How Perfect is This?

How Perfect is This?:  15 May 2024

An old friend invited me for lunch. Old in the sense that our parents were friends and maybe she babysat for me back in the day. She moved away, had an incredible California actor life. She married a gorgeous actor/historian/professor man, is mother to a beautiful, last-name-for-his-first-name son.

Several years ago (before I acquired a pandemic brain I would be able to recall the approximate year) they moved ‘home’ to Greenville and we reconnected as adults, as families. We don’t see each other nearly often enough, but I’m glad they’re there, you know, out there in the world. We’ve had them over for supper and they’ve included us in lavish silent-movie theater nights, complete with costumes, period drinks and homemade lasagna. What a gift, to celebrate generational friendships like this.

Yesterday, over salad, quiche and Swamp Rabbit Café Stecca bread, she honored me as her first guest in their new, lovely town home. She hadn’t wanted to move out of their loft, a renovated space in an old textile mill that my father remembered when it was full of looms. But the new home checks a lot of needed boxes and sets them up long term. It was a good, and smart, move, mingled with a dollop of grief.

Lunch was a multi-dimensional treat. I snooped around on the tour of the new space because I was looking, very particularly, for a small 4x6 framed picture I’ve loved since our first reconnecting evening. It’s a picture of my friend from behind, arms akimbo, her beautiful blond hair cascading down her back, in 2017. She’s looking down on Griffith Observatory (with Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean further out) from Dante and Charlie’s Garden, later renamed Dante’s View. I encourage you to read the fascinating and tender story about Dante here. Really. Right now. Then come back.

Hiking up to Dante’s View is now on my bucket list, but before I even knew the whole backstory, I loved this photograph because of the caption. It includes the quotation found inscribed on one of the benches added to the garden, a testament to friendship and purpose and love. “How perfect is this? How lucky we always were.”

As I said, that captured me years ago when I first read it, I think because it speaks to how we can determine our own attitude. That attitude is malleable. I am not beholden to the first emotion that arises. I do not have to accept someone else’s disapproval or criticism. It hurts, and I’m too much of a pleaser (and wow, wasn’t that ingrained into girls, Southern girls, good Southern girls; isn’t it still?) but I don’t have to accept someone else’s opinion as my fact. There’s power in that. There’s power in choosing my attitude, my reaction. That power is what can turn adversity into ‘how perfect is this?’

I need reminding of that more often than is flattering.

One of my favorite podcasts is How I Built This with Guy Raz. He interviews entrepreneurs and idealists who had good ideas and shepherded them into huge and successful businesses, often with failures and heartbreak along the way. His last question for each guest is a version of: “Given all we’ve discussed and thinking about where you are now, how much of your success would you attribute to hard work, and how much to luck?” Most guests acknowledge that it’s a combination of both. They took advantage of whatever breaks came along, but also, they refused to give up. I admire that attitude, that drive.

My grandfather, a Presbyterian minister, when asked for help with any difficult situation, would advise, “Pray as if it all depends on God. And work as if it all depends on you.”

We choose our attitude; we choose our friends. We can choose what we do with our time, our advocacy, our volunteering, our child-raising, our community-building. When I remember this, I’m encouraged to choose wisely. To work as if it all depends on me. But I can’t keep that up if I’m not also praying like it all depends on God. And when I pray as if it all depends on God, I can’t help getting the not-so-subtle divine feedback that what God needs, actually, is for me to get off my keister and get to work.

Dante would welcome hikers saying, “Come into my garden and refresh yourselves.” Textbook hospitality. Especially if your textbook is the Bible. Gardens figure prominently throughout all wisdom literature, not only as metaphors for growth and beauty, but as real-life reminders of our fragility. We need rest, and God makes it desirable and beautiful. Our rest often makes us rest-less, propelling us to leave the garden, leave the safety. Go out into the vast Creation and be God’s hands and feet, eyes and hearts, ministering to all God’s beloved ones.

I’ll admit that I’m not naturally a how perfect is this kinda girl. I’m much more naturally a this is nice but it could be improved. And instead of how lucky we always were I tend toward we’ve done okay but I’m a little worried about tomorrow. Dante and Charlie had the Biblical confidence of grace. They embodied the Lord’s own enthusiasm in Genesis when day by day God declares the creation good, good, good, good, good, good and finally, very good. How perfect is this?

I’m also cautious to throw too much you make your own attitude out here. It can sound tone deaf or new-agey given the reality of culture wars and international wars and the deep divisions fracturing all facets of society. But for me it offers a counterweight to the despair engendered by all this harsh reality. It reminds me of my own agency, and renews the muscular hope needed to care.

There’s a window reflected in my photo of my friend’s photo of Dante’s View, and at first this annoyed me. It messed up the beautiful simplicity of the picture. But the more I look at it, the more I like the depth it offers. My friend is looking west in 2017, but if she could turn around, she’d be looking east, towards her future, and into her new, happy, light-filled home. The flaw in my photo exposed the transcendence that I’d felt, but was hidden, in that still moment.

I believe in the transcendence of each moment, and every once in a while I can see it. When I do I think: Of course! How perfect is this?

(p.s. Thank you so much, Katherine, for letting me show and tell part of your beautiful story.)