Upon learning of an impending birth, I admire the bravery of the parents.

They’ve heard the stories about how much it costs to raise a child from birth to college. They’ve heard all about the dangers of the world, the pressures upon families. We’ve seen first-hand the astonishing, unprecedented, unthinkable leaps of progress and creativity in technology that have made life today radically different than it was just 40 years ago, when the microwave oven was the latest thing.

A kid today will not only want the same old candy and treats that are so much more expensive than in my day. He will want things I don’t even know about yet, which will do things he will make them do that I will not be able to make them do.

That’s about the half of it.

A person goes into parenthood knowing he or she carries the same genes responsible for his own parents’ inabilities to parent better than they did, which, had they done, might have produced a more capable adult likely to be more competent at parenting than he will be.

If the child was to be a predictable offshoot of he and his partner, that might be provided for in advance. But who knows which relative on which side of the family, which odd mutation owing to what innocuous environmental factor, will tilt the child’s essence into a realm into which the parents might have little or no insight or access?

Often, we didn’t really know our parents; how they got to be that way; how we have become the way we are.

My two-year-old son looks at a favorite drawing of puppies and ducks and emits a laugh I’ve never heard anywhere before.

One must resort to the most obvious truths sometimes when delving into the most obscure mysteries we must somehow incorporate within the worldview we construct, the map that has both finely-detailed regions and vast “parts unknown.”

Every person has a mother and father, and every person is part of the human community, which becomes a bit more elaborate, exotic, and extensive with the addition of every single person.

Walking down the street, one sees children, adults, people of all ages. Children not with their parents, parents without their children, individuals alone, with friends, brothers, sisters, cousins, strangers. So many people could be your parents; your children; your spouse; your siblings.

As a son leaves his father and mother and becomes a father, so his son leaves him and becomes a father. Somehow, he has made it through the expenses, the genetic idiosyncracies, the dangers, the educational system, and acquired everything needed along the way.

The father and son have had their unique relationship, triumphs and struggles, not because of anything historically extraordinary, but simply in the natural courses of daily life.

A person is an individual: a son, daughter, father, mother, a soul in life among souls in life. The parent, the child: these are the relationships I understand best from the perspective that these are the temporary vehicles of the beings called “souls,” who we all are, the children of God.

Screw up though we do, and must, we are loved. We will be taken care of.

“Be perfect, as I Am perfect,” God says. Looking up into the kindly face of God, I am encouraged to make my utmost effort.

Then I read the letters of Paul and James and think, “They’re so right! I am a liar, and a hypocrite. Although, I daresay, they are rather rude to say so.”

How is God perfect? Nowhere else do we leap so completely into circular logic that is essentially useless. God is defined as possessing all these positive attributes, so much so that He becomes rather a tool of the language. We take all these things and say, “The Sun was out, and it was warm, so it had to be a nice day.” Anything that is good, God has to have that, and everything God has, has to be good. Sure, but that comes with the territory.

“I Am Who I Am,” God says, a beautiful sentence inasmuch as every word is one syllable and has to be capitalized. That is one rare sentence.

God is always here, in the present tense. “Be perfect, as I Am perfect” conveys a wistfulness, a note of speaking to Himself, a whisper in a sleeping ear.

We just need to work with this word– “perfect.”

Once, a giant walked the Earth– Mr. Perfect. He sank basketball shots from the middle of the court with his eyes closed. His darts always hit the bull’s eye. He hit home runs. He bowled perfect games. He had blond hair and blue eyes. But even he eventually lost (to Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake, of course).

In some cultures, legend has it that a perfect piece of art is impossible. That eleven-fingered lady on the Japanese six-panel screen– maybe that was, in that spirit of capitualtion to the inevitable, intentional. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers performed “Kings Road” on “Tomorrow with Tom Snyder” one night in 1981. They seemed out of sync until they neared the instrumental conclusion. Suddenly, the band clicked. “That,” I thought, “was perfection!” 8:08, 11:11:11 and 12:34:56 are three seconds of perfection on a digital clock. A colleague of mine had a saying– “Imperfection is perfection.”

Perfection is also an average day for a robot. Everything is done correctly.

Perfection and Heaven suffer the same stereotype– something finished. Static.

A human is different. To always exist in the present moment is a process, a carrying forward the progess made in the past and using it in the here and now and carrying it into the future where it will be discarded, or transformed.

To be who you are, to be someone whose beliefs, intentions, and actions are unified and consistent, despite doubts, mistakes, and opposition– that is the perfection I hope for.

“Make peace with your enemies while you are still on the way to court,” Jesus advises, lest you get tossed into prison. You won’t be released until you’ve paid the last penny.

So we should assume we are wrong about our enemies?

“Why not decide for yourselves,” Jesus also asks, “what is right?”

Some say you can learn a lot about someone from his friends, but you can learn more about someone from his enemies.

Depending how one defines “friend,” one can include most of one’s acquaintances among one’s friends. In a workplace of several hundred, one can work for decades and acquire so few enemies that they can be counted on one hand.

Those are the few who somehow instigate an antagonistic relationship through egregious, intentional violations of basic standards of decency.

We’ve all known a few back-stabbers. Grotesque abusers of power. People whose actions force one’s conscience to itch for vengeance. We want nothing to do with them, and wish we had never met them.

Such people are scorned. No way could we behave toward them in a way they could possibly construe as an endorsement of their conduct and behavior. We would have them understand that they have created a gulf of alienation.

But one appreciates that life is complex, that people come into circumstances that influence them badly, and they behave badly, sometimes in ways that seem personal, but actually are not. That person had a bad influence to act upon, and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, his unwitting target.

