Failure the Greatest Teacher Is

 “Pass on what you have learned, strength, mastery, but weakness, folly, failure also; yes failure most of all, the greatest teacher failure is.“  Jedi Master Yoda
 

     Sometimes it is hard to recognize or appreciate the light when there is no darkness. It is hard to really understand and appreciate success when there is no failure, and as a rule, success rarely if ever comes without it. The student or apprentice who first sets out to learn his craft does not instantly succeed at it. The master of the craft has only become so because he has failed over and over again, but learning from each failure. The same is true with being a disciple of the Way no less than it is with blacksmithing, tailoring, coding, martial arts, or any other discipline one might practice. And the wise master will pass on the lessons from their failures more than the stories of their successes. The lessons of their failures are meant for the student's instruction and success. The stories of their triumphs, if that is all they relate, are meant to tell everyone about how great they are, and it becomes all about them. While I can really on write from my own perspective and experiences, it can't be or even appear as "Look at me! See how great or how wise or how knowledgeable I am at this!"

     This more than anything is why I also write about my struggles and failures, and I am reminded of Yoda's words from "The Last Jedi." It does no good to attempt to teach following the Way and not relate my own struggles between submitting to and cooperating with the Spirit of Christ, and engaging with my own malfunctioning mind. It does no good to hold myself up as an example, if I do, and then try and cover up or hide my own failures. No one benefits from that. The distinction, the contrast between Christ acting and speaking through me, and when it originates from my own malfunctioning EMI has to be seen and taken note of as I myself press on with being a disciple. And it isn't about me, how saintly or how great I am, but it is about Jesus Christ and how His control influences and changes my behavior when I am in submission to Him and cooperating with His Spirit. And my flaws must be on display, honestly and openly, so that Him manifested through Me is not confused with my own ego.

       Paul wrote about his own failures too, and was honest about them. but even his successes, or those things which might have been an advantage to him he threw under the bus "for the superiority of the experiential knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, through whom I lost everything, and consider it crap, so that I would gain the Christ ... to know Him and the power of His resurrection and communion of His passions, being conformed to His death, if I might somehow reach the resurrection from the dead."

     Is it uncomfortable and embarrassing talking about my failures? My anger, my frustration, and all my other faults? Every time I attempted to do the right thing and ended up crashing and burning? Yep. Do I enjoy hanging my dirty laundry out to dry where everyone can see it? Nope. But bringing things into the light is the only way to get past them, to heal from them, and to move on. The "bad spirit," as St. Ignatius of Loyola called it if I remember correctly, is like a rapist or molester that thrives on its victim keeping what it is doing a secret for fear of the shame, pain, or imagined harm if the truth should be revealed. The bad spirit threatens us against bringing what it's doing into the light because it knows it will be arrested, driven away, and beaten if it is. The only way to take away its power over us is to expose it and everything which has transpired to the light. This is one of the reasons why confession used to be done within the Sunday service openly for the whole congregation to hear (and it was only the baptized brothers and sisters that were in the congregation at the time; the unbaptized and uninitiated were not permitted).

     Admitting our failures allows us to learn from them, and it allows others to learn from them too so that they don't fall into the same pitfalls. And Yoda was right, they are just as important to pass on as our triumphs and achievements, because it is in our failures that the bulk of what wisdom we have lies.