Embracing Imperfection

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Religious Education for children and youth happens during worship on Sundays. Children and youth arrive in the Sanctuary for the just a little bit and welcome in Sunday with a story and song. Then, they attend their own programs in the Education building. Learn more here!

If you don’t have a chalice, but want to light one, check out our Making a Chalice at Home page.

In person services are followed by coffee hour.

Children’s Story

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Reflection by Jenny Newell

Rev. Maria Cristina likes to include in her Sunday welcome “Here, we believe everyone can sing.” But I can’t. Or, to be accurate – I don’t. I have a memory. I’m in the passenger seat in the car. My mother is driving. I am 7, maybe 8 years old. A song I know comes on the radio and I start to enthusiastically sing along. Halfway through the song, my mother interrupts with something to the effect of “You can’t sing at all. You sound terrible and should stop.”

Yes, my mom probably just wanted a bit of quiet while driving and didn’t want to listen to a 7 year old hollering along to Queen or Blondie or whatever was playing on the radio in 1980. But I believed her. She was the adult and obviously she’d know better than I would. I tried not to sing in the car with her after that – if I forgot, she’d remind me that my singing was just awful.

My father loved music (although to be fair, he also always claimed he couldn’t sing), and the more unusual the better. He liked Thelonious Monk and Frank Zappa, klezmer music and Irish pennywhistles. The man owned a theremin! But he got to me too late – by the time he tried to get me to learn the clarinet, an instrument he’d played since he was a child, I already believed that music was “not for me”; that I had no talent; that I was tone deaf. In 7th grade, of course, they gave us all a recorder one semester and I actually had no problem learning that … but I didn’t think that was a “real” instrument so it didn’t matter. 

About 7th grade is also when I started to get into theater. I did a bunch of children’s theater productions … but only regular plays. Musicals, which I loved, were also “not for me.” So I was backstage as a stagehand or costume assistant for Pirates of Penzance, Sweeney Todd, 1776, Camelot, and so on. I couldn’t sing, after all. Oh, I tried a couple of times, but I was terrified of looking bad. My mom said I can’t sing, and she’d know, right? Wouldn’t she?

What it took me about 40 years to realize is that in all my short life up to the point my mother said that to me was that I’d never had a single music lesson. No one had *taught* me to sing. Of COURSE I was terrible! 

I was considered a “gifted” child. I learned to read before I was 3 years old. I was good at math – I understood fractions by kindergarten. School was easy. I didn’t have to try hard to get by, and I did the bare minimum. So by this point I probably already had the idea in my head that I was either “just good” at things automatically, or if I wasn’t, they were not for me. Because I was “the smart one”. And I don’t think it did me any favors, because I was afraid to try things in case I wasn’t naturally good at them. I didn’t know how to learn something that was hard. I didn’t know how to fail. 

I joke that I’m a control freak. Eric and Rev. Maria Cristina can probably tell you how agitated I get when service has a tech issue. If I’m not that effortlessly competent gifted child, if everything hasn’t gone perfectly, then who am I? Do you know how many times I revised this reflection, trying to get it *just perfect*?

In April 2021, when we were all mostly still home and events were mostly not happening, Prince Philip died. I saw his funeral online and it reminded me that something I’d always wanted to learn was … the bagpipes. I said to my husband “hey, can I take up an expensive and really obnoxious hobby?” and of course he said yes, so I found a teacher online that would give me lessons over Zoom, got a practice chanter, and started learning. (For those who don’t know, you don’t learn on actual bagpipes, just the part you blow in and the finger holes. No bag or drones. It’s actually pretty similar to a recorder).  I figured if I was terrible, 99% of people wouldn’t know anyway (don’t tell my teacher I said that).

It’s been almost 3 years and I’m still on the practice chanter. I still don’t have actual pipes. I still can’t really read music; I have to count notes up from low G and write the letters down on my sheet music! I often can’t play a tune consistently from one day to the next. I can’t use a metronome without forgetting the notes I’m supposed to play. I lift my fingers too high and my embellishments are slow and sloppy. I’m not naturally good at it. 

And I love every minute of it. I can tell how much I’ve learned. I’m not “tone deaf”, I can hear when I play the wrong notes. I know 5 tunes by heart. I’ve just nailed a tune that’s taken me 18 months to get right. I could have lived my whole life believing this was something I couldn’t do. That it was not for me. But I decided I was willing to try and fail, rather than never try to do something I’d always wanted. 

I’m a rule-following type of person. But I’ve realized a lot of these “rules” don’t actually exist. I’m making up rules about being perfect, about not trying and failing, that are making my life harder. Those rules aren’t real.

I still can’t sing – not really, anyway. Or maybe I can. I don’t really know. I’ve still never had a voice lesson. But it doesn’t matter to me anymore. I love karaoke, where no one expects you to sound good anyway. And you’d better believe I was hollering along with Freddie Mercury all the way into church this morning.