Had someone else done the same to him, he would have wailed and gnashed his teeth. Then he would have thought, “If someone can get away with that, I will too, when it suits me.” Or, “That is one bad example I will never follow.” Two roads, either of which can be more appealing than the other at different times of life, with different stakes in play.

Playing the odds of personality, one assumes that another person’s inclination is toward relationships that are harmonious, and mutually beneficial. When the offender learns that his poor behavior causes more trouble than it’s worth, he will reform his behavior toward the end of restoring an amicable bond with those he has antagonized.

One has decided for himself what is right– that the enemy will learn from his mistakes; that one needn’t press the charge that the villain deserves definitive condemnation.

Wouldn’t an apology be nice? Yes, but in lieu of that, what also might suffice is that the enemy simply behave with enough decency that, one would think, he has to recognize the inconsistency of his offense, and realize that he had exhibited some poor behavior.

As we accuse others, we might also accuse ourselves, and as we forgive ourselves, we might also forgive others, and find common ground with anyone with no intention or desire to wind up in a hostile court.

And let us not lose any sleep just because, among all our friends, lurk a few enemies.

Under the snow, stuff from last year’s garden remains that will have to be cleared away so Spring will have the blank space it needs to operate.

In the brain, it’s all four seasons of the year every day as certain patches lay fallow, others flourish, others are in full bloom, and others decline. Not everything is going to be fully underway all the time. If one feels like writing, he can do that instead of focusing on music for awhile, or maybe one feels like drawing (finally inventing a good graffiti tag, for instance) instead of anything else.

Several types of prayer are common, and familiar: classics (Our Father), less familiar (Memorare), obscure ones found in old prayer books, individual formulas one creates by linking Scriptural texts, private prayer (Rosary), common prayers said in unison at Mass, lectio divina, spontaneous prayer, petitions, thanksgiving.

It can all add up. During Mass, petitions are offered, with reference sometimes made to the prayer concerns of the congregation. When one starts naming names and praying for certain situations, it can be hard to know where to stop. Think of all those people at work, their difficulties and problems. A word might be said about those things, and if one doesn’t, is it because he has the shortcoming of not caring enough about that person’s thing, or thinks it’s not a big enough problem? If one prays for peace and justice in Nigeria, how can one leave out the Congo? And that’s just for starters. At what point do you think you’ve singled out every specific issue big enough, or just lump them all together into one region of the world? If one has prayed for a place every day for years, as have so many people in the place itself, and everywhere else, with no signs of things ever getting any better, at what point does one think he’s done enough? And, what has he actually done, and how is it that that much of whatever one has done is enough?

Just because one prays those petitions doesn’t mean one is doing that with the intention of drawing God’s attention to something, or is attempting to persuade God to take action. The formula of the prayer is automatic and the mind is complex enough to appreciate that one doesn’t exactly mean it like that, nor does he think God thinks he does. A prayer is answered if it successfully predisposes the person to a deeper engagement with the issue of concern. If one prays for the hungry every day, it becomes harder to neglect opportunities to provide practical assistance in service of that cause. There’s the answered prayer.

Petitions are a means of awakening one’s conscience. But they can also be a 15-minute daily recitation of a long list of things. It’s hard to remember them all, and it’s difficult to say while one is busy with the other chores of the day, and they’re stressful to say when one is rushing through them to get to the rest of one’s daily prayers, which include other questionable exercises which are also difficult to recite efficiently, which he likes to say before some other prayers. All told, including the prayer books in the morning, all this can last five hours on an easy day, eight hours on a difficult day.

The whole program began small, but has gotten bigger, and massive, over the years. Many of the exercises began when he had a much different life. He had much time on his hands. Now, he has no such time, partially because so much of the day is spent on the same activities one has maintained for decades.

For what purpose? The idea with prayer is that it’s a constructive activity that deepens one’s spiritual life, and helps him be a better person. But habits are imbued with an inertia, and become difficult to dislodge. It can be easier to stick to habit than to question the habit, and investigate whether that has been time well-spent. Is it really necessary to spend 15 minutes reciting petitions when one is pretty sure there is no need or benefit there? Must one reject altogether that entire form of prayer? One can always pray for somebody or something with honesty and sincerity, and that is enough.

Some people might have the problem that they don’t pray enough. Others have the problem that they don’t sleep enough.

Who has the problem that they’re not good enough? When one grows up with the story that all those people are the goats, and they’re destined for the everlasting torment created for Satan and his angels, and others are destined for the eternal banquet on the mountain with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it ‘s hard to shake the idea that some people, maybe a lot, are just rotten. Maybe some of us! Because all those people in the story are going to Hell, and it’s so scary that someone can spend several hours a day his whole life saying all kinds of prayers for anybody and everybody.

But if it’s being a better person that someone is after, a good way of getting there could well be not getting up so early to say so many more prayers , and instead try to get enough sleep so one has the energy and focus to make good, well-considered decisions.

All the prayers you can say won’t make you a good enough person, and if you are a good enough person, you won’t be downgraded because you don’t fulfill a quota of prayer. None of us can say he hasn’t deserved some punishment at one time or other, and no one can say he is no good at all.

How does one really become a better person in his family, his work, his neighborhood, his life? When too much looking inward causes a skewed perspective outward, it’s time to look outward more thoughtfully, and see what one can do in one’s inner life to restore a better balance.

Although the mental landscape is covered with things: things that have been there too long, things that need to be moved into the compost pile, triumphs, partial successes, and some experiments in progress, it remains one’s private place where, if one looks, one continually finds opportunities to try new, and better, things.