39.40 Better Imperfect

The 77% Weekly

The 40/52-weeks-a-year, quick-reading, thought-lingering, spiritual-religious newsletter.

Religion-Outside-The-Box (oldrotb.wpengine.com) is a donation supported not-for-profit empowering adults to find and be with (the) God (of their understanding).

39/40
From the desk of Rabbi Brian

Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing perfectly.

–Robert Schuller

Read the above quote by Robert Schuller. (Read it twice if you want.)
Remember it.
Now scroll down.
Scroll down a few more lines.
A few more.
Now…
Surprise quiz!
Now
that you can’t see Robert Schuller’s quote, what was it that he said?
(Don’t look!) Take a guess if you don’t remember it exactly… that’s
the point, right?
(If you scrolled up to check, you’ve probably got a problem with perfection.)
We’re often afraid that we aren’t going to get things exactly right and so we just don’t try. We can be guaranteed to fail if we don’t try.

We tend to be so perfection focused that we won’t try something unless we know we are going to do well. What a shame!
Spiritual-religious exercise for the week: try and fail!

With love,

Rabbi Brian

The 77% Weekly

The 77% Weekly: The Religion-Outside-The-Box Newsletter helps people find and be with (the) God (of their understanding) 40 out of 52 weeks a year.

Why 77%?
Two reasons:

1) 40/52 = 0.76923. The newsletter is sent every Monday except the last of each month.
2) In school 77% was a passing grade and ROTB is delighted to remind you that life isn’t graded.

Religion-Outside-The-Box is a donation-supported,
non-denominational, internet-based, 501c3-tax exempt religious congregation.

Flash Bang

February 6, 2026

✧✧✧ My buddy Marc meets me near my house at 3:30 on Saturday afternoon so we can bike to the small park named for Elizabeth Caruthers. I looked her up as I started to write this article. Elizabeth Caruthers was an early pioneer woman whose Supreme Court case led to the 1850 Donation Act—ruling that a woman, married or not,

Hiawatha Johnson, JR.

January 31, 2026

January 2026 — Portland, ORE Hiawatha Johnson, Jr., a mentor and friend died. Summer 1985 — Magic Camp Oakdale, Long Island I’m 15. He’s 30. He wears a dashiki. He uses a walking stick. I’m prepubescent. I listen to comedy cassettes on a Walkman. I’m in awe. ✧✧✧ I perform a rather banal magic act that year — me narrating

The Delay

January 14, 2026

2026 issue #03 — The Delay I’m in my buddy David’s car. He’s driving me from my mom’s apartment in NYC to Newark, NJ, where I’m going to catch a plane back home to Portland. David and I have been friends for fifty years. Amazing. My phone dings. I look at it. Nothing important. Just an alert from United. *

39.40 Better Imperfect