What I Learned About Imperfection

I had to let some time pass before I could write about this. I needed space to process and determine just the right words, the perfect angle to present it. Two weeks in and I’m not seeing perfection in this so I’ll just do the sloppy thing and relate it as best I can because I need to say it. 

Sometimes you just have to carry on without perfection as your ultimate goal. 

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We traveled to Penhook Virginia to attend a relative’s memorial service. The fifty minute drive from Danville, where we spent the night, was a portal through which we stepped temporarily back in time. 

Allow me to explain.

Penhook is a small rural lake community snuggled into the heart of Virginia by a crazy quilt of irregular patches of fields embroidered together by verdant tree lines. The route is not a modern highway nor is it straight from Danville to Penhook thus one has to follow the directions carefully. The two lane road weaves and meanders through an agricultural countryside then suddenly, without warning, takes right and left angle turns that appears one might have mistakenly gotten onto a private road inside the middle of a working farm. 

Sometimes the road winds through wooded areas and then rounds a bend where the view bursts open to a wide vista that reaches all the way to distant mountains rising above the horizon. 

All along the way we passed tall, square, windowless, obviously elderly, log structures. Some were nearly obscured with the naked tangled tentacles of vines still hibernating in the February chill. I wondered when I spotted the first one. It was too small to be a cabin. Then by the time we had passed the fifth of sixth one, I knew there must be something in particular these relics represented. Sometimes one would sit precariously next to the road, as though the road pavers had specifically deferred to the building’s first right to be there and left it undisturbed, inches from the asphalt. And then others would be standing like mute sentinels in a stubble covered field or tucked in a stand of tall pines. 

My curiosity peaked, I determined that I’d find out what these old buildings were as soon as I was able.

We arrived at the little United Methodist Church in Penhook and filed in with the other somber guests. The first thing I noticed was that it was decidedly a church. It had all the markers. Stained glass windows that depicted Bible stories and, gasp, a CROSS. There were enough wooden pews to fit several hundred people, if tightly seated. 

The second thing I noticed was what was missing - the stage and the rock and roll instruments. Instead there was a piano and a single microphone. Old, well-used hymnals sat in the racks behind each pew. Everyone seated, the pianist began the service with the achingly tender sounds of gentle worship. There was no throbbing, bumping, thumping or rousing percussion. Just delicately, adroitly touched piano keys, melodiously setting the mood for a humble coming together to honor and remember a life. Several times we were asked to open the hymnal and sing along. Like revisiting old dear friends the familiar lyrics and melodies hugged us with deep spiritual assurance rather than jolting physical emotion. We listened to the eulogies, recited the Lord’s Prayer together and the Twenty-Third Psalm. Even though this was a special service I knew this is what a normal Sunday service would be like in this place.

I began to wonder if I had somehow managed to transcend the space-time continuum. 

Service over we were all invited to go downstairs to the basement where a delicious meal prepared by the church ladies awaited us. We ate and fellowshipped. Not once in the whole time in that building did my ears ever need protection with plugs nor were my nerves frazzled into high danger alert mode. 

On a table outside the fellowship hall I noticed a stack of cookbooks. I know from experience that the very best cookbooks are always the ones put together by the church ladies. I picked up four and pressed a folded bill in the minister’s hand. I didn’t need an excuse to contribute to the little church but it seemed to be the easiest way I could show my gratitude for the experience of church one more time - real church - the kind that is fast becoming extinct–replaced by what is considered superior, the new normal, modern razzle-dazzle. Better. More perfect for this age.

At the end of the day, as we took the winding country road back to Danville to our hotel, I flipped through the spiral bound cookbook marveling at the wonderful recipes it held as we re-passed the old log buildings and I had a strange thought that these two things have something in common–church cookbooks and old log buildings. 

They are both perfectly imperfect. 

In this age of flash and dash, crisp, sleek and precision-devised style, old log buildings would never pass modern rigorous building codes for any purpose and spiral bound church lady cookbooks would never make the best seller list. Neither are perfect by any 21st century standards, meaning: not marketable. 

But I want to point out that the old log buildings - called Tobacco Barns, where the farmers used to dry their crops, some over two hundred years old, are still standing. Still. Standing. Still able to do what they were built to do if anyone wanted to dry their tobacco leaves there. 

And... the United Methodist Church of Penhook, Virginia has been serving the small community faithfully, without fanfare, promotion or marketing since 1956. 

And... the Penhook United Methodist Church Cookbook is full of recipes handed down generation to generation, that have been nourishing families for longer than I’ve been alive. 

Sometimes you just have to carry on without perfection as your ultimate goal. 

Or you could redefine perfection.

For Him,

Meema