Failure and a Paradigm of Growth
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
August 24, 2025
Hebrews 12:1 (The Voice)
So, since we stand surrounded by all those who have gone before, an enormous cloud of witnesses, let us drop every extra weight, every sin that clings to us and slackens our pace, and let us run with endurance the long race set before us.
Growing up, I was taught at a very early age, that our sin could be defined as “missing the mark” (Anyone hear that definition before?) which signifies failing to meet God’s standards of holiness and righteousness.
I remember many illustrations of arrows not hitting their targets being presented to me during this era of my life. This also implied that if I missed the mark, I failed. And if I found myself missing a lot, then I was categorized as a failure in God’s eyes and in my neighbors.
That is a lot to take in and wrestle with when you are young, insecure, and finding yourself categorizing much of what you are doing, thinking, feeling as sin at this age.
About the same time as this theology was being engrained into my young mind, I was introduced to a very different “theologian” – this one did not talk much about God or dogma, but rather with paint brush in his hand he said, “We don’t make mistakes; we just have happy accidents.” Yes, you know I am talking about Bob Ross. My grandfather learned many of his artistic methods from Bob Ross, but also many of his personal “theologies,” like “happy little accidents” and he passed those on to me.
This all reminds me of a time when I was asked by Sam’s 2nd grade teacher to come in on my day off to “live-paint” for his class. They were studying Georgia O’Keefe and she asked if I would paint a large flower. I was put in a room down the hallway from their class, and I spent the entire day painting this one giant painting. Every hour the children would be allowed to come and see my progress and ask me any questions they had. In the room where I was painting, I had set up my easel and I had an enlarged photo of the iris I was painting. The kids would come and look at the original and then look at my interpretation of it.
At one point in the afternoon, I noticed a boy in the class who had not said much but was staring intently back and forth from painting to the photo and back. He finally raised his hand and exclaimed, “I see a problem.” I asked him to come up and show me. He said, “You failed to make it look exactly like the photo” then pointed out a place where I had changed the painting slightly. I removed a petal of the iris to give the painting a bit more depth and balance. He did not like this and said I had failed to make it look the same.
I then had an interesting conversation with this set of very observant and creative 2nd graders. I asked them if I really did fail? Some said I did, others said, no that is how you see it, and others, that is your interpretation of the flower. They found other differences in the background and on the petals, and even in the colors as we discussed.
What I reverted back to teaching in that moment was what I had learned from Bob Ross. He addressed failure by reframing it as an opportunity for growth and learning. I then quoted them his most famous saying, “We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents…As long as you’re learning, you’re not failing.” Bob Ross encouraged his viewers to embrace these “accidents,” learn from them, and work with whatever happens on the canvas, transforming the fear of failure into a fun and positive experience.
Not long after this experience, I began to ponder how much we are taught about failure in life and the church, and how creativity seems to recategorize it and make it less about failure and more about opportunity. There is a website I have really been draw to recently called, “Hevria.”
The title of the page, Hevria, comes from combining two Hebrew words – hevre (group of friends) and bria (creation). Thus, it is a home, a community, a space for creative Jewish people of the world. I thought how it really should be Quaker, as it literally means a group of “Creative Friends.” But we will give this one to our Jewish Friends (for now).
As I was perusing this sight one day, I came across a very interesting post titled, “There is No Failure in Spiritual Creativity.” That, in itself, caught my attention, but some of what this article proposed really spoke to what I am trying to convey this morning. The article begins with this opening,
The blank screen. Staring at me right now.
Every letter I type, though, darkens it. Focuses it. Turns pure potential into startling limitation, but also into life.
That’s the scary part for so much of us. Why destroy the white paper, the blank screen, the untouched canvas? They’re so perfect, so beautiful in its blank potential. The black we throw on them could just as easily destroy them as bring them to life.
In fact, it’s in life that all the danger exists. God created the world multiple times, each time deciding to scrub it out and start over. Only in this iteration deciding to stick with us, stick with it to the end.
If God can’t create without messing up, how can we hope to?
That query stopped me in my tracks.
If God can’t create without messing up, how can we hope to?
What? Did the Divine Creator mess up?
Did they have happy little accidents?
Did they fail?
