Graciousness

So, it has come to my atention this week that I am totally incapable of accepting a compliment. Well, I can accept it so long as I modify it with something along the lines of, "weel, no" or "its not very good" or "I didnt like it." I seem okay with the statement that one enjoyed my performance but not with a subjective assessment of its merit (only if the critique is bad can I accept it). This concerns me because it was referred to as false humility, but I don't think I agree with that. It is a very uncomfortable thing to have someone say they like your performance, your writing, your art. I think most people are being polite and have not really gone into an in depth analysis, and I have no real need for people to be polite. I would like to think that, if they were being sincere and I knew it, I could say thanks without so much difficulty.

I have avoided Church drama for most of the last 15 years for two basic reasons. For one, Church drama usually sucks donkey poop and sucks fiercely. It is less art and more propaganda, too one-dimentional for my taste and generally stunningly poorly written. The second reason is that I really like appreciation, adoration and applause. I like it too much. I receive too much joy from applause and laughter and it concerns me because it makes me feel like an idiot for being so moved by it. The psychological determinist might point to the lack of affirmation I received in my early years, I don't know, I just love it. I drink it in and it makes me self-conscious that it miht peak its ugly head out when someone says nice things to me in person. Maybe that is the false humility my friend was talking about. It is not the lack of comfort with praise but rather the fear that someone might see how much I like it.

Since I have mentioned it, I feel the need to explore why church drama, and many arts within the context of church, suck the poop. I think the main reason is that we are under the most unfortunate opinion that our art needs to have a point and sway others to that point. I don't have a problem with works which do have a point, but I think good ones rarely started that way. We don't have all the answers folks and creating art which assumes that we will be able to give the answers is silly. While each of us is created in the image of the True Creator, and so each of us has the ability to create, we are not given the answers to any and every question in the universe and when we try to answer fully a question which is hanging in the ether of our culture, we tend to do so poorly. (wow, that is a long sentence) However, I do believe God inspires people to great works which can lend a spectacle into the truth of a given issue. The difficulty seems to be that we TRY to do so.

While we are on the subject, and unless you wish to hear an earful from me, do not say "you're telling a story" when you mean don't tell a lie. Don't say something is a fairy-tale or myth when you don't believe it to be true. This only shows your ignorance of story, fairy-tale and myth. We have replaced the concept of accuracy with the definition of truth. A story can be totally inaccurate and completely true. Fairy-tales and myths are considerably better vehicles to explain ideology and virtue than cold hard facts ever will be.

I guess what I am trying to say is choose accuracy over politeness, but choose fairy-tale over accuracy. Hmm, not very consistant I guess, so I will opt to live with that tension and I will try to be gracious and say thank you when I really want to tell you all that is wrong with my performance. Thank you for reading.