Nothing in life is perfect.

Nothing good is all good.

Every positive choice, every wonderful character trait, casts its small shadow.

In July, I was gifted with an extraordinary teaching experience: a week-long journey through the Book of Ruth, with twelve fellow travellers.

During that week, my thirty years of teaching experience reached a peak. And I learned about my shadow.

Thirty years ago, I designed my first adult education course. The “Creativity Workshop” offered three sessions of fun designed for people seeking techniques to open their creative gates. Each session offered a relaxed entree into non-linear expression, followed by an integrative group creation. We wrote a group poem while listening to improvisational music; created a piece of art by playing with materials while turning the work in every possible direction; and danced a group dance, moving from small individual movements to an interactive circle. Lots of process, little content, and much fun.

This July, I used a similar teaching model to explore the book of Ruth. We read, we talked, we sang, we told personal stories, we dramatized, we made collages. The different activities were designed to allow different parts of our selves to speak. Intellectual discussion, spontaneous improvisation, tearful personal sharing, processing images  — each vehicle gave shape, voice, and energy to a different part of consciousness.

On the last day, we made collages. On the walls around us hung newsprints reminding us of our discussions: meanings of the names in the Book of Ruth, questions about the characters’ personal lives, questions about the narrator’s style of telling the story, hints to other Biblical stories, words to the songs we sang.

We all began with the intention of making collages about a theme in the Book of Ruth. But most of us ended up making collages about ourselves – parts of ourselves that had opened up during our multi-modal study.

My own collage began with sympathy for Ruth’s impulsive journey. It continued with a search for interesting magazine and comic book images. And it ended with insight into multiple facets of my own self.

I cut my paper into a spiral. If you pull on the red string, the spiral separates and hangs as a slowly twirling mobile.

In the center, I glued bridal images – the anchor of my day to day life, my presence as wife and mother.

To the right, the words “Mom in motion to endless possibilities.”

To the left, a trap door, where someone has just fallen with a “Foosh!” Around it little dialogue bubbles: “I’m trouble!” “I didn’t do it!” “Help me!”

Yes, to the right, my restless journey towards knowing and doing, a journey that has led me to live in eight different cities over 30 years. And to the left, my terrible shame at leaving loose ends each time I move on.

Two sides of the same person.

Realistically, I know: when I move, I have to let go. If I linger to sew up every loose end, I will never move on. And if I travel and explore life in many places, I will not have many close, lifelong friendships. This has turned out to be true — most of my closest friends are in my family, either my family of origin or my family of choice.

Everything about me, I realize, everything has a shadow side. I cannot make the shadow go away.

Everything in life is mixed. Everything carries unintended, sometimes unknown, consequences.

I feel ashamed of everything that is the fallout from being who I am. Ashamed of the flip sides of my most positive, most animating qualities. As if I am pulling behind me a giant wagon filled with little pieces of paper documenting my sins — as I dreamed one night.

Yet I know: If I tried always to do everything just right, predicting and preventing every negative consequence, I would be rigid and controlling. No one would feel comfortable around my anxious, calculating energy. I would not be more perfect; I would just be a different mixture. My shadow, unexpressed, would still be with me. No one would feel comfortable around the anxious energy I would have to summon up to hide it.

The beautiful Ruth, star of her own book, was not perfect. She clung to her mother-in-law and they traveled together to Bethlehem; who knows what relationships Ruth left unfinished as she left Moab?

My own mother, another beautiful Ruth, was not perfect either. Her creativity and drive often left her unsatisified. Her desire to love and be loved often left her disappointed. Her impulse to perfect the world often left her in despair over the enormity of the task. She often felt she was dragging a huge cart of sin and failure behind her.

So I like to think that she, through her namesake the Biblical Ruth, gave me a last gift of insight: even I, whom you adore, am mixed just as you are. You can learn to hold it all.

Images: (1) Laura Duhan Kaplan in the darkroom at Stuyvesant High School 1976, photo probably by Lewis Brooks. (2) Our Ruth class at Naramata Centre, photo by Kirsten Ferguson. (3, 4, 5,) My collage, photos by me.