Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48)
This notion of perfection is one that we as United Methodists certainly spend a great deal of time studying. This summer in my United Methodist Doctrine class, we spent a couple of days reading about and discussing what perfection means in the Wesleyan tradition. I have to admit that I am far from perfect. I am sure that Karen would be more than happy to echo that thought. But, I don’t believe that there is any place that my lack of perfection is as obvious as in my punctuation, spelling and grammar challenges.
I remember in 9th grade being confronted by my English teacher. “If you don’t improve your English skills young man, how do you ever expect to get ahead in this world?” I still remember those words as clearly today as when they were said to me thirty some years ago. The reason that I remember them so well is not because of her question, because to be quite honest, I knew that English wasn’t my best subject, but because of my uncharacteristic answer. Perhaps I was having a rough day, perhaps she caught me at a bad time, I suppose that it was possible that I really didn’t like this teacher very much (I really didn’t) or perhaps I was just being a smart-alecky teenager, but I looked her square in the eyes and said, “I will just hire someone to do it for me.” Trust me when I tell you, that was a big mistake.
Through the years I have reflected on that answer many times, and I am not sure that I ever really reached the place in life where I had people to correct my English for me, although, when I first started seminary I did have a wonderful person, Brenda, who single handedly got me through my first year, helping to edit and correct my papers until I had the confidence to do it on my own.
There was one gift from God that my 9th grade English teacher wasn’t able to foresee and that was spell checker and grammar checker on the computer. This one thing alone has enabled me to be successful in seminary, had it not been for Bill Gates, I would have been in real trouble.
I really would like to improve my spelling, grammar and punctuation. I still struggle with spelling a great deal. Unfortunately, I misspell “Unfortunately” every time I use it. I always struggle knowing when to use lie or lay or laid, I have a difficult time knowing when to use effect or affect and one of these years I am going to figure out what the line means in one of Karen’s favorite movies, “Two Weeks Notice,” when Sandra Bullock says, “Aside from the split infinitive that was somewhere in the middle, that speech was actually quite perfect, wasn't it?” Actually, not that I know what a split infinitive is, but as I was looking up this exact quote I found out that Hugh Grant didn’t actually use a split infinitive in his speech. No wonder I get so confused about these things.
Anyway, I bring this up today to let you know that yes, I am aware that I have a few, maybe a lot of mistakes in my blog, and considering that often times I write them either very late at night or early in the morning, I am surprised that I don’t have more of them, and yes I do proofread my seminary papers significantly more than I do my blogs.
So for anyone that I have offended by my grammatical and spelling challenges I want to apologize to you from the bottom of my heart… I’ll try to do good from now on so my writing doesn’t have a bad affect on you.
Blessings
This notion of perfection is one that we as United Methodists certainly spend a great deal of time studying. This summer in my United Methodist Doctrine class, we spent a couple of days reading about and discussing what perfection means in the Wesleyan tradition. I have to admit that I am far from perfect. I am sure that Karen would be more than happy to echo that thought. But, I don’t believe that there is any place that my lack of perfection is as obvious as in my punctuation, spelling and grammar challenges.
I remember in 9th grade being confronted by my English teacher. “If you don’t improve your English skills young man, how do you ever expect to get ahead in this world?” I still remember those words as clearly today as when they were said to me thirty some years ago. The reason that I remember them so well is not because of her question, because to be quite honest, I knew that English wasn’t my best subject, but because of my uncharacteristic answer. Perhaps I was having a rough day, perhaps she caught me at a bad time, I suppose that it was possible that I really didn’t like this teacher very much (I really didn’t) or perhaps I was just being a smart-alecky teenager, but I looked her square in the eyes and said, “I will just hire someone to do it for me.” Trust me when I tell you, that was a big mistake.
Through the years I have reflected on that answer many times, and I am not sure that I ever really reached the place in life where I had people to correct my English for me, although, when I first started seminary I did have a wonderful person, Brenda, who single handedly got me through my first year, helping to edit and correct my papers until I had the confidence to do it on my own.
There was one gift from God that my 9th grade English teacher wasn’t able to foresee and that was spell checker and grammar checker on the computer. This one thing alone has enabled me to be successful in seminary, had it not been for Bill Gates, I would have been in real trouble.
I really would like to improve my spelling, grammar and punctuation. I still struggle with spelling a great deal. Unfortunately, I misspell “Unfortunately” every time I use it. I always struggle knowing when to use lie or lay or laid, I have a difficult time knowing when to use effect or affect and one of these years I am going to figure out what the line means in one of Karen’s favorite movies, “Two Weeks Notice,” when Sandra Bullock says, “Aside from the split infinitive that was somewhere in the middle, that speech was actually quite perfect, wasn't it?” Actually, not that I know what a split infinitive is, but as I was looking up this exact quote I found out that Hugh Grant didn’t actually use a split infinitive in his speech. No wonder I get so confused about these things.
Anyway, I bring this up today to let you know that yes, I am aware that I have a few, maybe a lot of mistakes in my blog, and considering that often times I write them either very late at night or early in the morning, I am surprised that I don’t have more of them, and yes I do proofread my seminary papers significantly more than I do my blogs.
So for anyone that I have offended by my grammatical and spelling challenges I want to apologize to you from the bottom of my heart… I’ll try to do good from now on so my writing doesn’t have a bad affect on you.
Blessings
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