Wearing the cloak of respectability lightly

Ah, Commencement. A time to celebrate. A time to enjoy the upcoming freedom of summer. A time to enjoy the quietness of the town before summer school starts and the seasonal residents arrive in droves. Also a time to observe how society has changed since last year’s Commencement. Although my heart is usually broken by my observations, the ceremony is still good each year. I have to say that this year, our crowd was very well behaved. But this is a blog, and so we’re going to pick it apart, anyway:

There was the usual hooting and hollering for this or that graduate (is that related to the sophomoric hooting and hollering for a groom who finally ties the knot?). There were those graduates who wore shorts and flip-flops under their gowns (one of the oldest and lamest tricks in the book). There were the usual graduate(s) who painted messages on their mortarboard (again, lame).

I’m a fun loving guy, but I get serious when it’s time. I may sit backstage and crack jokes about these organ shoes making my butt look big, but when it’s time to walk out and play, I leave the Bozo nose out of it. I’ll play a great recital, and then I’m ready to go eat Mexican food and tell adult jokes. My dear friend John Yarrington still tells the story of me playing a recital one day and on the next holding up one end of the sofa he bought while walking behind the truck. Well, I’m me. I’m “good help” and a lot of fun, but I have worked hard enough for long enough to know that I play pretty darn well, and I don’t apologize for being respectable on the stage.

I believe it’s that word “apologize” that derails us most often. Passive apology, such as painting words on your mortarboard. Or the clergyperson who doesn’t want to be perceived by his youthful charges as stuffy, and so he wears Birkenstocks under his vestments and approaches the liturgy with a casual air of “y’all come.” Or the clergyperson who begins the liturgy not with “Blessed be God…” but rather with “Good MOOORNing! and WELLLcome to HOLy EUCHarist, RITE ONE!” as if we were at the world premiere of a long-lost Bernstein musical. Or the student who doesn’t want to be seen as responsible among his peers because it’s not cool. Or the brightest minds capable of great things but can’t keep up with their daily schedule. Come on, folks. It’s okay to get it right and be proud of it.

This past “May the fourth” fell on a Sunday. Someone was agonizing on Facebook over how to work Star Wars themes into the liturgy for that day. I told him, “It’s church, not a frat party. Leave Hollywood out of it.” (On the other hand, I myself did put South Park tunes into all services one Sunday. But they deserved it. Read about it here.) One Sunday many years ago, the Warden of the Vestry got up during the announcements and sang a song about the Rector “turning 50 in the morning,” sung to the tune of “Get me to the church on time.” I have seen moving liturgy brought to a mushroom cloud at the Peace by a troupe doing a frivolous skit about the upcoming country day fair. You’ve got to be kidding me.

But I know what it's like to be a prophet in his own land. I have been accused of being “so far above us now” when I played a fine recital on the home turf. But you know what? Screw ’em! It’s who I am now, and I will encourage anyone struggling with it themselves to wear the cloak of respectability lightly, except when it needs to be buttoned alllllll the way up.