Failure is good thing, religion should help us embrace it

Those lucky to catch the presentation of Google X’s Director of “Moon Shots,” Astro Teller at this year’s South by Southwest were no doubt surprised the Titan of innovation wanted to talk about failure. Business magnate Elon Musk has a similar message. Failure is king this year. This is from folks who are definitely not losers — so there appears to be a relationship between failure and winning.

Perhaps the relationship is that fear of failure stifles risk, and thus innovation. Both Teller and Musk insist that failure is not a necessary evil, but rather an essential part of progress because success is usually at the end of a wavering series of steps — not a straight-lined result of planning, prediction and execution.

Ah, the crooked road we walk! Does that remind you of anything in your spiritual life? Though The Ten Commandments are pretty clear, I have to admit, I mess up occasionally. Most faith traditions are great at declaring the roadmap, but somehow we lose the more subtle message of “what do we do when we fail?”

Contrition and Penance are two popular responses, particularly in the Catholic tradition from which I come, but somehow they do not seem to be proper stand-alone responses for failure. The guilt from recognizing that I am a sinner is useless if I am unable to restore and grow my spiritual self as the result of my failure.

I met a woman years ago who was obviously depressed and wanted to talk about the failure of a significant relationship. She regretted many things she did that she felt contributed to the break up. In short, she blamed herself and had not found a path of self-forgiveness.

I truly felt sorry for this person and that she was suffering. Then I asked how long it has been since the break-up. Her answer: Thirty years! This is sad, but it’s also an excellent example of failure to use failure to move beyond failure. It does the soul no good to use the excuse of past failures to deny ourselves a future of hope.

A state of Grace exists in the conscious effort to move beyond one’s sin, failure and despair. Yet this woman persisted in her despair, unable, perhaps unwilling to move beyond it. She was the very definition of a pessimist.

In the words of poet James Richardson: “Pessimists live in fear of their hope, optimists in fear of their fear.” We live in a world of deep pessimism, even as we are surrounded by Grace and beauty. We fear our hope. Any sort of stumble, be it political, social or personal is placed like a severed head on a stick and paraded through the town square as if to say, “See, this is what happens when you mess up, so don’t bother trying again.”

But optimism marks both Teller’s and Musk’s approach. Their approach moves beyond typical optimism in that it also attempts to remove the fear of fear. This refinement is the rocket fuel for any moonshot. The ability to learn from mistakes, to feel that superiors will tolerate missteps and that ultimately challenges will be overcome is the powerful formula for success.

Ancient alchemists used to say “what is above, is also below.” To this point, matters of science and the soul match. Sin and redemption are mirrored by the continuum of experimentation, failure, adjustment and success.

Teller and Musk say go ahead, try, mess up. Pick yourself back up again and do better the next time. There is Grace in failure, but only if we choose to be an active part of that Grace by redeeming our efforts, our vision and our spirit and trying again.

This process is a building block of the universe from subatomic structures to the largest systems in the cosmos, of all that is seen and unseen. Who are we to deny that?

I hereby declare 2015 the Year of Failure. Can I get a big ole Hallelujah?