New life springs up in a world of risk and failure, but that's okay, and sometimes even necessary, reflects Mark Berry.
This weekend finally the weather was dry enough to get out in the garden and start the post winter refresh and tidy up. After giving the lawn its first cut I went to clear some of last year’s dead foliage from the pots, as I did a robin flew out from the bottom of some pampas grass.
Deep within the tangled fronds were four tiny, speckled eggs. Unfortunately, I had disturbed the mother and she had flown off the nest. A bit of panicked Googling reassured me that she would probably come back, and fortunately she has.
However, we have a Beagle with a very inquisitive nose and that creates a potential problem as the nest is the perfect height off the ground for her to find. So, for the next month and a half that end of the garden will be made off limits to her with the help of some garden netting and some canes.
Of course, there’s a chance that the chicks may not hatch and even if they do, they may not survive through to fledging. New life is a risky and fragile thing, there are so many factors beyond the control of the parents and so many things can cause failure.
Business writers, Kjell Nordström and Jonas Ridderstrale wrote in their book ‘Funky Business’ about the relationship between new life, innovation, risk and indeed, failure.
“By its very nature, creation involves a departure from traditional structures and frames. In a world of creativity-sucking board meetings, past structures have ruled the roost. Now, we have to be prepared to depart from the agenda… innovation requires experimentation. Experiments are risky. We can succeed or fail. So an innovative environment must have an exceptionally high tolerance for mistakes… we have to fail faster to learn quicker and succeed sooner… traditionalists should remember that the only way not to fail is not to try. And try we must. No failures; no development. The innermost mechanism of human progress is called failure. If it were not for all the fools trying to do the impossible - over and over again - we would still be living in caves... Failure happens. Give people trust and it will happen more productively.”
I’m struck that during the Creation story in Genesis chapter 1 we find the repeated refrain, “and God saw that it was good”. This suggests to me that even for God, creation still had the potential for failure, for it not to be good. But God created anyway!