We all hold in our memories images, stories, and words describing (in great detail) and relaying the potential (no, the imperative) for – “perfection”! Very early on we are handed a vision of what that “perfection” should look like, what it should sound like, what it should feel like.

And it always seems to be very clearly NOT what WE look like; not what WE sound like, or feel like. “Perfection” always seems to abide within…”someone else”; within the super-heroes of our “imagination”. (Many of whom, if they were asked, would be the first to admit that they are far from perfect themselves. That they, too, feel weighted by limitations, by fears and expectations – their own or someone else’s. And, that it’s often not easy to tell the difference.)

Excerpt from Reverend Stefanie Etzbach-Dale’s 11/17/13 sermon for the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Santa Clarita Valley