As I started to look at this more in depth, I began looking at the book of Genesis. Adam was not even in the garden 24 hours before he failed, made a mistake, sinned – whatever you want to call it. God resets creation and starts again outside the garden. Then comes Cain killing Abel. and God again must reset things. And then there comes the time of Noah, and once again God is resetting their creation.
Let’s return to that query – If God can’t create without messing up, how can we hope to?
Early Jews, Kabbalists, and Chassidim, all had a different way of viewing this. They don’t see anything as a mistake when seen from God’s perspective.
Everything that happens is part of a paradigm of growth or evolution, not of two-dimensions, failure-and-success or rising and falling.
In the article, Elad Nehorai says,
Some might say, the ones who point at us foolish believers, that it would be only a deranged God who would create a world that had to be scrubbed clean a few times. That the world is a sick place, that it was never worth creating, that anywhere that the Holocaust can happen, where there are starving people, rape, genocide, plagues, and so much more, God could not exist. God wouldn’t fail.
But interestingly he goes on…
We hear the same argument for why we shouldn’t create. Often from the religious people themselves. Often from ourselves. Saying, “You put words on paper, you write on that screen, you paint on that canvas, and you’ll inevitably fail in some way. Why create when you could let the perfect potential exist? You’ll only hurt people.”
The angry people who point at the believers, the believers who point at the creators, they’re all speaking truth, but from the wrong paradigm. They see every horrible thing, and every negative reality, through the paradigm of failure and success.
Stop for a moment here. I sat with these thoughts for quite some time and continue to ponder them in light of what we have been talking about the last several weeks:
What paradigm are you and I looking through?
What paradigm is our country, our state, our media, our neighbors and communities, our schools, even our Meeting looking through?
Are we looking at every horrible, negative thing and simply embracing a paradigm of failure and success?
When we embrace this paradigm we neglect our creative spirits- and that means we no longer connect or see from the Divine’s perspective. Look at it this way, when we look from above, we do not see failure in such a “black and white” way. Instead, we see growth, evolution, even wrestling and struggling to develop into something better.
Yet from below, as people who are grounded on this earth, it can easily look horrible, negative, and full of failure – and that is often what we hear from each other.
The reality is that when we tap into our creativity we are tapping into a place beyond space and time and beyond the questions of failure. I think Bob Ross was tapping into this place a lot, and that is why we have embraced his legacy long after his death.
Yet, Bob Ross is just one creative among many who learned to tap into this paradigm of growth, hope, and possibility.
We could also add Fred Rogers, Anne Frank, Jim Henson, Julia Child, Steve Irwin, Bill Nye, Levar Burton, Maya Angelou...and the list could go on.
Their legacies and creative spirits continue on to this very day because, I believe, they tapped into a paradigm of growth, of positivity, of hope. And even though each of them have written or shared their struggles with failure (go read their stories) they found a way to rise above it and find a more “Divine perspective.” This then gave space for creative change, opportunity to arise and address constructively the horrible aspects of life, to create a positive outlook, and garner hope for generations to come. We continue to return to their wisdom because it seems different than what the world offers, today. Now, there is a fundamental Quaker principle.
I wonder what it would be like for us at First Friends to seek a more “Divine Perspective” and to embrace a paradigm of growth in this current time?
Michael Cohen (not that Michael Cohen) the Director of Innovation at Yeshiva University of Los Angeles Boys School who speaks often on creativity and failure gave this disclaimer to his students,
“You will fail. I failed…[but] when failure is part of the journey and not a destination, it can be used to give strength, to an even more incredible outcome than was previously possible.”
Isn’t that what we as Quakers are hoping to find in this world – a more incredible outcome than was previously possible?
When I was a kid one of my favorite Bible verses was our scripture for today...but I think it might need a different metaphor than running…maybe it could read this way…this is the Bob Henry Translation.
So, since we stand surrounded by all those who have gone before, an enormous cloud of witnesses, let us drop every extra weight, every “happy little accident” that clings to us and slackens our creativity, and let us see with a paradigm of growth the blank canvas that is set before us ready to accept our creative brush strokes.
Amen!
Now, as we enter a time of waiting worship, I want to have us return to some of those queries I have presented in this message.
· What paradigm am I looking through?
· What paradigm is my country, state, media, neighbors and communities, schools, even our Meeting looking through?
· Am I looking at every horrible, negative thing and simply embracing a paradigm of failure and success?
· How might I embrace a paradigm of growth?