{"id":170,"date":"2011-10-12T23:42:30","date_gmt":"2011-10-12T23:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/?p=170"},"modified":"2018-07-20T21:05:06","modified_gmt":"2018-07-20T21:05:06","slug":"the-gift-of-failing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2011\/10\/the-gift-of-failing.html","title":{"rendered":"The Gift of Failing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Garrison Keillor read this poem by\u00a0Wendell Berry<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0yesterday’s “The Writer’s Almanac”:<\/p>\n

IX.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I go by a field where once
\nI cultivated a few poor crops.
\nIt is now covered with young trees,
\nfor the forest that belongs here
\nhas come back and reclaimed its own.
\nAnd I think of all the effort
\nI have wasted and all the time,
\nand of how much joy I took
\nin that failed work and how much
\nit taught me. For in so failing
\nI learned something of my place,
\nsomething of myself, and now
\nI welcome back the trees.<\/p>\n

There is something profoundly reassuring in the truth that when we fail, the trees still come back.\u00a0 With the healing passage of time God’s vegetation gradually\u00a0fills in all of\u00a0those places in our lives\u00a0where we have sown where we cannot reap.\u00a0 A law of nature, maybe- or of grace?<\/p>\n

(As an aside, if only this law also applied to the piles of\u00a0laundry\u00a0sitting on my\u00a0couch for the last two days waiting to be folded! If a forest can grow without my help, why can’t\u00a0laundry\u00a0find its way into drawers, too?)<\/p>\n

I am re-reading\u00a0Jesus’ parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30)- this time in a new light, thanks to Berry.\u00a0 Do you remember the story?\u00a0 A master entrusts\u00a0each of\u00a0his servants\u00a0with a certain number of “talents” (a money denomination in the ancient world).\u00a0 The first leaves with five and comes back with five more.\u00a0 The second leaves with two and comes back with two more.\u00a0 The last servant hides his one talent in the ground.\u00a0 When the master comes back, he has nothing but praise to shower upon the first two servants, but the third servant meets a sorry fate:\u00a0 “take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents,” his master demands.\u00a0 “And throw that worthless servant outside into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (vv.28-30).<\/p>\n

I used to assume that\u00a0the first two servants\u00a0were\u00a0just shrewd portfolio managers: that they by sheer effort, wise decision-making and innate giftedness earn the master’s admiration.\u00a0 But the text actually makes\u00a0no suggestion of the sort.\u00a0 There is no indication that the doubling of the two servants’\u00a0talents has anything to do with how they go about choosing to invest.\u00a0 All we really know from the text is\u00a0that they do invest- how, with whom, or where remains unknown. For all we know, they could have been cultivating “a few poor crops” on a field that ended up overrun\u00a0by trees.<\/p>\n

And then we come to the third servant.\u00a0 His failure is not that he invested his money and came back empty-handed, or that he planted a crop only to have it fail.\u00a0 His failure is that he never tried in\u00a0the first place.<\/p>\n

The question, then, is why?\u00a0 Why did he not try?\u00a0 Why did he not\u00a0stake out his own little plot of land and begin planting, or at the very least put his one talent in the bank to accrue interest?<\/p>\n

One compelling explanation\u00a0is that he misread the\u00a0character of the Master\u00a0(v. 24), so that it was the servant’s own distorted picture of God as a hard-driving, unfair manager\u00a0that made him\u00a0afraid to try\u00a0and ultimately cost him everything.\u00a0 When he comes to the Master, the servant says,\u00a0 “I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed.\u00a0 So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground.\u00a0 See, here is what belongs to you (vv.24,25).”<\/p>\n

But there is another way to answer this question.\u00a0 Maybe the servant had discovered a bit of who God\u00a0really was and decided that he did not want to have any part in Him.\u00a0 Maybe he had decided it would be too “hard” to take what this God was giving at face value.\u00a0 Maybe his words to the Master were not a misreading at all but, rather, the\u00a0truth that when unveiled unlocks the whole point of this parable.<\/p>\n

Because there\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0something “hard” about the grace of God:\u00a0it really is not about\u00a0how\u00a0well we do based on any of our own merit.\u00a0 We could even go out tomorrow\u00a0and plant “a few poor crops” that fail.\u00a0 God’s trees will still come back.\u00a0\u00a0God really does harvest where\u00a0God has not sown.\u00a0 All we need to do is give\u00a0our best college try with what we have been given.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Garrison Keillor read this poem by\u00a0Wendell Berry\u00a0on\u00a0yesterday’s “The Writer’s Almanac”: IX. I go by a field where once I cultivated a few poor crops. It is now covered with young trees, for the forest that belongs here has come back and reclaimed its own. And I think of all the effort I have wasted and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":461,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,69,68,32],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-god","category-good-news","category-grace","category-sanctification","tag-failure","tag-matthew-2514-30","tag-parable-of-shrewd-manager"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Gift of Failing - Fellowship of Saints and Sinners<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Gift of Failing - Fellowship of Saints and Sinners\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Garrison Keillor read this poem by\u00a0Wendell Berry\u00a0on\u00a0yesterday’s “The Writer’s Almanac”: IX. 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