yesterday tbV and i attended the wedding of some friends we have made in americaland, namely Kristin and the Beatles [as i call Matt, cos to me he looks like 2 or more of the Beatles rolled into one] and had a really fun time.

the wedding was outside and the highlight of the event [apart from all of the wedding-related stuff of course] was this young flowergirl who completely messed up her job and yet somehow got the equivalent of a standing ovation [that sitting people can give] from the crowd…

and my explanation will do it absolutely no justice at all, but let me try – the audience had formed a semi-circlish kind of shape and the seven bridesmaids had walked through one after another building the expectation and with gentle music playing in the background as everyone awaited their first glimpse of the lovely bride… enter flowergirl…

young, pretty, dressed nicely and walking along with her basket of flower petals grabbing handfuls of them [‘grabbing’ in the way that a heavy metal lead guitarist would as opposed to the more graceful ‘grabbing’ one might use to describe a heart surgeon carefully reaching past a crucial artery] and throwing them at [as opposed to ‘gently and lightly tossing them into the air so that they might settle like a flock of gently settling doves after a synchronised flying aerial display] the ground [in the way that the previously mentioned heavy metal rocker might ‘gently lay down’ his guitar at the end of a set into thousands of tiny scattered guitar shards] and having most of them land on her top… before savagely [well, as savagely as a prettily dressed flower girl might be capable of] turning the basket over and emptying the rest on the ground just over half way to the front…

and the response to this messed up, ungraceful, wedding-holding-up display? applause… thunderous applause… as thunderous as a [well, by now i’m thinking you get it, it was pretty thunderous]

because it was a wedding. and she is a young girl. and the crowds were gathered for a celebration. and everyone was in the spirit of love and life and wonder and grace and joy. and because no other response would have felt close to being the right one.

she didn’t steal the show from the married couple, because it was a wedding and the marrying couple deserve and win the majority of the love and support and celebration… but she did provide an extra unscripted moment of unity and surprise and fun.

and this morning as i thought back to that delightful event, i thort to myself, imagine if we could treat all forms of ‘failure’ or ‘accident’ or ‘mishap’ like that… what if we chose to celebrate the person, rather than the action? what if we decided that the ‘failure’ [which, at least for a few more years, we cannot go back into the past and make any changes to] was just something to learn from or to save for ‘remember that time when you’ stories and chose not to get angry or frustrated or make people feel stupid? what if, time after time, we chose people rather than things?

what if, we chose to take the stance of the wedding crowd more often than we currently do?