"Shoulda Been Me"

Bruce Beisner
December 27, 2009

Reading: "Let The Motor Go" by Tony Burkhart

Last September my wife and I went on a four day fishing trip with two friends to a large lake in eastern Maine. Settling into our isolated cabin on one of the lake’s islands we decided to take advantage of the last few hours of daylight and take the canoes out on the lake. A stiff westerly breeze blew down the watershed. We figured we would paddle downwind four miles or so and motor back against the head wind. We scudded down the lake propelled by the tail wind,surfing on the two to three foot swells, prolonging our turnaround time while enjoying the exhilaration of the moment. The last of the sun’s rays were rapidlyvanishing in the west.

Finally we decided it was time to head back for the island and with considerable effort got the canoe turned around into the wind. This was when my anguished outbursts and gnashing of teeth began. As I repeatedly pumped the fuel tank and pulled the starter cord, the motor didn’t emit
a sound, not even a cough or a pop.My frustration and anger increased. The situation was not going my way and my worst fears about having to paddle against a considerable headwind in a heavy canoe were rapidly materializing.I pulled and pumped and pulled and pumped some more.By now my language had reverted to my navy days and I was making a complete jerk out of myself. My wife and friends rolled their eyes with a tense and diminishing tolerance for my behavior.

As I repeatedly pulled the starter cord, pumped the fuel tank and became even more obnoxiously verbal, my wife finally turned from her place in the bow of the boat and said,“Tony, let the motor go!” It all became amusing suddenly. I recall a momentary shift of ego energy to something else of which I am still uncertain. “Let the motor go” was the only alternative under the circumstances. There was no other choice but to pick up a paddle and enjoy what was left of the evening. The astonishing part was that once I honestly let go of the motor, the evening did become enjoyable, if not sublime, paddling back with jokes and conversation and the exquisite joy of close friends and the deep wilderness.

This incident has left me reflective over the past six months. Letting the motor go feels more like a process than a conscious decision. It was prompted by my own hubris and helplessness in such a situation, and by the wisdom of the company in which I found myself at the time. It seems that which gets in the way of our agenda also contains that which is most instructive. 

Sermon: "Shoulda Been Me" by Bruce Beisner

When I was 19 years old I met my friend Dale. In his baggy clothes and baseball cap, Dale was just your average guy from a small town in the mountains outside Charleston, West Virginia. But on Saturday nights, Dale would transform himself into his alter ego, a fierce drag queen named Delisha. While I remember Dale as a quiet, shy and rather plain looking person, Delisha was flashy and brassy, with an outspoken demeanor and raucous sense of humor. She was loud, proud and in your face!

I bring up my friend Dale this morning not to brag about the all colorful characters I’ve known over the years, but because I was thinking about him this past week in preparing this sermon. In particularly I was remembering a song he used to perform quite often in drag at the local nightclub.

On many a weekend evening back in 1986, Dale would put on his best dress and high heels and step out on stage to perform to an old gospel style tune called “Shoulda Been Me.”  The lyrics of the song tell the story of a scorned woman who is attending the wedding of her former boyfriend. She is there in the church watching the love of her life marry another woman.  In the middle of the ceremony, she rises from the pew  and angrily exclaims “It shoulda been me!”

Whenever Dale performed this song, he really got into it, with amazing anguish and pathos. During his frequent performances of “Shoulda Been Me,” it became a tradition for patrons to come up to the stage and tip him, not with dollar bills but with glass ash trays and cocktail glasses.  Caught up in the emotion of the song, Dale would grab the ashtray and, with all the drama of a good drag queen, slam it down onto the stage, shattering it. The crowd would go wild, screaming and clapping.

I look back on this as not just great entertainment. I think that song “Shoulda Been Me” and Dale’s interpretation of it tapped into something primal in many of the young lesbian and gay people in the crowd, including me. I think it spoke to our frustration and anger over living in a town that should accept us as we were, but didn’t, with families that shouldn’t make us hide who we were, but often did, and in a country that should recognize our relationships but wouldn’t.  The breaking of those glasses was extremely cathartic, allowing us to symbolically release all the fury of feeling that life should be different.

Even if we’ve never seen a drag show or attended the wedding of a former lover, we all have those moments when our heart cries out “It shoulda been me.”  Those times in our lives that when we think  “It shoulda been me who got that last piece of apple pie” or “It coulda been me who won a new car on the Price is Right.” Or perhaps, “It would have been me who helped that person in need, if only I’d been more thoughtful.”

Shoulda, woulda, coulda. These thoughts haunt us. They speak of missed opportunities, of broken relationships, and things we wanted but didn’t get. They remind us that life isn’t fair and is, at times, filled with disappointment. That no matter how much we think we are in control, we aren’t. 

This holiday time of year brings up lots of memories. Some are pleasant thoughts. I recall many a Christmas Eve holding a brightly lit candle and singing “Silent Night” in the darkened sanctuary of my family’s Lutheran church. I remember the year my older brother and I got brand new sleds from Santa and spent Christmas morning playing in the record snowfall of the Blizzard of 1978. You surely have some wonderful Christmas memories too.
But the holidays also can be filled with long, dark nights. Candles and snow and carols bring memories of lost youth. Thoughts of loved ones who are no longer around to share the turkey with, of all those Decembers we intended to go and volunteer at the Food Bank but just got too caught up in our holiday shopping to find the time. Of years when we decorated and planned the perfect holiday gathering, and it just didn’t turn out that way.

