Grief

A Hot Mess: Seeing Myself in Father Gabriel

Posted on by PopCulturePreacher

“You play a bad priest so well,” I said to Seth Gilliam, the actor who plays Father Gabriel on AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead.’  “Father Gabriel is a hot mess! Good job!”

Mr. Gilliam smiled.  “Yes, he is.  He is a hot mess.”

Thank you, dear eight pound, six ounce baby Jesus that Mr. Gilliam *did* smile.  The last thing I want to do is offend this gifted actor.  I meant my comment as an absolute compliment. Mr. Gilliam’s  nuanced portrayal of the fumbling Father often elicits visceral reactions from me: I yell at the tv…a lot.  When we found out he hoarded all the canned goods, I bellowed, “Have you forgotten the story of the manna?!?” When Father Gabriel says to Rick, “The wine’s just wine until it’s blessed,” I grunted “Have you forgotten that in the Beginning God called it ALL good?” GAH!  As a clergy person, Father Gabriel drives me batty.

It’s when I turn off the tv and get back to real life that I realize why: Father Gabriel has forgotten who and Whose he is. He is a hot mess, and if I’m being honest here, this pretend pastor gets a rise out of me because I, too, have been a hot mess of a pastor more than once during my 12 year career.  We all have.

Clergy friends, can I get an “Amen”?

We’re just human, like everyone else, and Seth Gilliam’s Father Gabriel reminds me of that every time I watch.

When we first meet Father Gabriel, he’s up on a rock, all alone, isolated from everyone, surrounded by walkers snapping their jaws. To me, that big rock looked like the place in society where clergy are often placed: up on a pedestal. Ordained clergy are “set apart for special service,” but often times, being “set apart” gets misunderstood. Often, church folk, and non-church folk alike, want pastors to be strong and wise and have all the answers. We want pastors and priests to say all the right things, at all the right times, to kindly remind us we’re loved and beloved, while also speaking truth to power. We want them to care for the widow and the orphan, and be the vanguard of the marginalized, all while not offending any one. We want them to be like Jesus – the nice version of Jesus we’ve cherry-picked from scripture. We want pastors and priests to be perfect.

God forbid our pastors ever, actually, be human beings.

A couple of days ago, I ran into new congregants of mine out for lunch with friends. “Looks like you had a great birthday!” they said, commenting on my social media pics from Walker Stalker Chicago. “We loved seeing your pictures with all those people from the zombie show.” They turned to their friends and explained, “She loves ‘The Walking Dead.’”

One of the friends raised an eye brow, “I hope you’re stronger than Father Gabriel.”

I’ve only just met this person and already I’m up on that rock as clergy-walker-bait.

“To be fair,” I said, “I think we’d all be a hot mess in the zombie apocalypse, don’t you?” The truth is, whereas the zombie apocalypse hasn’t struck yet, we all (clergy and laity alike) have experienced our own personal apocalypses: betrayal by those intimate with us, death of loved ones, financial catastrophe, loss of work, feelings of insecurity, depression, frustrations with family and friends and children, health crises, addictions, grief, and other gut-wrenching tragedies all amidst the daily grind of life. And even though my colleague, the Rev. Elizabeth Dilley, likes to describe me as “the one who would win if there was such a thing as ‘Pastors Fight Club’” the truth is, I’m not always a badass. I’m not always stronger than Father Gabriel.  I’m not always confident or sure of myself, and I do not get it right all the time. Far from it.

I’m human and I’m a pastor and God knows those two things are hard to hold together.

After the birth of my eldest daughter I found myself isolated, with the jaws of postpartum depression (PPD) snapping at me left and right. I felt like Father Gabriel in his inaugural moment: up on a rock, all by myself, helpless, and terrified. As a clergy person watching that scene, remembering the personal apocalypse that was my PPD, when my whole world fell apart and I had to find a way to just survive somehow, I saw that rock he found himself on in a different way. It was like the pedestal we’re often put up on as clergy which I had internalized. I remember being so afraid of what people would think of me as a clergyperson when I realized I had PPD. “But I’m The Pastor. I’m not supposed to be the one who needs help. I’m supposed to be the one who helps other people.”  PPD threatened to consume me, but so did the unrealistic expectations with which clergy are so often saddled, which I had swallowed whole.

