Giving Up on Perfect

Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

Kate Bowler

Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 5.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2022

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I do not imagine that I will settle centuries of debate about just how good we are, except that I believe that it is somewhere between two poles: everything and nothing. Perfection is impossible, but transformation isn’t. We can change a bit, if we really want to. This is the choice embedded in every day, the moment we wake up. We will have to find enough momentum to reach for a life that is never perfect, but good enough. Jessica Richie, my executive producer and co-writer and co-dreamer of this podcast, started just SAYING THAT. GOOD ENOUGH. Which made us laugh. So we said it again. Good Enough became a little permission slip for us. A little shrug that takes us off the hook for perfection and reminds us that we are human. Again today. Inside fragile bodies and contingent relationships and a whole web of love. Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection is available now wherever books are sold. And as a little treat for you, here is an excerpt from the audiobook, read by yours truly. It’s a little something my grandpa taught me about what it means to be content… and how contentment might look different for all of us. *** Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more. No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) is now available wherever books are sold. Order your copy, today. Join us for Lent. Receive a free lenten reflection guide, here. Introducing, GOOD ENOUGH: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection. Available wherever books are sold. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh, hello there.
0:04.4	I'm Kate Boller and this is Everything Happens.
0:08.6	Welcome. Today was the 73rd day of January. I'm sure you feel it too.
0:14.7	There is just the tick, tick, tick of a new year and nothing is being accomplished.
0:21.4	When January came to a close, so did that new year's feeling, the feeling of newness and possibility.
0:27.2	So many of us started off this year with a little ooth. We made lists. We scratched out resolutions
0:33.9	and read articles about making better habits.
0:36.7	And we always wanted to maximize our mornings.
0:39.8	Cut down on sugar and stop obsessing about our grab bag of faults at 3am.
0:45.2	We were about to forge more meaningful friendships, backfill our plates with vegetables,
0:51.0	and listen to me describe the hit documentary Netflix series, Cheer.
0:55.2	The highs and lows and power and glory of a cheerleading team for Navarro College in small town,
1:00.1	Texas and what it can tell us about the human condition, everyone.
1:05.2	We are trying. Well, we are trying to try.
1:11.7	That is the difficult to describe truth about living here. Now, at the long end of two years
1:19.5	of hemorrhaging pandemic losses, we are reaching for the hope that things do not always have to be
1:26.8	as they are now. That change is possible. That we could be kinder than we've been.
1:34.1	More empathetic than we were raised to be. More aware of policies that bring justice to our
1:39.5	neighbors and, while we're on the subject of neighbors, less pissy about our actual neighbors.
1:44.8	We were hoping, as Christians and as humans, wanting to outgrow our worst selves,
1:51.2	that each passing year might bring not only any old change, but transformation.
1:57.8	But trying feels harder than it did before. Which must be hard for Americans to admit, she says,
	...

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