Perfection

Dalescape - Oil painting on canvas by Margaret M Brownlow

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You ask me, my brother, when will man reach perfection.  Hear my answer:

Man approaches perfection when he feels that he is an infinite space and a sea without a shore,

An everlasting fire, an unquenchable light,

A calm wind or a raging tempest, a thundering sky or a rainy heaven.

A singing brook or a wailing rivulet, a tree abloom in Spring, or a naked sapling in Autumn,

A rising mountain or a descending valley

A fertile plain or a desert.

When man feels all these, he has already reached halfway to perfection.

To attain his goal he must then perceive that he is a child dependent on his mother,

A father responsible for his family,

A youth lost in love,

An ancient wrestling his past,

A worshipper in his temple, a criminal in his prison,

A scholar amidst his parchments,

An ignorant soul stumbling between the darkness of his night and the obscurity of his day,

A nun suffering between the flowers of her faith and the thistles of her loneliness,

A prostitute caught between the fangs of her weakness and the claws of her needs,

A poor man trapped between his bitterness and his submission,

A rich man between his greed and his conscience,

A poet between the mist of his twilight and the rays of his dawn.

Who can experience, see and understand these things can reach perfection and become a shadow of

God's Shadow.

                                                                                     by  Kahlil Gibran.