A wall of pink granite faces me. I’m on the South Bubble Trail in Acadia National Park in Maine. It didn’t look so hard on the map. The ascent was steep and rocky, but nestled in a comforting forest of spruce and birch. But now, toward the more-exposed top, a narrow ridge of rock at eye-level coaxes me to grab on with my left hand while finding a foothold for my right foot. Fog has encased the view behind me, which in many ways is good, because I can’t perceive how high up I am.
A man above me suggests a spot for me to place my right foot. He also offers to hold my trekking poles for me. He can tell I’m struggling. He and his spouse and children are about to scramble down the same route I’m attempting to scale. I tell myself that if his kids can do it, I can do it, even if I question their wisdom as parents of letting their elementary-aged children climb this trail.
My sense of competitiveness helps get me to the top. Thankfully, the trail continues down the back side and the descent isn’t a challenge. I did it. I got past my fears of falling, of twisting an ankle, of embarrassing myself, of failure. One more challenging trail under my belt. One more notch in my trekking pole holster.
I hate failure. I have always been strongly motivated to accomplish anything I take on and I have had an unusually high success rate. In my family of origin, I often took on the role of being the successful pioneer: first to complete college, first to go to graduate school, first in my class to land a job.
I graduated from college a semester early. I was one of the youngest (if not youngest) practicing Landscape Architects in the state of Florida. Because of graduating in December, I was able to apply to take my state certification exam that spring, a month before many of my classmates would be graduating and a year earlier than they would be able to apply.
I took the exam with two other work colleagues, both of whom were taking it for the third time. I was determined to pass on the first try and I did.
This continued a pattern into my young adulthood of not only accomplishing what I set out to do, but avoiding things/experiences/relationships that didn’t guarantee success. I passively aggressively avoided failure. And I was highly successful in that as well.
Years later, now a priest, a husband, a father, leading a congregation, I was still avoiding failure. I was on sabbatical one summer, blessed with a grant that enabled our family to travel extensively out west to many of the national parks that I enjoyed visiting when I was growing up. My goal for the summer was to hike as many trails as I could, cramming in as many successes as possible in my quest to do more and be more.
One trail I had recently heard about from some fellow hikers that had just visited Zion National Park was called “Angel’s Landing,” which was certainly an enticing name for a hiker priest. We were headed to Zion so I added that to my must-do bucket list.
I was on the first shuttle bus of the morning that delivered me and a handful of early morning hikers to the trail head. I was first off the bus, determined to be the first on the trail, first to the top.
I felt strong as I began the steep ascent. The morning air was cool and inviting. The views as the trail wound upward 1,000 feet were stunning. Walter’s Wiggles, a series of tight switchbacks that get you almost to the top in short order, were not difficult for me and from that vantage point, I could easily spot the others from the bus still aways behind me. I was doing it!
But at the top of Walter’s Wiggles, the trail reaches the top of the canyon walls. It seemed as if the hardest part of the hike—the ascent—was pretty much over. But the reason this trail is so famously hard isn’t the steepness of the hike, it’s the last half a mile walking a knife-edge trail that drops 1,000 feet on both sides.
When the Virgin River carved its way through the sandstone to create this stunning canyon over the course of millennia, it zigzagged a bit as rivers do. As the result there is one bend of the river that has created a peninsula of canyon wall 1,000 feet high but probably no more than 100 feet wide. From the trail at the top, it feels as if it’s less than ten feet wide and a straight drop either way. There is no hand rail, only a chain to hang onto. The trail is on bare rock that gets slippery when wet. It is deemed “safe” in that the National Park Service continues to allow thousands of hikers per year to traverse this path, with very few (but some) deaths over the years.
So here I am at the beginning of this skinny peninsula in the sky, grabbing my first section of chain and attempting to step forward. I couldn’t do it. Fear took hold, actually hugging and squeezing me. I sat down, attempting to facilitate a reasonable conversation between my frontal lobe and my amygdala (which was basically screaming the whole time). My frontal lobe ticked through all the reasons I could do this: chains, track record of safety, blah blah. My amygdala was having none of it. I was now too scared to even walk backwards on the path away from this first section of precipice. I sat down on the ground and wrapped my arm around the pole holding the chain as I tried to mentally regroup.
Two hikers passed me. Oh well; I’ll no longer be first to the terminus. Then two young guys ran past me—RAN past! No chains, no fear, no sweat. Absolutely disgusting and beguiling. Then—the final humiliation to my ego—a family of four, sauntering past as if it was just another family walk in the park. “Aren’t those parents insane for bringing their kids up here? Do they not care about their safety?? You’d never do that to your kids.” my amygdala shouted in my ear.
I was losing the battle quickly. There I was, this 45-year-old fit adult, hugging a metal pole while these others moved past. As I continued to sit there and rolodex through my options, I also was able to get quiet enough to invite God’s voice into the argument. And it was God’s voice that simple stated, “You don’t have to finish this hike. You can quit. You can fail. Failure is okay. The hike was still rewarding. There will be other trails. Allow yourself the gift of failure.”
And so I did. I failed and it felt freeing. It was like a pressure valve for every other hike I would ever take. I could successfully fail again, because I had done so previous and survived!
The biblical narrative is full of stories of failure—FULL! Adam and Eve, Noah, Moses, David, kings, prophets. Jesus was perceived as a major failure to his followers in the last week of his earthly life as he allowed himself to walk off the trail that others expected him to lead them down, choosing instead an unexpected path, one paved with humility, mercy and amazing courage.
I learned years later that it takes courage to face failure—far more than it takes to achieve success. Jesus blazed this trail for us 2,000 years ago and it continues to present vistas that invite us to pause and reflect on what we can and cannot do. Reinhold Neibuhr’s Serenity Prayer, a favorite tool for many of us in recovery, prompts us to accept what we cannot change, have the courage to change what we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. That’s often the trickiest part. Pausing to listen for the voice of wisdom guiding us down the path or possibly telling us (even screaming, if necessary) to step aside and pursue another route.