Loving is not inspecting hams, stamping purple seals on them, scared to death that someone will find out you stamped grade A on a ham that is really grade B. If you confuse grading hams with loving them, you will close your heart out of fear of being conned.
This is not to gloss over flaws or make believe they do not exist. It is just that you do not have to go to extremes the moment you notice the flaw: “I wanted to love this – was all set to love this. But now it fails by this crucial standard to live up to what it should be – to what everyone knows it should be.” The flaw is obviously there, so you cannot deny it, and you will not get past it.
Everything that you ever receive will come to you in a flawed vessel. All vessels are flawed. That one swears too much, that one makes too little money, that one has a mole on his cheek, and that one laughs too loud. Every blessing, every lesson, comes in a flawed vessel. You can focus either on the contents of the vessel or on the flaw. If you do not like the role that someone plays in your life, you will see a flaw in him. If you focus on it, get lost in negative judgment, you have no way either to love him or to learn from him. There he is – glorious, flaw and all – and here you are muttering about what a terrible thing it is that he does what he does. Thus you waste your blessings.
Frank Andrews, in The Art and Practice of Loving
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