Example, Not Discipline

Today was a rough rehearsal.  Not just because it had been longer since we rehearsed a lot of the scenes and they had gotten a bit rusty, but because I was trying to do not just double but, in reality, triple-duty at once.

Which even more unfortunately means being less open and caring and encouraging and more abrupt, matter-of-fact, and even having to plainly tell students to wait and not talk for a minute while I deal with the other students' issues.

In some ways it feels like a betrayal of the warm atmosphere I try to create in rehearsals, and it wasn't fully dampened.  For most students, not by a long shot.  But that's why I hate this part of rehearsals.  I have to be more drill sergeant than creative guide and guardian.  Not just because I'm trying to track down 10,000 prop and costume pieces and personnel, etc.

So it's a good day for me to reflect on how to lead as a Christian teacher.  As the New Testament reading exhorts leaders in the Church to do.  Not as a burden but eagerly.  Overseeing but not by constraint.  With joy and encouragement -- like I recruited the stage hand in the hallway with a quick word of thinking she'd be good at it, rather than the way I had to order and re-order my costume designer's hard work.

Because the best theatre is like the faith that Jesus outlines for Peter.  It's not something you come to on your own.  It's something given to you by God, by your fellow castmates, by the collective efforts of those working.

All of this is to say that I wish I'd read the day's readings at the beginning of the day so that they would be on my mind as I negotiated group work issues I didn't really solve so much as hope for the best and watch God mostly resolve.  And tried to direct a bifurcated rehearsal with a possibly unnecessary sacrifice of gentleness for clarity.

Real leadership doesn't look like that.  Relationships built up can take a day or two of that.  That's the entire premise of tech week in theatre.  But they need to be based on mutual trust and love.  Leading through example and guiding of eager willingness.

It's a good time for this reading, as has been the case throughout Lent.  To remind me that there's always the time to be my best self.