The Art of Failure

Is there an art to failure?

I remember reading something Anne Lamont wrote in her book Traveling Mercies. One day she found herself broke, drunk, addicted to drugs, suffering from bulimia, and totally depressed. She had hit a bottom. Desperate, she set an appointment with an Episcopal priest. She told him, “I’m so messed up that I don’t think God can love me.” The priest replied, “God has to love you. That’s God’s job.”

It’s true, isn’t it? As my friend Herb Meza used to say: There is more grace in God than there is sin in us.

A couple of weeks ago, I shared a message on the topic of forgiveness. On the way out of worship someone said to me, “You know, Joe, the hardest person to forgive is often yourself.”  

That’s true too. 

If the first step in the art of failure is to simply acknowledge the failure, then the second step is accepting forgiveness and grace. Yes turn things around, yes make amends where we can, but then move on.

But there is more.

The Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue says, that to be born at all is to be chosen. In an Easter sermon, he claimed, “None of us is accidentally in the world. We are sent here because there is something special for each of us to do here that could not be done by someone else. One of the wisdoms of living a full life is to try and sense what it is you were sent here for and to try and let the hindrances that block you from that, fall away…”

Sometimes we might think that the failures of our lives are in the way – when actually – it may very well be the failures themselves give us exactly the tools, the experience, the compassion, the learning, the strength we need to do what we are put here to do.

If life is an art and failure an aspect of it, perhaps there is something to learn from the failures in my own life. Perhaps, there is a way to incorporate them into my life story – without letting them define me. Perhaps, there is a way to come out on the other side of it stronger, deeper, more courageous, more generous. Perhaps, just perhaps there is a way to use that past experience to help others.

Let us pray: Loving God, help us to accept that we are accepted and loved. Help us forgive as we have been forgiven – even ourselves. May we be centered and grounded enough to use our past experience to help others in your name. Amen.