A close friend of mine went into the hospital this past Monday.  A couple of days before his scheduled surgery, he shared with me how important it was to him to be able to be home for Christmas with his wife and daughter. His biggest anxiety about the surgery was not medical, but that he wouldn’t recover quickly enough and would have to spend the holiday in a hospital bed. He came home on Wednesday but experienced such lingering pain that his wife ended up driving him back to the hospital early on Thursday morning.  On Christmas Day I called his hospital room and we talked about his feelings, and how disappointed he was to be missing a family Christmas at home.  It shouldn’t have happened this way.

It seems to me that these shoulda, woulda, couldas seem to fall into two areas of our lives. There are the actions we think we should have done. The empathy we should have felt.  Those little personal failures to live up to our ideals. These memories create guilt and regret. They lead to self doubt. They make us wonder if we are really the good person we think we are.

There are also those expectations we have about the world that seem to get shot down on a daily basis. Our belief in the inherent goodness of humanity is difficult to sustain whenever we move from the abstract realm of theological thought into the real nitty gritty of everyday life. Other people let us down. They can be petty, selfish, inconsiderate, unfair. That woman who pushed her way to the front of the line at the bus stop without considering those already waiting, including you. The President who starts a war, sets up internment camps and defends to use of torture. We live amongst institutions that perpetuate violence and greed and systems which codify injustice. It’s impossible not to feel that these people shoulda acted better, coulda done better and of course, “I woulda known better.”

Our personal regrets, and our disappointments with those around us are a challenge.  If we are not careful they can easily become a muddy rut that leaves us spinning our wheels. We can get stuck in our frustration at ourselves and the world. As Ann Landers, that noted purveyor of wisdom, once said: “Hanging onto resentment is letting someone you despise live rent-free in your head.”  In many situations, they only path forward is acceptance and forgiveness.  We must let go, surrender and realize nothing is ever perfect.  Every moment and experience will always come with a shoulda, woulda, or coulda. Writer David Augsburger puts it this way: “Since nothing we intend is ever faultless, and nothing  we attempt ever without error, and nothing we achieve without some measure of finality and fallibility, we are saved by our ability to forgive.”

In a couple of days as we welcome in the New Year, we will be reminded to “Let old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind” As the ball drops, Guy Lombardo’s ghost will say “let go of the past, it’s time to start anew!”  Time to forget and forgive. 

But forgiveness is not unconditional. We can’t always forget our history. And perhaps at times we’re not meant to. Maybe some of  those “shoulda, woulda, couldas” are there for a reason. They do more than just drag us down into self pity and regret. More than just teach us to have low expectations of life. That feeling that something wasn’t or isn’t right can be a powerful motivator for growth. It can be that little itch in our side which reminds us that we can do better next time. That we must not repeat the mistakes of the past. That we are called to change what’s not right with our own lives and with the world.

Desmund Tutu, the former Anglican Archbishop of South Africa, spoke of the transformative power of the tribunals he headed in the years after the end of Apartheid, saying “We witness by being a community of reconciliation, a forgiving community of the forgiven.” But Tutu is quick to point out that this forgiveness could not come until the systematic oppression of Black South Africans had been brought to an end by years of struggle, protestsand international boycotts.

Earlier I spoke about how that song “Shoulda Been Me” seemed to have expressed my anger and hurt at how the world should have treated me and my gay brothers and sisters. During much of my youth those feelings pushed me further into a dark place of worthlessness and helplessness. But it was that same yearning for something better that eventually motivated me to become involved in local human rights organizations and to speak out, march and make some noise for equality.

When I think about that woman in the song, I wonder if someday she found peace and
forgiveness. I hope that her experience of a lover’s betrayal didn’t keep her from trusting other people in other relationships. I want healing for her. I hope she let go and moved on. But I am thankful that she was there for me when I needed to smash a few glasses to get over my disappointment.

St. Francis of Assisi so famously prayed "Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."  We’ve all heard this saying a million times, so much so that I kind of sounds a little trite and overly simplistic.
But there it is. One of the central challenges to being alive. Finding acceptance and forgiveness. And also growing and working for change. Learning how to release ourselves from those “shoulda, woulda, couldas” that get us mired down. Yet holding on to our hopes and dreams for a better tomorrow.

The trick is figuring out which are which. When to let go and when to hold on. Knowing the difference.  In our reflection, perhaps we need to examine some basic questions:What are the values at stake? What does this thing that haunts me have to do with who I am and who I want to be? And what can I do about it?  Do I have the power and ability to make it right, or not?

In our reading this morning, Tony Burkart talked about how acceptance is really a process. Sometimes figuring out when to let go comes quickly, in a moment of realization. Hearing his wife say “Let the motor go!” snapped him out of his ego driven anger and moved him into a new place of acceptance. But sometimes coming to peace with what has happened takes years or an entire lifetime. Sometimes it requires patience and fortitude.

Burkart also speaks about the gift of relationships in guiding us through the process. Forgiveness, acceptance and commitment all happen in relation to others and with others. On that boat in the river, it was his wife and friends who helped him let go. For me, it was my friend Dale and so many other people who urged me to hold on to who I was and refuse to accept anything less than respect.

Our Unitarian Universalist faith, with its affirmation to the acceptance of others and spiritual growth and its call for justice, equity and compassion offers us inspiration and direction. Being in relationship with the people of this church, our families and friends, we are constantly challenged to find the balance.

One again, it’s time for New Year’s resolutions.  This Thursday night as we say farewell to the old year and usher in the second decade of the 21st century, may we remember to both let go and hold on.

May these words from poet Mary Oliver ring in our ears:
To live in this world
you must be able to do three things:
To love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones,
knowing your own life depends on it;
And when the time comes to let it go, 
to let it go.

Amen.