For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.

(Romans 11:32)

I took The Power of Myth off the bookshelf when PBS replayed the Bill Moyers’ interview with renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell recently. It brought me back to the days when I was doing men’s work. Campbell is credited with inventing the term, “follow your bliss.” Doing that which you are called to do or that which you love to do. Campbell says that when you discover your bliss, doors will open, even doors you didn’t know were there. I heard it in another way. Do what you like and the money will follow. A pastor once said, “A man without a passion will die.” Babe Ruth said, “I can’t believe that somebody is paying me to play baseball!!!” I spent 32 years in the classroom after being told by my mother that there was no money in the house for college. I loved the classroom. I was in another world. My everyday problems were of another universe. I was inspired by my 9th grade Social Studies teacher, Mr. Noli. After putting the chalk down for the last time, I could tell myself, “I did what I was supposed do.”

I grew up trying to be the perfect child. I did whatever I had to do in a perfect way so that my mother would love me. Maybe that’s because whenever she looked at me, she saw my father. o say that my mother and father had a troubled marriage is an understatement. Whatever anger my mother had towards my father, she vented on me. Years later when I entered a funeral home as an adult, a gentleman looked up at me from his chair and said, “I heard you sing!” My father was a locally renowned talent with a beautiful singing voice. “You are the spitting image of your father,” he said. Being the “perfect child” was my way of working around my mother’s anger. It was also an attempt to become her favorite son. It never worked.

I bought my first home in the 1970s in the era of the oil embargo. Everybody in the neighborhood was trying to find ways to become more fuel efficient. The common source of heating energy was fuel oil. People were trying to find inventive ways to save oil while keeping warm or making hot water. Trying to do my best to conserve oil, I called in an oil company to assess my burner. My goal was to have it become the perfect burner. On the appointed day a technician came to analyze my boiler. As happens when a service man comes into my home, I watched him like a hawk because maybe I’d learn something. I am a visual learner. The technician took out his tools and began his work. He flushed the system, changed the filter, installed a smaller nozzle so less fuel would enter the combustion chamber, and analyzed the smoke going up the chimney. After he threw his lighted cigarette into the can of heating oil, he turned to me and said, “Your burner is 85 percent efficient.” “What? How much for a new burner?” I asked in a heartbeat. “You don’t understand,” he replied. “85 percent efficiency is the best your burner can do!”

My house had a big backyard. My wife came home with the idea of putting a four foot pool two feet into the ground with a deck around it. I can’t draw out plans. If I can see it, I can build it. I use the trial and error method of construction. Build it, take it apart, and build it again if I see a problem. It’s not a very efficient way to work, but who cares. I had the whole summer to figure it out before school started in September. And, seeing myself swimming in the pool kept me going. My 10 year-old-son wanted to help. He wanted to learn how to use a hammer. I would assign him a task and set him to work. The problem was that every time he did something, my perfectionism got in his way. Finally, he said to me, “Dad, whatever I do, you take apart.” “Vincent,” I said, “It’s not about you. It’s about me.” Weeks later when Cousin Jimmy asked us for help installing a bay window, Vincent showed me that he overcame my dysfunction. He jumped up on the window sill and showed the world that he knew how to handle a hammer. Like Ozymandias, however, the pool did not stand the test of time. It came down after the divorce. My daughter built a garden in its place. So much for perfectionism.

Joseph Campbell tells of an awareness he had while studying the writings of James Joyce. Campbell said that throughout Finnegan’s Wake Joyce used the number 1132 in one form or fashion. Campbell spent a career trying to discern the importance of 1132. It wasn’t until Campbell read Paul’s letter to the Romans 11:32 that he understood Joyce’s message. For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. God created us to be disobedient so He can forgive us. That’s self-serving, isn’t it? Then God gives us free will and blesses us with a guilty conscience. Isn’t this the recipe for dysfunction? Without the benefit of Romans, I came to a different awareness. God created us as imperfect because otherwise we wouldn’t need Him. Look at what happened to Lucifer. Quite possibly God, like the great artists of the Renaissance, made a deliberate mistake with us because nobody is perfect. Perfection belongs only to God. In 12 Steps I learned that perfectionism is a defect of character. It’s what kept me codependent. I had to find another mind set when my perfectionism gets in the way. It’s only through the grace of Recovery that I can say, “If I am operating at 85 percent efficiency, then I am a perfect oil burner!” The rest is up to God. Thank you, Lord!

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FCM member Rev. Anthony Di Bartolo is a retired high school teacher, interfaith minister, wedding officiant, Reiki Master, and a Fifth Dan Black Belt in Aikido.