Moments of Shame, Moments of Grace

           It really wasn't anybody's fault.  The adult in me knows this.  We hadn't really practiced together at all, I'm therefore not used to the way she directs and I mis-read her cue.  What I thought was a "prep-beat" was her downbeat. The result?  It was not good.  The concluding, triumphant exit music for this beautiful service began as a disaster.  The choir began to sing as I played the last beat of the introduction, which meant that I and a couple of the other musicians were a beat behind.   And in the end, I stopped playing altogether, unsure whether to keep playing with the musicians who were with me, or to play with the choir and director.  By the middle of the first verse we were together.  None the less, this happened in front of a huge number of people who'd come for a very important memorial service.  I left feeling humiliated, but more, ashamed - I had failed a group of people I cared about at a memorial service that was important to me as well.  I had practiced, worked to play well, and the performance was not up to my expectations.  I was so upset that, rather than stay for the reception (which I had planned to do and which I had wanted to do), I just came home and ate pie after the service.  Yes, I know that eating pie is not the healthiest way to deal with problems, but it made me temporarily feel a little better, so there you have it.  We all have our coping strategies: pie eating is one of mine, so try not to judge it.  Perhaps another "coping" strategy is thinking up stupid, unhelpful ways of dealing with the shame, "Okay fine!  If this is how you are going to play for important services, it is obviously time for you to quit playing altogether.  You aren't good at this anymore.  This was a message to you.  And the message is 'DONE!'  You are done.  Finished.  Letters of resignation to be sent out in the morning."
           Fortunately, I'm slightly more grown-up in my behaviors than I am in my head.  I know this situation wasn't really anyone's fault.  It just happened that our lack of knowledge of each other and our limited time to practice together caused a misunderstanding, a misreading of cues.  There are other ways to prevent this problem in the future than just quitting.  This may be the first time I've played under this director, and my guess is it won't happen often, if ever, again.  If and when it does, we'll deal with it then, and we'll both come to it with a deeper understanding of the potential problems we might have.
          But, now that I'm moving out of that shame-place, I'm also able to take a step back and reflect a little on the power of shame in our lives.  We all make mistakes.  Some of them are met with feelings of guilt, sometimes we deal by blaming those around us, and sometimes we move more deeply into places of shame.  The difference?  Guilt is an "I've done something wrong that I feel bad about"  response.  Blame can be a number of things: inability to self-reflect, or guilt and shame transferred onto the other.  Shame on the other hand is "I am innately wrong.  Something about me is wrong.  I am bad, I am not right."  That is a deep place.  What causes a person to go there?  Probably years of conditioning that has told us that mistakes are not okay and that they somehow mark us as bad people.  Maybe our faith communities historically have had a hand in this: some faith communities tell their folk that we are innately "sinful," wrong, not deserving of God's love, and that can be embodied in us as shame.
          But our faith should instead, I deeply believe, help us to focus on our creation as good beings.  We are created good.  We are loved into being.  Yes, we make mistakes, but nothing, nothing is so big that it stops God's love for us.  God sees deeper, and I believe, with everything in me, that what God sees is the good, is the beautiful, is the "holy" even.  We are not mistakes.  We are not "wrong" as people.  We are loved.  Even something as big as a crazy music mess up in a memorial service should be treated with grace, with laughter, with a recognition that maybe these mistakes are calls to not take ourselves so very seriously.  Life happens.  And it is messy.  But in that mess is beauty.
       More importantly, it is often in the messy that we find God.  God comes to us in the least expected places: among the poor, among the disadvantaged, among the outcast.  Might that not also mean that God comes to us in the mess?  In the mistakes?  In the chaos and confusion and clashes of life?  It's easier to see it when that mess is taking place in others... we can see God, for example, in children who've been playing outside so hard that they are covered in dirt.  It's easy to laugh and delight and see God in their joyful, soiled, messy faces.  We can see God in funny or humorous situations that involve other people or animals: again we feel God in our own joy and delight.  When people misspeak and say funny things, our laughter is often God-filled happiness.  But when we ourselves make a mistake... it's hard to laugh at it, hard to delight in it, and even harder to find God in it.  
         So today I am looking for God in the mess.  And what I see is that we celebrated a man today who was described again and again as joyful, enthusiastic, fun, playful.  He was said to be filled with laughter, to include humor in every service.  So, we tried to make a service for him that was more perfect.  The laughter came in some of the stories told, but perhaps that was not enough.  No, perhaps it was not going to run perfectly because that would not have been a true service reflecting the joy and humor of Father Mat.  His service needed some chaos, some mess, some unexpected and unanticipated moments - moments where God could break in in a new and different way.  So having the choir sing a beat ahead of the accompaniest?  Well, maybe there's the humor for you.  Maybe Father Mat was laughing at us despite all our efforts to be perfect and great.  And maybe he was delighting in our humanity, in our flawed attempts to be just right.  It is inevitable in my life that the times that I try hardest to be perfect are the times I fail to be so.  I struggle and strive to stop seeing those times as moments of condemnation.  Instead, they are invitations to see as God sees, and to delight in our goofy, imperfect selves; to relax my own rigid rules of what is okay for myself, and instead to enjoy our crazy world for what it is.  Those moments of imperfection are also invitations for grace to come in.  There is no room in perfection for grace.  It is only in the chaos that there is space for grace to come swirling in with healing and light and compassion.  The invitation for grace is an invitation for God to be even more present with us.
       So, while I still wish the mistake hadn't happened, that we hadn't gotten off a beat, that the service was picture perfect in every way, I recognize that it was what it was: another opportunity to ask for, seek, find, and accept God's grace.  And today that grace comes in the ability to laugh at myself for ever thinking I could be perfect, even just for a service, and to rejoice that I was able to be there in the celebration at all, doing my best, no matter how it came out, and honoring an important man for the gifts he gave to this community.

