Oh, the humiliation

I like being a cantor. It keeps me singing every week, and I enjoy helping people worship and pray. Cantoring has the power to teach spiritual lessons, too, sometimes even to the cantor.

Those lessons often come from a new understanding of Scripture as I'm proclaiming it in the Psalm or a hymn. But sometimes, there's another kind of lesson that teaches me in a far more practical way.

Last night at the 5:00 mass, there was a substitute pianist. She and I have worked together before, and I enjoy the chance to sing with her. She had made some changes to the music selections earlier in the week via email, which I never printed, but figured we'd have the chance to go over them before mass, which we did.

Everything was going swimmingly until I took my place on the ambo for the Psalm, "The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel." Imagine my surprise when the introduction she played was for another psalm altogether.

Now, I recognized the tune for this other psalm. Panicked, I flipped through the pages of my hymnal. I thought I would just sing the refrain, bring the assembly in to repeat it as usual, and hopefully God would help me find the verses before it was time to sing them.

Alas, 'twas not to be. I sang the refrain and the assembly repeated it, full-throated and confident. And then all the air went out of my balloon as I stood there, helpless, blushing, nearly choking in my inability to find the verses.

In the end, I just repeated the refrain and walked down the ambo steps. I was humiliated, because even though the pianist had made the mistake -- she just somehow played the wrong thing, she later admitted -- it appeared as though I had, since I was the one who was unable to perform, so to speak.

In my fog of embarrassment, anger and confusion, I didn't even hear the second reading. As I continued to fume, I had a thought: yes, that was an awful situation, but Jesus suffered far more humiliation on the cross.

I finally was able to laugh about it last night, in a cringing sort of way. I wouldn't care to repeat the experience, but remembering that others have suffered far more at least put it into perspective.