Core Circle - Learning from Failure

Opening Words:

We gather to affirm the potential we all share:

for building community, for undertaking constructive change,

for engaging in mature growth,

for achieving greater humanity than we have known.

May our meeting together be a time of reflection on possibilities untried.

May it help us on our perilous ways during the week ahead.

adapted from Harold Babcock

Check-in/Sharing

Topic: 

“Whether or not we soften the sense of “sinners” to what Eugene Kennedy calls “mistake makers”, the fact remains we are not and never can be perfect.  This is not to say we are condemned to making the same mistakes over and over.  If we learn from past mistakes, we shall have the joy and sorrow of making some entirely new ones and learning from them as well.  That is learning.  That is growth.  That is what being alive is all about.” 

- Glenn Turner            

Focus Questions:

Relate a story or time when some effort or endeavor of yours failed.

Can you identify a life lesson from this?  What is it?

How do you define failure?  How would you define success?

How do we make our imperfection a wise teacher?

Many spiritual traditions hold up humility as an ideal.  Just what is humility?  And, what is the difference between healthy and unhealthy humility?

Likes and Wishes

Closing Words:

We receive fragments of holiness, glimpses of eternity, brief

moments of insight.  Let us gather them up for the precious gifts

that they are, and, renewed by their grace, move boldly into the

unknown.

- Sara Campbell