’m here to remind you that pursuing “perfection” is fine if it’s God sending you on the errand because something lacks in your heart – and isn’t fine if it’s something that you’re doing so you can make *yourself* good enough.

I won’t regret a moment of kindness, I won’t regret the opportunities to refresh people’s minds about Scary Christian Ladies. (Okay, I like being a very confusing Scary Christian Lady).

Let’s look at the beginning of the passage. The woman blessed Mary, for her womb and her breasts nourished Christ as an infant. Indeed, that was her work: raising small children is a full-time occupation, and this is why grandmothers often visit after the child is born to keep the family going while a woman discovers this strange new being.

Us men don’t need much. We can and will manage with very little. At times we have to. But we don’t seek a perfect situation in this time: instead we work to make good and beautiful things, and shine light in a time of darkness.

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1. A quick word on work. Work is good for you: retirement is bad for you. A man needs a reason to get out of bed, a project. And if society does not provide rewards to him and his — instead removing such, using such agencies as the family courts turning what should be a lifelong covenant (I mean marriage) into something fungible do not be shocked when you find men working the winter and spending the summer playing. They have been kicked out of society. It is the duty of the church to become a little less pretty (well, a lot less) and challenge men, bring them back, and give them something to work for.