Failing Spectacularly
Realising, nearing forty, that to do some things well, we must do other things badly. Really badly. Not in objective measures of truth and rationality, intent and benevolence. But rather, in the subjective eyes of the other, the ones who may, can and will judge you by a frame of reference that must, in truth, conflict with your own. I find, more and more, that to truly live out the call, vocation and expression of life that will be marked as remarkably and indisputably yours, you must be at wondrous odds against the world around you. If you’re not, you may in fact, be failing in your fidelity to the deeper truth and purpose in your life.
There is an odd joy, that can bleed into pride if left unchecked, that I take when people recoil, wonder or want to challenge what I know to be true, good and beautiful in my own life. The most obvious example is in family life. The reaction when you share that you have seven children is more than often incredulity, sometimes alarm. In a context of widespread and perpetual contraception, and the legally and socially sanctioned act of abortion, the sight of unbridled life spilling forth from a loving marriage, is nothing short of counter-cultural, no matter how founded in logic, truth, love and natural law it is. It’s a beautiful witness to bear, shocking as it is to some, when our kids tumble out of the family bus, leaping, rolling, hiding and shaving days and weeks off our lives by flirting with passing traffic.
We are a terrible, troublesome anachronism to an age that continues to divorce the natural, procreative act from it’s wondrous consequences. Many of our friends and their families are similarly smitten by the call to ‘be fruitful and multiply,’ and as blessed as we are to have them in our lives, I know that our greatest witness is born to those who walk a different path, and perhaps betray the body to a reductionist, fatalistic view that intimacy can and must be stripped of it’s fullest expression in nothing less than new life itself. When people look at us like we’re crazy, in an age whose greatest lies reduce the most natural, beautiful gifts we have to a banal, hedonistic transaction, I know we must be doing something right. When, from a secular perspective, we fail spectacularly to be ‘sensible,’ ‘reasonable,’ ‘careful’ or ‘realistic,’ it’s for having stumbled onto the truth of life, love and being.
The same could probably be said of our homeschooling. When we decided to reject institutional forms of learning to teach our own, recognising and relishing our role as the ‘primary educators’ of our own children, we failed, once again, to do what was perceived a ‘sound,’ ‘reasonable’ and ‘normal.’ We were driven by a passionate commitment to do right by our children, and what we felt was right for them and our family. We knew that it would be the greatest way to meet their passions, needs and abilities in a way that is near impossible in a standard, modern classroom. Furthermore, we wanted to be able to form them, morally and spiritually, to lay a foundation by which they could engage with the world with a clarity, depth and consistency of understanding by which they could seek and speak the truth, rather than the peculiar distortions of our age.
The journey has not been easy, convenient or perfect, but the means by which my beloved has balanced discipline with tenderness, curiosity with a formidable process and practicality, and faith with a deep intellectual and moral foundation, astounds and humbles me day after day. Our decision to homeschool was not, and never would be, an accusatory dismissal or denial of all who chose to do otherwise; it was simply the right path for our children, for that part of our lives. Lo and behold, eleven years into parenting and we move, adapt and respond to the changing needs of our children. For the first time in their lives, they’ll be attending school in the new year, a decision that has required a long and demanding period and process of prayer, reflection, discernment and the search for a school that reflects the priorities and pedagogy that have underpinned our children’s learning.
The school in question however, came with a single complication: It’s three and a half hours away - in another state no less. As such, this year has been spent planning and preparing, wondering, dreaming, fretting and finally leaping at the opportunity for our children to be a part of a school, and school community that will continue the formation we’ve started, with wonderful new ways to revel in all that life in a small country community entails. We’ve sold our house, bought some land to be our blank canvas, and (at the time of writing) were about 90 days away from moving away from all we’ve even known and loved (beyond our own little clan), to lay down roots in Jindera, NSW.
And herein lies what seems to be my greatest failure. Once again, I fall on the sword of my own heedless irrationality, to build a new life, in a new community, leaving common sense, reason and restraint to those who know better than I do. We cannot accept the options available to us, when it comes to schools in our immediate vicinity. We refuse to accept a finite set of unacceptable options, when it comes to to the formation of the greatest gift God has bestowed upon us. We cannot leave our children in the midst of wolves and snakes that would pander to a facile, modern sensibility at the cost of all truth, beauty and goodness. We’ve come too far, and love them too much, to settle for the best of a bad set of options; so we’ll move heaven and earth to give them an education, a community, a home that will grant them every opportunity to thrive, and will continue to form them, as much as it will inform them. The more I learn, the more I grow, my view of education and of learning, is that it is to inform an understanding and disposition that will liberate us from the vices, distractions and illusions of any given age.
This process cannot be viably divorced from the faith with which we live and breathe, nor from the greater truths of our being, made in the image and likeness of God, oriented towards he who ‘emptied Himself to take the form of a servant,’ whether we realise it or not. I fail and fail spectacularly, because I strive to be in the world, but not of the world. I fail spectacularly because of a radical proposition that two thousand years ago, our blessed Mother made her fiat, exclaiming: He puts forth his arm in strength, and scatters the proud hearted. He casts the mighty from their thrones, sends the rich away empty. He protects Israel, His servant, remembering his mercy. The mercy promised to our fathers, to Abraham and his sons forever.
There has been no event more remarkable than this since that moment (unless one wants posit, perhaps, a certain Sunday morning roughly thirty three years later), and I want my life to turn on the axis of that moment, to be built on that moment and all it’s implications, until the day I take my last breath and know, in peace, that I too, have emptied myself and taken the form of a servant, as the wisdom of God is folly in the eyes of man. May I fail, and fail spectacularly, in every way that truly matters, until the end of my days.
by Gaetano Carcarello