If you have been following me during Lent you will know that I have not blogged for a few days – breaking my intention to do so.  So I have failed – the question is, what am I going to do about it?

In Joan Chittister’s commentary on the Rule of Benedict (or here online) she writes:

A contemporary collection of monastic tales includes the story of the visitor who asks of the monk: “What do you do in the monastery?” And the monastic replies: “Well, we fall and we get up and we fall and we get up and we fall and we get up.” Where continual falling and getting up is not honoured, where the senpectae–the wise ones who have gone before us–are not present to help us through, life runs the terrible risk of drying up and blowing away before it is half lived.

Rowan Williams has also written that if we do not fail at our Lenten discipline we may come to believe that we achieved it, and can achieve others things, through our own abilities, rather than relying on God.

So today, I get back on the horse and start again.

The question I am left with, is falling failure, or is failure not starting afresh following a fall?