Tarantella and Kintsugi

Backstory:

I had the perfect cello teacher.  She had a doctorate in cello and was one of the more frightening individuals in my life.  After months of working on one piece called the Tarantella I walked into my lesson and played it for her and she told me that she could not clean it up any more, it was perfect.  It was the only time she ever said that to me.  In my mind that was the definition of perfection: that which is the shiniest and the most clean. I held that standard to myself through most of my life.  I tortured myself and assailed the ears of God asking Him why I could never be perfect.  I carefully wallpapered my heart with that image of perfection and it daily mocks my efforts.  I built this image in my mind of a God that would only love me and use the life I was trying to give Him if it was the shiniest and most clean.

Reality Check:

When I was little I read my bible and believed that Christ was the perfect man but I missed the fact that His sorrow and death were part of why he was the perfect man.  You cannot have a resurrection without a death. 

Perfection is an illusion, or rather, my definition was.  I missed the most important part of my Tarantella: after that lesson I stopped playing it.  I let it sit in my music book.  I shelved my mental trophy and wondered, “Is that it?”  Yep.  That’s it, that’s all I got.  My “perfection” was worthless.

Kintsugi:

Japan began a custom of repairing broken pottery with resin powdered with gold.  It is called Kintsugi.  By this process a vessel is made more valuable for having been broken.  That is how real perfection works.  Brokenness, hard work, Mondays, the struggles of any hero you’ve ever known are meaningless and wasted time unless perfection is forged from blood and tears and not simply awarded to the person with the cleanest performance.  Victory is more perfect for having been paid for with blood.  The Tarantella sounded sweetest when I played well the notes I had stumbled over 84 times.  A story is considered the most beautiful when it makes you cry.

Conclusion:

Death and failure of any kind have no power over you because they are no longer related.  Jesus ripped them apart.  We are commanded to die to ourselves daily, to be crucified daily, but dying is simply the prelude to resurrection. Failure is not to play the wrong notes and perfection is not to get them all right.  Failure is to never play the piece because it is too hard.  Death is no longer married to failure.  There is nothing left to fear except our own estimation of what is possible.