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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 2, 2012
In our culture we have to make straight As, be partnered up with an attractive person, raise children who are accomplished and useful, have a good job, and stay healthy and strong. What use is failure?
Reading: Last night as I was sleeping
by Antonio Machado
Last night while I was sleeping,
I dreamt – blessed illusion! –
that a fountain flowed
within my heart.
I said, “By what hidden canal,
water, are you coming to me,
wellspring of new life
where I have not ever drunk?”
Last night while I was sleeping
I dreamt – blessed illusion! –
that I had a beehive
within my heart
and the golden bees
were going about inside it
concocting white wax and sweet honey
out of old failures.
Last night while I was sleeping
I dreamt – blessed illusion!
that a burning sun shone
inside my heart.
It was burning because it
flashed embers of a red hearth,
and it was sun because it gave light
and because it made one cry.
Sermon: Sweet Honey From Old Failures
I remember, in SC, writing a chalice circle lesson on the topic of “Failure.” One of the groups, who normally were game to try whatever topics I came up with, called me on the phone to ask if I had anything else besides that they could do, that it just seemed too depressing. They were welcome to come up with whatever else they wanted to do, I said, but that was all I had this month. They ended up using the lesson, and said it turned out pretty well. We don’t like looking at it, but when we do, it’s not usually as awful as we think. I know people who have hit rock bottom have a special way of looking at life. One of my friends won’t date anyone who hasn’t got his “bottom certificate.” Marianne Williamson is often quoted as saying “Nervous breakdowns can be highly underrated methods of spiritual transformation.”
Once you have lost everything, you can face the next thing with more courage. You have hit bottom and survived. It’s demythologized for you, no longer mysterious and full of dread. A person who has lost everything has good odds of being kinder, more compassionate afterwards. Failure can make you more supple in your approach to life, less rigid. Thinking back to survey my failures, I couldn’t find any that fit into the word, exactly. I learned how to think about failure by reading Thomas Edison : he said “I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” Also:
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. It was not always that way. I used to send my writing out to publishers, and I would get a letter back that said this: ” Dear Ms. Barnhouse, We have read your pitiful attempt at a story and we have to say that, really, it would be better if you never again attempted to write. You are also ugly. It also would probably be better if you had never been born.” It really hurt. Then I would read it again and what it really said was Ôthank you for sending this. It doesn’t fit what we are trying to do at this time.”
I found some ways that don’t work for me. I failed to stay with the Presbyterian Church. Even in seminary I lost my faith regularly. “Explain it to me again,” I would ask my roommate, or my fiance. Tell me how someone else dying for me could erase my sins, and what are my sins, anyway? I’ve been doing my best my whole life, really trying to be a good person. I don’t identify with the whole “you need to be saved because you’re a miserable sinner. Yes you are. Yes. You. Are. Now, there’s good news! You’re saved by this man being killed by God so God could forgive you.” No. It didn’t make sense. It took me fifteen more years to leave. I don’t see that as a failure, though. It wasn’t a good fit for me. They loved me in spite of who I was, which is not fun.
I failed at my marriage, kind of. I mean, It lasted seventeen years, and a lot of those years were good and happy. Then I found out he had voted for Bob Dole, and that was it. I don’t want to make light of that, but I also don’t believe in preachers over-exposing themselves. The marriage doesn’t feel like a failure. We have two great sons, and that feels like success. It’s complicated, isn’t it?
I’m not sure that all of the things we label failures really are failures. Many “failures” happen when you go against what your inner voice tells you to do, or when you try to make yourself into something the others want from you, rather than what you need to do and be to live authentically. Maybe it happens when you don’t measure up to what the Perfection would be, in your place, but perfection doesn’t really exist.
Another possible translation is “old bitterness.”
the golden bees
were going about inside it
concocting white wax and sweet honey
out of old bitterness.
“Failure” is such a dualistic word. You succeeded or you failed. Life is more organic in shape than that, more complex. There is overlap between bitterness and failure, certainly. When you fail, there is bitterness at the situation, at the others involved, about your inadequacies, your lack of perfect knowledge. Failure sounds like something happened. Bitterness sounds like something you choose.
When you have a picture of how things are supposed to be, and they don’t turn out that way, there can be bitterness. In the 12 step program they call expectations “premeditated resentments.”
When you fail, there is bitterness about the circumstances, the other people involved, yourself, the things no one told you. How can the bees visit those things, draw out the essence, chew on it, distill it, carefully fan it dry and turn it into sweetness?
How can you make honey from those? I re-read “when smart people fail,” and they talked about telling the story differently, redefining failure, learning from mistakes, etc., but none of that felt like what this text was taking me. The man is sleeping. The water breaks through, water from a new life that he has never drunk before. The bees are busy, busy making white wax and sweet honey from old bitterness, old failure. He dreams that there is a sun inside warming like a hearth fire. I realized, late in the week, that these were not to be made into instructions about how I, a strong smart UU can make honey out of my own failures! The poet is sleeping. These things are happening beside his will and control.
Last night while I was sleeping,
I dreamt – blessed illusion! –
that a fountain flowed
within my heart.
I said, “By what hidden canal,
water, are you coming to me,
wellspring of new life
where I have not ever drunk?”
Last night while I was sleeping
I dreamt – blessed illusion! –
that I had a beehive
within my heart
and the golden bees
were going about inside it
concocting white wax and sweet honey
out of old failures.
Last night while I was sleeping
I dreamt – blessed illusion!
that a burning sun shone
inside my heart.
It was burning because it
flashed embers of a red hearth,
and it was sun because it gave light
and because it made one cry.
Last night while I was sleeping
I dreamt – blessed illusion!
that what I had within my heart
was God.
All of those, the spring that breaks through, the bees making honey, the sun, those are pictures of the Mystery. I try so hard to control everything, to use my will. It occurred to me that the poet is talking about things that happen in that part of yourself which has a life that is not always rational, that breaks now and then into your conscious experience. Many of you have experienced a shift in your mind or heart that feels like something new breaking in, bringing you water you haven’t drunk before. Many of you have felt warmed by a sight, some music, a relationship, a connection that flashed embers of home, that made you feel this, yes this, is the center of the universe. When you feel stale or exhausted, when you feel stuck in bitterness or ashamed of your current life, ask for the water of new life to break through, listen to the bees, busy making honey, turn your face to the sun. It is all within your heart, and it is on your side.
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