Sermons

I think it is precisely because we are finite — because we are flawed, imperfect beings — that the pursuit of perfection has so long captured the human imagination.

Perhaps the most known, concrete example of its achievement came in 1976 in Montreal, achieved by a 14-year-old gymnast from Romania, Nadia Comaneci. That first act of perfection took all of 30 seconds for her to finish her routine on the uneven bars. And when she finished, the scoreboard simply read 1.00, because gymnastics scoreboard makers could not imagine perfection, and so they only made the scoreboard go up to 9.95. Nadia would go on to record six more perfect routines. And she would go on to expand just how much strength, grace and beauty we could imagine coming from one human being.