Sinful Timidity

While leafing through some old scores at home, I came upon a packet of music from a 2015 workshop I attended in Moscow, Russia. I enjoy searching my "stacks" for music I love but may have forgotten about; rediscovering such a piece is like embracing an old friend after spending years apart, during which time both people have grown and gained new perspectives, but the love and affection remain. I also find it fascinating to read through the scrawled notes that pepper most of my music library, and during this recent excursion into my score collection I came across a quote from the clinician, Vladimir Gorbik, copied in the margins of Archimandrite Matfei's Богородице Дево (Rejoice, Virgin Theotokos):

There are two extremes: fear of singing, and being overly confident/familiar. Both of these things are from the devil. Find the golden path in the middle, which is true freedom and humility.

When the maestro said this, it was easy to understand why overconfidence is problematic, but at the time I didn't fully understand the part about timidity. I guess I had a certain timid streak in myself back then, as I was still a fairly new Orthodox (10 years in, which isn't as long as it may sound) and was at least somewhat aware of how little I knew about liturgics. I could sing and conduct, but in our Church that doesn't necessarily mean very much unless one also has an encyclopedic understanding of rubrics, common cuts, and even what the clergy are doing while the choir sings (we all make mistakes and get lost occasionally, and if the priest does something unexpected or accidentally jumps ahead, it's on the choir director to quickly identify what has happened and what to do about it). This is not easy, and it takes years (and many mistakes!) to really learn your away around this stuff.

Anyway, by "fear of singing", the maestro wasn't talking about a few butterflies in one's stomach, nor about the truthful acknowledgement that one still has much to learn. He meant timidity, which — and this realization shocked me when I finally made this connection — is one of the daughters of pride.

This seems odd at first, doesn't it? We tell ourselves things like "I'm timid because I don't want to derail the service by singing in the wrong tone," (as if such a mistake, unnoticeable by the majority of the faithful outside of the choir, was that important!) or, "It's because my voice isn't very beautiful or powerful," or, "I'm terrified of making mistakes because then the faithful will think I'm terrible at this, and Father will get irritated with me."

You've had these thoughts. I know you have. And do you notice a trend, now seeing those thoughts typed out on your screen? The common thread here is this: "I'm timid because I'm fixated on other people's opinions of me," and that. is. pride.

Make no bones about it; if you're going to sing, conduct, or serve in the altar, you're going to make mistakes. Sometimes you can play it off smoothly and recover before the faithful notice, but some of your screwups will be obvious to everyone. It's unavoidable, and God allows this to happen precisely to help us with our (lack of) humility. All we can do is move forward and make a note about what happened so we hopefully don't repeat the same error in the future.

It's incumbent on each of us to prepare as thoroughly as possible for every service, ranging from a "vanilla" Divine Liturgy to the Annunciation Vigil, which has unquestionably the most complicated rubrics in the entire liturgical year. We prepare, we ask questions, we "pre-game" with the priest to iron out any last-minute details before the service begins, and then whatever happens happens. It's in the Holy Spirit's hands at that point, and He will always be with us if we just consent to His presence and do the best we can.