If you ask me if I have a tattoo, I’ll tell you I don’t.
But that’s not really true.
I’ve never been to a tattoo parlor. (I’m not even sure if they’re called parlors.) But I have had a needle and ink poked into my ankle 16 years ago. (Actually it was a guitar string, not a needle.)
Ash and I had been friends for several years and I wanted to ask her to be my girlfriend.
The tattoo was my plan.
We had talked about doing stick and poke tattoos. We were broke college kids who couldn’t afford real tattoos and I heard that you could do stick and poke tattoos for the cost of a bottle of India ink from Hobby Lobby. And I had a guitar string that I figured could do as well as a needle.
I took her to the capital lawn. We laid out a blanket. Put the guitar string over a lighter flame to feel like we’re doing this legit.
And then I tell her, “I don’t want to get a tattoo from just a friend.” She’s confused.
“I only want a tattoo if it’s from my girlfriend.”
She takes a few seconds to realize I’m clumsily, awkwardly asking her to be my girlfriend. Then she squeals and hugs me.
Then at some point we get back to the matter of the tattoos. We had already talked about where we wanted them: on our ankles. Somewhere discreet enough incase they were a (permanently) bad idea.
But we hadn’t talked about what.
So she asks me, “What do you want your tattoo to be?”
And this is the reason why when people ask me if I have a tattoo I say, No: because 16 years ago, when I could have gotten anything tattooed on my body, what I chose was the word: PURE
There’s an ancient creation poem about the Divine creating the world. Today we usually call it the first chapters of the book of Genesis.
It was quite a revolutionary creation story for the time. One of the other main creation stories at that time/place was from the Enuma Elish, where warring gods fight, one of them wins and then creates the world and humans out of the carcass of the other god.
Creation stories weren’t meant to be literal, they were meant to say something about the nature of reality and ourselves. So that story from the Enuma Elish said violence and destruction is the fundamental nature of life. (And some days I feel like that is true.)
So then this group comes along and tells this other creation story, with a new kind of imagination about what is true about reality.
This story said that before the world was created, it was formless.
The divine hovers over this formlessness. Then begins to create.
And how does creation happen? Through separation.
The divine separates light from darkness.
Separates the earth from the sky.
Separates land from sea.
Then animals and plants… all the way up to humans.
So in this story, all things come out of the same underlying oneness.
That formless oneness is separated into different shapes and forms.
And at the end of it all, the Divine calls it all, “Good.”
In this story, the fundamental nature of reality is not violence. It’s not even separation.
The fundamental nature of creation, of ourselves, is oneness and goodness.
So when you’re going through heartbreak…
When you’re feeling restless for something new…
When you’re tired and need rest…
When you’re confused and disoriented…
When you’re experiencing loss and grief…
And wondering, does THIS belong?
This story says, Yes. Even this belongs and is Good.
The Jews are the ones who gave us this story about a Good creation. Where everything belongs.
Later, the Greeks would come up with this idea of the Perfect. (And it was in Greek culture that the New Testament gets written and much of early Christian theology gets started.)
Perfect is static.
Perfect is fragile.
Perfect is easily ruined.
Perfect is this ideal we’re not currently experiencing. We’re falling short of.
Perfect means hardly anything belongs.
But the Jews did not tell a story of a Perfect creation. They told the story of a Good creation.
Good is dynamic.
Good is vibrant, pulses with life.
Good is fertile, it is pregnant with possibilities.
Good is evolving and becoming.
Good is unfolding.
Good is a world in process.
Good says yes to light, AND to darkness.
Yes to solid, predictable land AND the chaos of the sea.
Yes to joy AND to sadness, grief, loss, heartbreak.
Of course… how else would there be any creation without all of it? It all has to belong.
Perfect is a museum - don’t touch, preserve it at all costs.
Good is more like a garden - things grow, decay, get pruned, are alive.
If we are supposed to be living in a Perfect world, then the question we live with is: Should this be here?
If we are living in a Good world, then the question we live with is: How does this belong?
Because of course it belongs - everything belongs. It all comes from the same source.
We can move towards whatever is happening, whatever we’re experiencing… because it is part of creation. And creation is good. It all belongs.
In a Perfect creation, forgiveness is needed for things being imperfect.
In a Good creation, forgiveness functions totally differently. The fault is not failure to be perfect - it’s failure to include. Not seeing that everything belongs. Forgiveness is about releasing our resistance to include.
Which brings me to my tattoo.
My earliest memory of feeling something in me didn’t belong was flipping through a magazine in our “toilet time” reading basket. I was 8 or 9 years old. It was a football magazine, and up until that point in my life I had only been interested in the pictures of the macho football players. But one day a different page caught my eye. The full 2 page spread introducing the new Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders squad. Why had I never noticed this page before? All of a sudden, this was the most interesting picture in the magazine. In any magazine. I snuck the magazine into my room where I could flip open to that page of a couple dozen women wearing white shorts and small blue shirts with a front knot. I felt like this desire in me was something wrong. Something that didn’t belong.
Then I learned that the Titanic movie had a full on naked lady in it. And we owned the VHS! It was actually a 2 part VHS, because it was so long… So I figured out which tape had the scene. I would watch it, and then rewind the tape back to the beginning so no one would find out. I had this sense that this part of me was something I needed to hide.
Or maybe this part of me wasn’t imperfect - but maybe my inability to say no to it was.
When I was setting up my first laptop in high school, I had to set the password for it. I knew that having a laptop meant access to everything on the internet. And I knew the drives in me.
