The village pantomime has finished: I found it hugely enjoyable- each time when I’m cast, my inner child who was too scared to do this punches the air in triumph. It’s always a risk auditioning: you might not get a part, particularly when the dramatic society have new faces joining. I find it quite nerve wracking waiting for the directors to give their decision, although my joy was tempered by a good, gifted friend not getting a major role.
That’s how any kind of group is supposed to work: newer people join, they are accepted and relationships and roles change. It’s hard sometimes for we who are established parts of a group: sometimes we have to give up status and role and learn new ways of being part of something.
For all of my life I’ve been part of voluntary groups; even more so in the last (nearly) twenty years that I’ve lived here. Many of them have described themselves as ‘welcoming communities’ and, by and large, they are: the world is so much better for them being there.
But….
…sometimes when people take up that invitation to join that community, the welcome can be conditional: ‘Join if you must, but don’t dare usurp our place’. Then I think about welcoming the newcomer to any group: for it to be genuine, sometimes I have to ‘lose’, although a better way of putting it is that I ‘gain’; new insights, relationships and ways of being. Once a community becomes rigid it has within it the seeds of its own ending.
The Good Book gives instructions to a fledgling community : ‘rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep’. It is possible to weep in a sense of ‘thank God it’s not me who is suffering’, but generally the human impulse to comfort is easier. Rejoicing with those who rejoice tends to be harder; they’ve got that good thing I wanted, they are overjoyed and I’m not- I really want to slink away. A healthy community knows that it holds constant weeping and rejoicing, while all still have a place.
I know that, but if I audition again (of course I will…) it will be in the sense that I have no right by virtue of ability or lack of it, seniority or any other category.; the director directs, I don’t. I hope, after any temporary soreness, that I’ll go up to those who have roles and rejoice with them and be first to offer a ‘well done’. It is hard though…
I hope, but then grace, acceptance, and welcome doesn’t always come easy and theory is always easier than practice. Being open hearted when you think you’ve ‘lost’ isn’t natural and is often learned through difficulty.
I do like being on stage though…
Wearily Hopeful 