You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely.
You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain
In the center of the town of Enterprise, Alabama, 160 miles northeast of Mobile, there is a heroic, white-marble statue of a Greek goddess holding aloft a four-foot long bronze bol weevil. It is a monument to failure. It is also Enterprise’s monument of gratitude. As the bol weevil was winning the war for cotton against the farmers, an Enterprise seed broker, H.M. Sessions traveled north seeking answers. He did not find a way of vanquishing the weevil; however he brought peanut seeds from North Carolina and Virginia. He passed them on to a farmer who was ready for change. The rest is a story of economic salvation, and Southern boiled abundance.
Regarding the importance of failure, one ought to read the biographies of Leonardo DaVinci, Benjamin Franklin, Mother Cabrini, and Jeshua bar Joseph. Wait, that’s Jesus, our Savior. Failure?
It began in the upper room, when the inevitability of Jesus’ march to the cross became painfully vivid to the Disciples. Despite Jesus’ teaching, there had to be profound sorrow and sense of failure in the upper room. I feel it every year, and I know the rest of the story; they did not. All they saw was the cross of oppression, suffering, and violence. It is only with benefit of our knowledge of the Resurrection that we have the luxury of seeing “drama” in the Holy Week story. It is not surprising, considering we read the Passion of Christ as a chancel drama on Good Friday.
All: “Crucify Him! (optional).”
My own failures, point the way to a higher Ignorance. It is the Ignorance that calls from the Holy Darkness that is the object of my faith practice. It informs my prayer when I get it right. Only by meditating on my own story and reflecting on past events I saw as failure, calamity, or bad luck; that I am able to appreciate the role of an omniscient and omni-present and loving God in my life. Only then can I redirect my prayer toward gratitude for a God that is present even in my failures and calamities. If I pray into a future I want, I have benefit only of the view through a cardboard tube of my own making. It is like a song of my holy wishes played on a kazoo – charming, but the only sound comes from me.
On the 14th of November, Hitler’s Luftwaffe carpet bombed the English industrial city of Coventry, including the Coventry Cathedral. It was a vividly horrific affront to Britain’s self-view as a Christian Nation. Ten years later, a young engineer from New Orleans went to Coventry to assist in the rebuilding of the cathedral. He had been the first love of a young Marjorie Leverich (Moran). The love affair failed. In 1982, Marjorie received package from her first love. An enclosed letter thanked Marjorie for being so understanding, gentle, and discreet, all those years ago; as she figured out he was gay. In the box was a cross made of nine pieces of charred brick from the ruins of Coventry Cathedral. A cross of gratitude -- The cross of infinite love and salvation, made of the rubble of unspeakable horror, not gold and jewels.
Musical Reflection - Ode to Joy - Beethoven
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