Glorious Failure

A very dusty hour and a half was spent on Friday trying to get audio from the church to be heard in the hall for the benefit of parents and those working with children who sometimes use the hall and meeting room during part of the 1030 service on a Sunday.

I had come up with the bright idea of trying to use a video-sender gadget to, well, send video from the camera that is used to record sermons into the hall and on to a television. This glorious plan would have not only got the audio into the hall but also real live moving pictures of the pulpit. However, it was not to be. I eventually had to admit defeat. It was possible to send the signals from one side of the Cathedral to another, which showed proof of concept. However, it was not possible to get the signals to go through the thick walls.

This isn’t going to be as easy a problem to solve as I had hoped and I’ve done what I can. It will have to be over to others to come up with ideas now.

My plan failed miserably.

Now, who was it told me that we don’t celebrate glorious failure enough in church? I can’t remember, but it was someone who was talking about the same attitude to risk taking as Kimberly was describing when discussing the liturgy video that I posted earlier.

I’ve much sympathy with her view. Indeed, my original post made reference to Provincial Conferences, which have been one of the places where liturgical experimentation has been much to the fore sometimes. That element of risk taking has been so valuable too.

The great liturgical moments I can remember (seeds scattered during the parable of the sower, the triupudium, asperges with attitude, the gospel and magnificant at my installation) more than make up for the liturgical failures such as the soggy mess that resulted from a failure to get palm crosses to burn during an Ash Wednesday service.

A little risk. A lot of tradition.

On second thoughts, a little risk is part of our tradition.