So I made my password the word ‘pure.’ But not in English. I looked up the Japanese word for ‘pure’ - partly because the English word was too short for a password. But also because I was worried of what someone might assume if they found out my password was the word ‘pure.’ Why is Brandon’s password ‘pure?’ Uh oh.
I felt like these parts of me were wrong. I wasn’t safe to be honest about what was real inside of me. I had to play whack a mole with my thoughts, my feelings, my actions.
I couldn’t rest in belonging. I needed to live in the pressure of evaluation. What was allowed and what was not. What was imperfect and how could I be pure.
Perfection, I’ve found, doesn’t create purity. It creates hiding.
When belonging is conditional, the self fragments.
So I lived in chronic self-monitoring. But I’d “fail,” which led to chronic shame.
So when my new girlfriend and I are sitting on the capital lawn, sterilizing our makeshift needle, and she asks me what I want my tattoo to be, I tell her the thing I most long for. The thing I most want to be true.
I want to be pure.
Then I can rest. Then I can be okay. Then I will belong.
There was this study done of two pottery classes.
The first class was told their only objective for the semester was to make the most perfect pot they could. That was it.
The second class was told they simply had to make as many pots as they could. No particular objective of the quality of the pots. Just make a lot.
At the end of the semester, it was the quantity class that ended up making the best pots. Focusing on allowing all of the messy process created better results than aiming for perfection.
Goodness actually happens when we release Perfection.
When we allow “failure” to be instructive.
When we can trust that growth emerges through the messiness of living.
When we let our imperfect pots belong to the process.
When we forgive ourselves for saying, “That doesn’t belong” and come back into the wholeness and oneness of reality.
Goodness says that all of it belongs.
And belonging is the soil of transformation.
A business owner I was talking with came to me because his work had piled up and felt insurmountable. He had gotten so far behind in his work that he felt buried in his business and didn’t know how to climb out of the workload. He was exhausted and there was no relief in sight.
As we talked, we noticed he had this lens of Perfection. He felt he had to do everything perfect, or his business would crumble.
As we looked at what the perfectionism was protecting him from, we found that he was trying to avoid conflict with his clients. He didn’t want to disappoint them. He didn’t want to feel the sting of criticism or the shift in someone’s tone that might signal disapproval. Somewhere along the way, his nervous system had decided that criticism meant danger. So perfection became his shield. If everything was flawless, no one could question him. If no one questioned him, he would be safe.
But of course, that safety came at a cost. When perfection is the requirement, nothing is ever ready. Every task carries the weight of your worth. Work stops being creative and starts being defensive.
This kind of stuff isn’t always conscious. Sometimes it lives deep in us and we need help becoming aware of it.
We began to explore how the things he wanted to avoid - feedback, criticism, conflict - might actually be things that are Good. Things that can be included.
He began to see (not just in his mind but in his body) that he can welcome other people’s opinions and perspectives. Even if that means some disagreement or healthy conflict is needed.
Now he wasn’t aiming for perfect anymore - his aim was for Goodness. Serving others in a way that is Good and can include all of the process.
He and his business transformed. Now he wasn’t trying to avoid anything, but could welcome it all - he had new ideas, created new systems, worked with less pressure and more lightness.
Nothing changed about his clients. What changed was what he allowed to belong.
The exclusion of what belongs is the root of violence, of evil.
Evil is the name we have for what grows out of exclusion. When something is not allowed to belong, then nasty things start to grow in those shadows.
The mind thinks, “Surely we can’t include everything! What about violence? What about evil? We have to exclude those things!”
Violence is rarely the first thing that goes wrong. It’s usually the last. Like a pressure cooker with no release valve, what explodes is not the heat itself - but the refusal to let heat move.
Pain that can be named, held, and responded to rarely turns violent.
Violence is often what pain becomes when it has nowhere to go.
When we welcome back what we excluded, it is allowed to return to it’s natural state. Which is Goodness. Not evil or brokenness.
We aren’t attracted to things that are perfect.
Have you ever wanted to watch a movie where things start out perfect… And then in the middle, they stay perfect…. Then at the end, it all ends still perfect?
Of course not! We wouldn’t even call that a story! There’s no plot. There’s no life. It’s uninteresting. It’s not moving. It’s not a story.
We don’t long for Perfection.
We long for belonging - of all of our experience.
To allow all the beauty, and grief and heartbreak and joy and terror.
To allow it all to be here in this dynamic, unfolding creation.
For years, my ankle tattoo of the word ‘pure’ was a badge of what I wanted (and was falling short of).
Until that whole worldview couldn’t hold my life anymore. It was bound to break. Like a pressure cooker with no release valve. I had to find a way to include what was real.
But then the tattoo became a symbol of shame. A relic of this old life that I was trying to distance myself from. Which was another version of exclusion - trying to exclude my old worldview of exclusion.
But slowly, through years of learning to include all myself… even my past selves… naming it all as Good…
I began to wear socks that didn’t hide my tattoo.
I practiced letting it belong.
And forgiving the ways I tried to exclude it.
That only created inner violence and harm.
Recently, I was at a coffee shop meeting up with a new friend. A friend who has a lot of tattoos. I started asking him about what they meant, when he got them, if they hurt.
Then he asks me, “Do you have any tattoos?”
There was my usual answer. My answer that didn’t want to include that part of my story. My answer that didn’t see that part as Good.
But I’ve been practicing including all of my life.
So, I tell him. “Yes, I do. It’s actually a great story.”