From your  Pastor and Teacher ~

Ordinarily, I use this space to offer you, the community of Redlands UCC, an inspiring quote from scripture or other religious literature, followed by some of my own reflections on the topic, all with an eye toward helping you along on the journey of faith.  Often, the topic is chosen from Spirit’s nudges regarding our direction or need or event or dream that is current within our community of faith. 

            This month, I defer to popular culture for both topic and quote…  Some of you, like me, are counting down the days until the final installment of the Harry Potter movie series makes its appearance at the local theaters.  As of this writing, the countdown stands at 23 days J  In the spirit of Potter-resiliency, and with an eye toward the continuing challenges of many within our congregation brought on by the slow economic recovery, I share the following words of inspiration from J.K. Rowling.  They arrived in my inbox, via Church of the Savior, our mentors in the covenanting process, from Washington, D.C.  After you read…go buy a movie ticket…and dream BIG!

The Fringe Benefits of Failure
J. K. Rowling

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.

I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.