The Blame Game

This blog began some time ago, when I realized that the things the boat teaches us are the things that religious people, and in particular this Christian priest, need to know and put into practice. Today, my topic is the Blame Game.

At practice this past week, I rowed in an eight that had, well, not the smoothest row in the world. Blades on the starboard side kept slapping the water, our legs seemed to go out from under us. At first, we were beating the other boats, but as practice went on, we fell further and further behind.

In this situation, there is a temptation to blame the problems on others: is this not a universal human tendency? At the same time, rowing teaches very explicitly the ways in which this stance is not only unhelpful, but harmful. As soon as one enters the Blame Game in the boat, muscles tighten, limbs stiffen, yanking begins, expletives pop out unbidden. The boat begins to fall behind, fall apart. One Big Blame, a thought or an action, infects each rower and like a virus soon overtakes the entire crew. Few people can withstand the assault of the One Big Blame, which soon mutates into smaller but no less insidious fevers. It is very difficult to recover once this has occurred.

My boat did something different that day. No Blame. No Fault. Our coxswain simply tried to keep helping us come together. People took their own roles seriously and did what they could to help, to correct, to unify. All nine of us. It got a little better, not too much.But it was enough, at least for me.

When we got back to the dock, no damage had been done, we were all still OK, just as we had been when we started practice. Blame damages this way: it allows me to sidestep any notion of my own personal role and responsibility. Others have failed where I have, at the very least, been trying to succeed.  It gives me a fleeting sense that I am perfect (one might say I am God!), and you are not. What a tantalizing hierarchy and power trip that is!

The No Blame Game is much less dramatic. Does this make it less interesting? The No Blame Game is so difficult to cultivate in a community. It causes no violence to another. The practice of living a different way - at rowing, at church, with our families - takes commitment, patience, trial and error. And the result is infinitely more life-giving, hopeful, peaceful.

That's what I learned at practice the other day. And I thank the boat - my teammates - for teaching me.