Grace and Forgiveness

I’ve made some references in these posts to a difficult moment in the national Orff organization’s (AOSA) history when an incoming President was asked to resign. He had overstepped one little line, but a small group of us felt like the punishment didn’t fit the crime and leadership seemed to be just sweeping the whole thing under there rug. This little cohort raised hell as much as one can using Zoom and e-mails and then we finally had a face-to-face meeting at the recent Conference. A lot of anger, tears, personal truths and the fuller complexity of the issues slowly coming into focus, some acknowledgment of missteps and much acknowledgment of the grief of the tear in the fabric of trust. While nothing is wholly resolved (is it ever?), it was a necessary beginning to what’s needed. Here below is the letter I wrote to the folks at that meeting:

 

“The presence of grace brings mercy and forgiveness that can reconnect us to the underlying wholeness of life, even when everything seems to be falling apart.”  -  Michael Meade

 

A good reminder at this Thanksgiving time and a good summary of my feeling about our meeting at the recent Conference. Not easy to imagine grace being present in company with all the hurt feelings, lost trust, sense of betrayal, misunderstandings, holding each other’s feet to the fire — a wide spectrum of emotion there! But alongside the difficulty was the honesty and the courage to say what you mean and mean what you say and that’s where grace can live. Bringing forgiveness where things seem to be falling apart.

 

And always a companion to grace is gratitude, the remembrance that amidst all the tearing of the fabric of our shared vision we’ve experienced recently is the beautiful garment itself, the cloth that we all do our best to weave in each and every class we teach, each and every piece of music or dance we create. 

 

I sometimes feel we lean too heavily to self-congratulations in our organization, a naïve labeling of “Awesome!!! Amazing!!” to every little thing we do that diminishes the perception of the things truly worthy of admiration. So when genuine conflict emerges—as it always will wherever human beings are gathered— we’re often not prepared to have the hard and courageous conversations we need to have. I have to say there was a certain cognitive dissonance walking to that meeting past the video cameras asking people to share “What I Love About AOSA!” Of course, there is much to love, but only when equally balanced with critical judgment and a brave look at all the things we could be doing so much better. 

 

So gratitude to you all for your presence in that meeting, to all who spoke from the heart and all who didn’t speak, but still might. I—and hopefully others— felt that this is just the beginning of more conversation to come. That the many issues brought up—and there were indeed many— all ask for continued thought and reflection calling forth our deepest intelligence and widest imagination. While offering each other both the encouragement and the safety to speak our personal truths in search of our collective truths.

 

One of the hardest things for me during this time is that maddening feeling of people hiding behind the culture of litigation that advises us not to say certain things or admit missteps. As I said, the rule of law is a safety net absolutely necessary to protect us and catch us when we fall off the tightrope of face-to-face conversations. But the net isn’t there to suggest we never step out on the tightrope. Indeed, that tightrope, that place of risk and balance and graceful movement and support from our colleagues, seems to be the very nature of our organization. 

 

So I hope we remember that we are teachers and we are artists and these should be front and center in everything we do. When I first joined the Orff Echo magazine board, I loved that we opened and closed each meeting singing a canon together. I loved that people would suggest things that others thought wouldn’t work and we were given enough time and space to keep discussing until a larger picture was formed and people ended up saying, “Okay, I changed my mind. Let’s try it!” 

 

When a new Editor from outside AOSA was hired, all of that changed. No more singing, no more setting our own agenda, top-down decisions without sufficient knowledge of who we are and what we do. When I protested, some shut me down and there was some behind-my-back talk going on about how to get rid of me. I finished out my term, didn’t sign up for a second and soon after, that Editor was fired by the Board. (But never an apology to me or thanks for pointing out what they eventually saw.)

 

I share this story simply to give an example of what can happen when we stray too far from our shared mission. In retrospect, the one thing I would have loved to have happened in that recent meeting is to end in a circle holding hands and singing a song. Perhaps something like Simple Gifts or Amazing Graceor This Little Light.  In other words, put an artistic stamp on the hard work of negotiating human conflict. Move beyond politics to poetry as the medium that expresses issues far more profoundly than any lawyer’s brief ever could. Like this one below, that speaks so eloquently about what happened to make that meeting necessary, what happened at the meeting and what we need moving forward. 

 

A RITUAL TO READ TO EACH OTHER

 

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

 

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dike.

 

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

 

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

 

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

 

-       William Stafford