The growing awareness of one's imperfection that comes with spiritual progress is not a shame-filled experience, but a pure, humble and healing awareness. It comes as we begin to glimpse, very faintly, the vastness of divine love, the depths of peace, the unshakable faith of those precious few souls who know God face to face. In these glimpses, we realize that the perfection to which we are called is so far from our current state that to feel ashamed seems silly. The task is so nearly impossible that it's a wonder we're on the path at all.
I am thinking of the mulberries we picked today, nearly black knobby fruits, their juice spilling so easily from thin skins. I held a branch down while you picked them double-fisted, dropping them into the empty bottle where they crashed, spurting tiny jets of juice. The girls ate them by the handful, stuffing the dark sweet berries into their small mouths, purple smears like bruises blooming on their hands, legs, cheeks. We had hoped for ice cream but were foiled, and returning from that failed trip we found the trees, dangling their fruit in offering. We ate, and it was good. It was very good.
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