(For the next ninety days or so we will be subjected to hour after hour—in 30-second bites—of attacks and counter-attacks on those seeking our support at the ballot box. In fact, probably we’ve already had some of that in the primary campaigns. We know it will become intolerable noise until the November elections, though. Dr. Frank Crane, however, suggests we might find something redeeming in our imperfections as he is—)
IN PRAISE OF FLAWS
The old priest’s pale face lit up with a curious one-sided smile. It was a find face, of a certain marble composure, as if he were a living carven stone rather than flesh and blood; yet there was a glint of humor in his eye, and of wisdom, for the two are akin, though one be the gift of God and the other the harvest of experience.
He spoke to her, a disheveled mass of self-pity and helpless remorse, one of the kind that picks at sin like a child at a hangnail, and said,
“Do not lacerate yourself, lady. Sack-cloth and ashes have virtue when applied to the body, according to tradition, but I know of no warrant for applying irritants to the soul. Your fault is the fault, it is true, and for sin, even the smallest, there is no excuse, but I question if you are the worse for it.
“Far be it from me to say a word that might encourage one to evil, condone heresy in the slightest degree, or justify imperfection. But the smooth polish of angelic sanctity is not for mortals. To be human is not the unpardonable sin.
“So, while I may not say a word for wrongdoing, yet I may speak in praise of flaws. For it is not by their strength but by their weakness that human creatures get their hold on one another.
“No one has a mightier grasp of love than a baby, that holds its mother in a grip of steel and binds strong men to its service; and the secret of this strange influence is but the child’s sheer helplessness….
“And doubtless it is because we are so blind and helpless, stumble and grope so pitifully, and are altogether so marred with ignorance that the divine hand is reached out to help us. Thus the Almighty is the servant of the feeble, as it is written, He is servant of all, for it is ever the business of the strong to serve the weak.
“It is not the classic beauty in a face that moves us. Hearts hang upon the little pegs of imperfection. If we were perfect no one would love us; we might be admired but not loved. Let us then be thankful for our tentacular blemishes. They are like the little tendrils of climbing vines; by them we cling and rise.
You recall what the cardinal said, in Ariadne in Mantua.* ‘There is, I notice, even in yoru speaking voice,’ he said to the singer Diego, ‘a certain quality such as folk say melts men’s hearts; a trifle hoarseness, a something of a break, which mars it as mere sound but gives it more power than that of sound.’
“Hate not yourself, dear lady, because you are mortal; but rather study to make use of your limitations, that you may weave all your little failings into a strong web of success. Souls can go forward even by falling. Walking has been called a succession of forward fallings. And more people slip and blunder into happiness than capture happiness by shrewdness.”
Whereupon the lady went her way, a little heartened and much puzzled, while the good priest murmured to himself: “Heaven forgive me if I have said anything she could understand.”
(*Ariadne inMantua, a Romance in Five Acts, was written in 1903 by prolific supernatural fiction British author Violet Paget 1856-1935), who wrote under the pen name of Vernon Lee. Thomas B. Mosher wrote in a foreword to the book: “As for her vanished world of dear dead women and their lovers who are dust, we may indeed for a brief hour enter that enchanted atmosphere. Then a vapour arises as out of long lost lagoons, and, be it Venice or Mantua, we come to feel ‘how deep an abyss separates us—and how many faint and nameless ghosts crowd round the few enduring things bequeathed to us by the past.’” The work is available to read on the internet.)