The Love of Failure

Julian of Norwich: Revelation of Divine Love

“All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Be careful what you pray for.  Trust me.  Prayer works. 

You see, after reading Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love (about nineteen years ago) in which the mystical English anchoress appeals to God for things like bodily sickness until death while still young, I felt stupidly inspired to make my own sincerely foolish prayers about ego deaths, artistic failures, and a woundedness that wouldn’t heal.  Silly silly me.  Of course, such prayers get answered.  But I don’t want to just blame Julian of Norwich, or God for that matter.  I also want to blame my wife, William Blake, and Vincent Van Gogh, a few of my favourite artists, who also can’t help seeing beyond the riches of social status, wealth, and fame.  It’s not that they’re against them.  They just don’t believe in them as much as I do (which is far less than I did).

But apparently, fortunately or unfortunately, you only need a mustard seed’s worth of faith to move a mountainous ego.  A tiny little prayer can cause momentous damage.  Be warned. 

Don’t get me wrong, I have been trying to reverse the spell in various seasons since the fatal prayer.  But that’s the problem with seeds.  They take root.  They work from within.  They’re too small to kill with grand designs and industrial minds.  They break things down.  They grow in the dark.  They work the underground while we unconsciously sleepwalk through life.  Thank God.

It’s wonderful.  It’s beautiful.  The freedom, peace, and serenity, that can follow each vulnerable act of creative failure.  You see, for me, however they are received, these creative acts always feel like a bit of a failure.  Because the once perfect vision from which I began each song, book, poem, or picture, with all the projections they carry, always fade when I dare to finish them, and share them.  Each act is a death of perfection and possibility.  A defeat of the ego. 

But when I do courageously let go, move on, and begin again, I open myself up to Divine Love; which is stronger than death, full of grace, comically compassionate, rich in humour, full of promise, and infinitely imaginative.

So, perhaps I am not ready to give up on success, just yet.  Because if I did, I would surely succeed, guaranteed!  And what sort of failure would that be!  Where would the opportunity be for all the Divine Love that follows each failing, flop, and fall!

All shall be well (as long as we keep sharing, shining, and showing up, in all the glorious mess of bodily sickness until death.)