Make MistakesRead Time 11 min

One of my favorite places in the world is a Byzantine Catholic parish in Los Angeles called the Proto-Cathedral of St. Mary. I go there sometimes when I’m traveling, and the time that I have spent there has transformed my spiritual life.

The Byzantine Liturgy is very embodied. The chant and the participation and all the rich details woven into the Liturgy make it incredibly easy for me to pray there. Learning about Byzantine teaching and practice has been beautiful and life-giving. The pastor and the community are loving and welcoming, and are quick to make you feel at home. It is a still unfolding story for me and I will not try to explain all of it here. But there is something about the Byzantine world that makes it easier for me to remember who God really is. That might sound silly, but there are all sorts of distortions that can slip into my daily thought patterns and mess with my idea of and therefore also my relationship with God.

For example, I have a difficult time with my mistakes. It is very easy for me to slip into the mentality that my mistakes have lessened my worth as a human being or made me less lovable. When I get into a mentality like that, mistakes become something to be avoided at all costs. My worth as a person becomes an almost numerical value that can be lessened or even destroyed if I slip up. But there is no version of my life where that is a good or helpful attitude to have.

In his book “Hidden Potential,” Adam Grant discusses unexpected and surprisingly practical routes to becoming excellent in your chosen field. One of the pieces of advice he offers is “to make more mistakes than most people make attempts.”

It is perhaps easier to see the wisdom of this advice in a context like sports. There is nothing quite like the physical excellence of the Olympic athletes. We are inspired by their grit and determination as well as by the sheer prowess of their physical abilities. But none of them would have made it even close to that level if they had let themselves be ruled by the fear of making mistakes. True, at the Olympics themselves, mistakes are to be avoided at all costs. But for hours and days and years throughout their life, an Olympic athlete had to embrace the messiness of practicing things beyond their skill level. They had to try and fail and fail and fail, and keep practicing until they mastered the skill. We have all seen the inspiring montages of fall after fall finally culminating in the spectacular skateboard flip or figure-skating spin that the athlete was practicing.

So why do I think that the same is not true of my daily growth as a human being?

If I want to grow toward the human excellence that God ultimately wants for me, shouldn’t I expect to stumble and fall and fail a thousand times in practicing? But if I am so afraid that each of those stumbles will lessen my value as a human, I will never really even start the process of practicing. If, on the other hand, I really do believe that God is “mighty beyond description, glorious above all understanding, merciful without limits, loving us all beyond expression” (a line from the Byzantine liturgy), I don’t have to be afraid of failing. I don’t need to hyper-fixate on my mistakes or wonder if they have chipped away at how much I am loved. I still need to apologize for my mistakes — to God and to anyone I hurt — but then I can move on in peace and keep trying to do better.

And, this side of heaven, I will always make mistakes. I am broken and human and there is no version of my life where I will do things perfectly every time. So, if I wait to love until I can love perfectly, I will never love at all. The good news is God can redeem anything that I give to him. Even my mistakes can be the material for something new and beautiful. As J.R.R. Tolkien said, “Evil labors with vast power and perpetual success — in vain — preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in. So it is in general, and so it is in our own lives.” And as Mother Natalia said on a recent episode of the podcast, “What God is Not,” “Not making mistakes is not the point of our spiritual life, of holiness. The point of our spiritual life is union with the Lord.”

The hyper-fixating fear of mistakes that I am prone to is not just impractical, it also distorts my image of God. It turns him into a petty taskmaster instead of a loving Father. When I fall into that fear, I can forget that all he wants from me is me; that the only reason he hates my sin is that it keeps me from him; and that no sin is too great for his power to redeem and restore. I can forget that his attitude toward me is always only love.

Specific details of my personality and past have made Byzantine spirituality a place that helps me to remember who God is and to approach him as a loving Father. But of course, all of Catholic teaching is ultimately about God, our loving Father. Within the Catholic Church, there are countless devotions, spiritualities, practices, spiritual writings, etc., that can help us to draw closer to God as he really is. Whatever it is that helps you, I hope Lent can be for you a time of drawing closer to God and allowing him to remind you who he is and who you are in him.