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The Failure Story of John Pierpont affected me like no other. The few times I tried to read it aloud, I broke down and cried. I wept uncontrollably.
I do not expect it to have the same effect on you, since your life experiences are different from mine. But there was a time when I felt very much a failure - my business, my finances, my marriage, my relationship with my girlfriend... nothing was going well, everything seemed to be failing.
I think this feeling is not uncommon. Donald Neale Walsh felt very much the same way when he wrote an angry letter to God demanding to know why his life was falling apart - and that resulted in the Conversations with God books that made him internationally famous.
A lot of us have, at one time or other, felt like failures. For all of us, I like to retell this story - even though it does not exactly offer consolation.
I first came across John Pierpont's story in Robert Fulghum's book, It was on Fire when I Lay Down on it.
At that time, I was publishing The Good Life, a newsletter on "health, healing and happiness" and I thought it was a nice story to share. I reproduced it in my newsletter (admittedly without copyright clearance) and forgot all about it.
Some years later, my marriage, business and everything else had broken down. My (ex)wife and I sold our house and in the process of packing and unpacking, I chanced upon the story. I cannot remember why I did it, but I offered to read it aloud to her. Before I could reach the second paragraph, I was weeping my heart out.
More than a year later, my life situation still had not improved. Twice, I tried to read it again, to two friends over the telephone. Both times, I broke down. The day I can read this story without my voice breaking, I consider myself healed from the sense of failure.
The story
Here is the story, as originally told by Fulghum:
JOHN PIERPONT died a failure. In 1866, at age 81, he came to the end of this days as a governent clerk in Washington, DC, with a long string of personal defeats abrading his spirit.
Things began well enough. He graduated rom Yale, which his grandfathre had helped found, and chose education as his profession with some enthusiasm.
He was a failure at schoolteaching. He was too easy on his students. And so he turned to the legal world for training.
He was a failure as a lawyer. He was too generous to his clients and too concerned about justice to take the cases that brought good fees. The next career he took up was that of dry-goods merchant.
He was a failure as a businessman. He could not charge enough for his goods to make a profit, and was too liberal with credit. In the meantime, he had been writing poetry, and though it was published, he didn't collect enough royalties to make a living.
He was a failure as a poet. And so he decided to become a minister, went off to Harvard Divinity School, was ordained as minister of the Hollis Street Church in Boston. But his position for Prohibition and against slavery got him crosswise with the influencial members of his congregation and he was forced to resign.
He was a failure as a minister. Politics seemed a place where he could make some difference, and he was nominated as the Abolition party candidate for governor of Massachusetts. He lost. Undaunted, he ran for Congress under the banner of the FreeSoil Party. He lost.
He was a failure as a politician. The Civil War came along, and he volunteered as a chaplain of the 22nd Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteers. Two weeks later he quit, having found the task too much of a strain on his health. He was 76 years old. He couldn't even make it as a chaplain.
Someone found him an obscure job in the back offices of the Treasury Department in Washington, and he finished out the last five years of his life as a menial file clerk. He wasn't very good at that, either. His heart was not in it.
Died a failure
John Pierpont died a failure. He had accomplished nothing he set out to do or be. There is a small memorial stone marking his grave in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The words in the granite read: Poet, Preacher, Philosopher, Philantropist.
From this distance in time, one might insist that he was not, in fact, a failure. His commitments to social justice, his desire to be a loving human being, his active engagement in the great issues of his times, and his faith in the power of the human mind - these are not failures.
And much of what he thought of as defeat became success. Education was refirmed, legal processes were improved, credit laws were changed, and, above all, slavery was abolished once and for all.
Why am I telling you this? It's not an uncommon story. Many 19th century reformers had similar lives - similar failures and successes.
In one very important sense, John Pierpont was not a failure. Every year, come December, we celebrate his success. We carry in our hearts and minds a lifelong memorial to him.
It's a song.
Not about Jesus or angels or even Santa Clasus. It's a terribly simple song about the simple joy of whizzing throught the cold white dark of wintersgloom in a sleigh pulled by one horse. And with the company of friends, laughing and singing all the way. No more. No less.
"Jingle Bells." John Pierpont wrote "Jingle Bells."
Simple joys
To write a song that stands for the simplest joys, to write a song that three or four hundred million people around the world know - a song about something they've never done but can imagine - a song that everyone of us, large and small, can hoot out the moment the chord is struck on the piano and the chord is struck in our spirit - well, that's not failure.
One snowy afternoon in deep winter, John Pierpont penned the lines as a small gift for his family and friends and congregation. And in doing so left behind a permanent gift for Christmas - the best kind - not the one under the tree, but the invisible, invincible one of joy.
PS: An inaccuracy
It seems that the facts of the above story are not quite right and I have received more than one email informing me of the mistake. The latest, received 9 April 2004, reads:
Mr. Fulghum is totally inaccurate in the facts he used in his story.
Poor research = poor author!!
My great grandfather, James Lord Pierpont is the composer of "Jingle Bells". John Pierpont was his father, my great great grandfather. He was hardly considered a failure. If you will research his life, you will find you are wasting your sympathies!
Very truly yours,
Constance Turner
The inaccuracy somewhat dimishes the value of the story of John Pierpont. But since this essay is about how the story affected me, I've decided to retain it here.