Guilt and Change

       After all these years, I still make a lot of mistakes.  Within the last two months I've made two errors that I felt were rather large in my role as Co-Moderator of SF Presbytery.  The first one happened at a Presbytery meeting that went 3 hours longer than planned.  We have a number of minister and elder members of our Presbytery for whom English is not their first language.  Since the meeting was going so long, it was suggested that the translators be dismissed and I allowed the meeting to continue without translation.  I never should have done that.  My worry about the exhaustion of the translators does not excuse my failure to think of those for whom the meeting was no longer accessible once they did not have translation.  But when another pastor took the time to lovingly but clearly point out the error, I saw it. I apologized to the Presbytery, I learned from the mistake.  We are now working on a policy that will make sure such an error does not easily happen again.  We were able to take a mistake and bring some insight and change from it.

          Yesterday I made another such mistake.  I was officiating at an ordination of a pastor in a truly multicultural congregation.  And, as I do, I was talking extemporaneously about how connected we all are.  I used a word I often associate with that, Ubuntu, which I have understood to mean, "I am because we are."  I was immediately corrected, by someone from South Africa, whom I believed was upset that I had used the word and used it incorrectly.  And suddenly I realized that I had once again erred.  It is not my place to be using or defining terms for people who actually speak the language and are from the culture that uses the word I was attempting to use. Being called out in front of the congregation had enough of an impact on me that I left immediately after the service out of a sense of shame.  I didn't sleep last night, feeling that I had failed again in a major way.  My nighttime inner critic kept yelling at me that I really needed to just stop opening my mouth, because when I do, I make mistakes, some that I can't fix as easily as others.  This, for example, was a mistake that will be harder to correct since there were people from numerous communities attending the service.  

    I could go several places from here.  

    I could talk about Professor Loretta Ross and her teaching at Smith College on the subject of effective conversations.  She says that we need to stop being a "call out" and "cancel" culture.  These ways of approaching one another tend to tear us apart and shut us down rather than building communities of reconciliation, growth and belonging across our differences. We sabotage our happiness with anger and create barriers between people that do not need to be there.  Dr. Ross encourages, instead, a "call in" culture where we invite one another into relationships, into conversation, into learning and healing. In both of the situations I described above, what the confronters said was absolutely true and it is not in any way their responsibility to take care of me or my feelings.  I was at fault in both situations. And I choose to grow from both situations.  I choose to learn, and I will work to do better, to not "co-opt" language, for example. Still, the impact of the way each approached the situation carried the potential for very different responses. Neither response was wrong.  But one had greater potential for doing good and for moving towards reconciliation and healing. 

    I could also talk about how we move from that place of shame into a space of grace.  It was helpful to me after the first error to write the letter to the Presbytery.  I could take an active step towards owning my mistake, and could be part of the solution, to try to make sure a policy was developed in the Presbytery for when meetings go too long for our translators.  I could also work to make sure the documents we write (such as my letter) are translated appropriately.  I am still thinking through how to deal with my mistake from yesterday.  But when I see ways to step forward (probably starting with another letter), I will do so.  These actions help us to name the mistake, ask for forgiveness, step into repairing, reconciling, and growing.  They help us to claim the grace that is always offered. We can do so by recognizing our own movement and decisions to respond to the world with creative but important action.  If we respond instead with self-judgment and condemnation, we are often left paralyzed.    

    I could talk about how intentionally studying racism in the United States with my congregation for the last three years has not prevented me from making these mistakes and then name the reality that the systems we live within are so insidious that even when I am daily reading, studying, and learning, that next step of being intentional about removing my own complicity in the system will take a lot more work. I've lived like this over 50 years. Changing behavior will take time.  

    I could write about how in many ways we have not moved much as a country.  This last weekend my daughter graduated from high school.  Over 30 kids from her graduating class then went to her high school and vandalized it with racial slurs, homophobic graffiti and other signs of hate and anger.  They don't learn these behaviors in a vacuum.  Their behavior was a mirror reflecting the communities and families in which they've been raised.  I found it deeply disturbing.  It broke my heart to know that kind of hate and anger was acted out by so many young people right here in this community.  It should not have surprised me.  With all the reading we've been doing, it just plain shouldn't surprise me.  But I was hit hard.

      But where I think I really want to go with this is into a deeper conversation about how we use the unpleasant feelings that arise for us.  Do we allow the feelings of guilt or shame to keep us up at night?  Or do we take our mistakes and seek out creative ways to learn from them, make amends to anyone we've hurt, and move forward?  Feelings are a gift.  Or they can be, if we use them well.  But if we allow our anger to cause us to hurt others (or continue to hurt ourselves), or if we allow our shame to keep us from living in healthy ways, we are misusing the gifts.  Our feelings can become oppressive if we choose to let them.  

       Almost everything in this life can be used for good or for harm.  Even our feelings and thoughts.  But we have a choice in this, like everything else in life.  I invite us to step back from those strong feelings and make choices to see them differently, to engage with them differently, and to find the gifts in the pain to use for the good of all.