Rules Over People? Again?

I went to the DMV today to get my daughter her driving permit. After the prerequisite standing in line, filling out forms, standing in more lines (even with an appointment), finally we were sent into the room where Eldest would take her written exam.  The line was so long for this that it wound through the room and out the door.  While the line was quite long, there was one lone worker inside who was setting people up for the exams and taking pictures.  After about 5 minutes another worker came and told us we couldn't stand in the doorway.  She proceeded to direct us into a weird snaking line that meant anyone else who wanted to be in the line was confused and had no idea where to go.  But we dutifully complied, even after being yelled at by this woman with her interesting line design.  Eventually Eldest and I made it to the front of the line and Eldest was sent one direction to have her picture taken and to take her permit test.  I was told to leave the room, but like the over-protective hovering helicopter parent I sometimes can be, I waited near the door because I wanted to make sure she could get onto the computer okay to take her exam.  While waiting there I noticed that the much older couple (had to be in their 90s) that had been ahead of us in line was struggling with their computer.  The woman was supposed to be taking the exam but they couldn't get into the computer.  The man went to the second worker who was just standing around telling people how to form a line and asked for help.  The worker said, "Oh, it's self-explanatory.  Just go over to the computer and it will tell you what to do."  He tried to explain that they'd been struggling with it for some time, but she tuned him out and went back to directing people how to stand in line.  I watched this couple struggle for a minute more with the computer and then I went over to help.  The screen had been asking for her birthday and she had typed in the month, the date and the last two numbers of the year.  The computer wanted all four numbers of the year and so it kept booting out her request to take the exam.  I explained this to them and they asked me if I could help by typing in the birth date for her.  Suddenly we were swarmed with 4 officials barking at me, "You can't take the test for her!  We are going to have to ask you to leave!"  "I'm not taking the test for her, I'm putting in her birth date so she can take the test herself!"  "We have officials here to help with any difficulties!  You are not to help!"  "Yeah?  Well, your 'officials' weren't helping!  This couple had asked for help, and were told 'no'.  Those who were supposed to help weren't, so I was!"  Her husband and I were "escorted" out of the room while the husband loudly complained that his wife needed help walking and that he needed to be with her.  We kept being told over and over that that's what the workers were for - to help, though none of them did help.  Instead, all of them went back to what they had been doing before, and this poor woman was left sitting, staring at the computer screen, still not into the system, still not able to even take the test, still not able to get up or go home either since she needed her husband to help her walk.  Her husband began to cry once we were out of the room.  All I could do was stay with him, which I did, while I waited for Eldest to finish her test.  I stayed with him, and told him that there were people who cared, even if they weren't those working here at the DMV.

Is this woman who can't figure out how to put her birth date into the computer someone who should be driving?  Perhaps not.  I understand the reason why there are rules and policies.  I understand that these tests are to determine who should be on the road and who should not.  I'm certain that they will not be reissuing her her driver's license.  I am also certain that losing your ability to drive, your independence, your ability to get yourself where you need to be is a very traumatic thing to have happen to you, and that having your license taken away by people who don't care enough to even respond when you ask for help, and who make sure others also can't help you is not just lacking in kindness.  It is just plain MEAN.

We sometimes put rules, put regulations, put red-tape, bureaucracy and our belief about how things "should" be done above real people.  This isn't a new problem.  Jesus had this same problem when he was condemned for healing on the Sabbath, when he was criticized and rejected for letting his disciples "pick grain" on the sabbath, when he and his disciples were put down for failing to wash their hands properly.  And his response to all of that?  "The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath."  To put it into more modern language, "Our rules are here to help people, people are not here for the purpose of following the rules."  But we, like the Pharisees and Sadducees, sometimes make idols of our rules, our policies, our procedures to the point that we would rather harm people than even bend a rule to fit the needs of those actually affected by it.  This is a problem.  It's a problem Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi and others who saw injustices written into the rules and who said, "no!" tried to confront again and again and it is a problem that has not gone away.  But I would challenge any of us who are stuck in our rules to the point where we stop seeing and helping and caring for real people and real individuals to think better of it.  We are called to love.  Loving is messy.  It just very simply does not fit into a nice neat box of "how tos".  It just doesn't.  The rules and policies and procedures are supposed to help us to care for one another better, to be kinder to each other even when we feel more selfish, to get along well, to function and work together.  That is their purpose.  Sometimes they fail to do that.  But as someone once said, "When you have to choose between being right and being kind, choose being kind."

Oh, and yes, Eldest got her permit.  Look out world!