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Don’t sweat failure, your time will come
By Dorothy Cummings McLean
April 27, 2011
Dorothy Cummings McLean
St. Ignatius of Loyola wrote a prayer that is often sung by Jesuits and in Jesuit schools. It begins, “Take, Lord, receive, all my liberty, my understanding, and my entire will.” It’s a lovely prayer, and I sang it happily. Then, during my PhD program, I lost the ability to understand theology.
Overwork? Depression? It wasn’t due to some hysterical paralysis for I could read other things. But if I picked up anything theological, the words swam before my eyes and nothing sunk in. I had graduated from Regis magna cum laude, and now I couldn’t manage a page of Augustine.
I gave up, went home and submitted to anti-depressants. I wanted to die, and so I wrote a 100,000-word novel detailing how I had died and arrived, not in heaven, but in Valhalla. Every day I took my pill and wrote my serial online. It caught the eye of a Scottish blogger, who brought it to the attention of friends who became my friends. One of them introduced me to the friend who is now my husband.
I owe my present happiness to my past misery.
But dropping out of the PhD was a psychic disaster. I don’t recommend it. The feelings of failure are enormous and lasting. In bad moments, I inform husband Mark that I am a terrible failure. He reminds me that I have a handsome husband and live in a big house. This is true, and it cheers me up until I remember that so much more is demanded of women of my generation. So then I ponder Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.
Hopkins (1844-1889) is now hailed as one of the greatest poets who ever lived. This was not true in his lifetime. In his lifetime, he was a just an unusually short Jesuit priest, and not a happy or cherished one.
The young convert admired Blessed John Henry Newman devotedly, but the great cardinal was not particularly interested in him. Newman was not enthusiastic about Hopkins’ wish to join the Oratorians, so Hopkins joined the Society of Jesus instead. Determined to be a good Jesuit, he burned all his early poems and promised not to write any more. Fortunately, his superior asked him to write a poem commemorating the wreck of a ship called the Deutschland.
The work was not published in the Jesuit magazine that initially accepted it; although he continued to write, this made Hopkins doubt his talent as a poet. And although he had graduated from Oxford with top marks, he failed his theology exam. This meant he would never take the final vows necessary to leadership in the Society. Instead Fr. Hopkins spent his life moving from curacy to curacy, teaching post to teaching post. His poetry — unpublished until 1918 — reflects his love of God, creation and language, but also his bitter frustrations:
“Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?
… Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.”
Fr. Hopkins’ unhappiness became acute when he was moved to Ireland. It was not fun to be an Englishman in Ireland of the 1880s. He had a heavy workload, his eyesight was failing and he missed England and his friends. He died of typhoid at the age of 45. (To put this into perspective, all but one of his brothers and sisters lived into their 80s or 90s.) He was buried in Ireland, and more than 100 years later, a Jesuit pal of mine told me of how he and other novices stared at the gravestone commemorating him and all the other Jesuits underneath. “P. Hopkins” was just another name in the list.
“Yeah,” snarled a novice. “Get in line.”
The other novices laughed.
La plus ça change, la plus c’est la même chose.
But the story doesn’t end there, of course. Death is never the end of the story, not even if men laugh at your gravestone. Gerard Manley Hopkins died in Christ; I think we may safely hope and expect his eternal happiness. And as for his earthly success, when his poems were published in 1918 the world realized what an artist he had been. Only heaven knows how many souls have been lifted up to God through his work.
I think it’s an Easter story. The Good Friday of Hopkins’ earthly life led to the Easter of his earthly poetry and will lead, I believe, to his resurrection. As for the latter, Hopkins must have thought so, too. Despite the anguish he suffered, his last recorded words, uttered on his deathbed, were, “I am so happy. I am so happy. I loved my life.”
Overwork? Depression? It wasn’t due to some hysterical paralysis for I could read other things. But if I picked up anything theological, the words swam before my eyes and nothing sunk in. I had graduated from Regis magna cum laude, and now I couldn’t manage a page of Augustine.
I gave up, went home and submitted to anti-depressants. I wanted to die, and so I wrote a 100,000-word novel detailing how I had died and arrived, not in heaven, but in Valhalla. Every day I took my pill and wrote my serial online. It caught the eye of a Scottish blogger, who brought it to the attention of friends who became my friends. One of them introduced me to the friend who is now my husband.
I owe my present happiness to my past misery.
But dropping out of the PhD was a psychic disaster. I don’t recommend it. The feelings of failure are enormous and lasting. In bad moments, I inform husband Mark that I am a terrible failure. He reminds me that I have a handsome husband and live in a big house. This is true, and it cheers me up until I remember that so much more is demanded of women of my generation. So then I ponder Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.
Hopkins (1844-1889) is now hailed as one of the greatest poets who ever lived. This was not true in his lifetime. In his lifetime, he was a just an unusually short Jesuit priest, and not a happy or cherished one.
The young convert admired Blessed John Henry Newman devotedly, but the great cardinal was not particularly interested in him. Newman was not enthusiastic about Hopkins’ wish to join the Oratorians, so Hopkins joined the Society of Jesus instead. Determined to be a good Jesuit, he burned all his early poems and promised not to write any more. Fortunately, his superior asked him to write a poem commemorating the wreck of a ship called the Deutschland.
The work was not published in the Jesuit magazine that initially accepted it; although he continued to write, this made Hopkins doubt his talent as a poet. And although he had graduated from Oxford with top marks, he failed his theology exam. This meant he would never take the final vows necessary to leadership in the Society. Instead Fr. Hopkins spent his life moving from curacy to curacy, teaching post to teaching post. His poetry — unpublished until 1918 — reflects his love of God, creation and language, but also his bitter frustrations:
“Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?
… Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.”
Fr. Hopkins’ unhappiness became acute when he was moved to Ireland. It was not fun to be an Englishman in Ireland of the 1880s. He had a heavy workload, his eyesight was failing and he missed England and his friends. He died of typhoid at the age of 45. (To put this into perspective, all but one of his brothers and sisters lived into their 80s or 90s.) He was buried in Ireland, and more than 100 years later, a Jesuit pal of mine told me of how he and other novices stared at the gravestone commemorating him and all the other Jesuits underneath. “P. Hopkins” was just another name in the list.
“Yeah,” snarled a novice. “Get in line.”
The other novices laughed.
La plus ça change, la plus c’est la même chose.
But the story doesn’t end there, of course. Death is never the end of the story, not even if men laugh at your gravestone. Gerard Manley Hopkins died in Christ; I think we may safely hope and expect his eternal happiness. And as for his earthly success, when his poems were published in 1918 the world realized what an artist he had been. Only heaven knows how many souls have been lifted up to God through his work.
I think it’s an Easter story. The Good Friday of Hopkins’ earthly life led to the Easter of his earthly poetry and will lead, I believe, to his resurrection. As for the latter, Hopkins must have thought so, too. Despite the anguish he suffered, his last recorded words, uttered on his deathbed, were, “I am so happy. I am so happy. I loved my life.”
Dorothy Cummings McLean