Lyman Randall has written:

I once viewed perfection as a state of flawlessness and my own pursuit of it as a lifelong progression toward zero defects (to use an old engineering term). Naturally, I always fell short of this impossible goal. More recently, I am beginning to catch glimpses of a kind of paradoxical perfection, one in which my own "flawed uniqueness" is being transformed into a more fully developed, one-of-a-kind human being empowered by a new partnership between "that of God within" and my own self-centered ego. ... Perhaps paradoxes are like toys that God gives us to play with. What we do with them is our choice. If we take them apart to perfect our knowledge of how they work, we could find ourselves in "Humpty-Dumpty-land" where all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put the pieces together again. If however we can play or dance with them, we might become children again.

And the kingdom of heaven might become ours. Lyman Randall Friends Journal September 1999