God forbid we allow ourselves as pastors to actually be human.

Thank God somebody showed up before I got consumed by it all. My friend Katie put her own newborn baby in the car, told her husband she’d be back (but I didn’t know when), then drove six hours north to be with me, and spent weeks with us during my leave of absence from church. Katie T., who has known me since I was 16 and is also a clergyperson, knows me without all the pretense – she’d never put me up on a pedestal, and yet, because she’s also a Pastor, she’s often found herself up there, too.  She, and a PPD therapist, helped me climb down from that precarious position.  That which threatened to consume me, both the depression and my own outlandish expectations, lost their bite.  I came down off the rock of isolation and remembered who and Whose I really am – Leah, beloved child of God, wife, lover, mother, daughter, friend, and soul-sister who struggles with health and wellness just like anyone. I am a pastor, an ally, an artist, a writer, member of the creative class, and yes, an avid fan of the Walking Dead.

I am a messy human being, with all the complicated characteristics that make us who we are.  Thank God.

Maybe Father Gabriel isn’t such a bad priest after all.  Maybe he’s just forgotten who he is – who doesn’t when their world falls apart – and I put him up there on a pedestal like so often happens to me.  So, Father Gabriel, and all you real pastors and priests out there, you can be a hot mess and still be a good clergy person – remember who and Whose you are: a human being whose set apart.  Remember that and you’ll find yourself again.

Blessings, y’all…

PopCulturePreacher

P.S. This post was also inspired by going to Clergy Boundary Training this week, and pastors, you know what that’s all about.  If you do find yourself up there on that rock with some nasty thing or another nipping at your heels, call a colleague.  Call your therapist.  Talk to your Spiritual Director.  Take an extra day off.  Take care of yourself.  As Parker Palmer says, “Self care is never a selfish act.”

The Way: walking the pain changes us

Posted on by PopCulturePreacher

He doesn’t expect to be making this trip.

He doesn’t expect to be joined by these people.

He certainly doesn’t expect to walk this road with his son’s ashes strapped to his back.

Thomas Avery didn’t expect life to turn like this. But it did. And when he finally opens himself to it, he’s changed. Isn’t that always the way?

On the first anniversary of my mom’s death, I snuck an order of sweet potato fries into the movie theater to see “The Way,” the 2010 film about Thomas Avery, a father who travels across the ocean to claim his son’s body after his tragic death, and then, chooses the unexpected: he walks the Camino de Santiago in his son’s stead. “The Way” was written, produced, and directed by Emilio Estevez, and stars his dad, Martin Sheen. Estevez appears in the movie as well. He’s Daniel, the son who dies, whose cremains the father carries, and sprinkles handfuls of along the Camino. Going to see that movie, on that day of all days, seemed like the thing to do because if my mom had been alive, we would’ve seen it together. My mom adored Martin Sheen. (Can’t Jeb Bartlett run for President?) And Emilio Estevez? Well, I’ve loved Two-Bit Mathews and Andrew Clark since I was a tween. (For those of you not up on your 80s teen flicks, those are characters Estevez played in “The Outsiders” and “The Breakfast Club,” respectively — two of my favorites.) That night, in 2010, the fries spilled all over my purse, the movie made me cry, and honestly, I didn’t understand entirely why.  (About Mom’s Death)

I decided to re-watch “The Way” a couple of weeks back. Like “It’s a Wonderful Life” at Christmas, this movie is a seasonal must-see. It’s a Lent movie that’s not about Lent itself, but what happens to us when we go where Lent invites us. Side road: Lent is the 40 day period – not including Sundays – that begins with the ancient ritual of donning our foreheads with ashes on Ash Wednesday and ends with the over-the-top, life-affirming, death-will-not-have-the-last-word celebration that is Easter. There’s something about the Lenten journey that changes us: new life is born out of pain when we really, truly walk through it. Think of it like that old camp song, “Going on a Bear Hunt”: can’t go around it, can’t go over it, can’t go under it, gotta go through it.  It’s the going through it that becomes transformational.

It’s the “gotta go through it” path that Thomas Avery chooses.  He could’ve just shipped his son’s body home, buried his son and all their father-son mess with him, and gone back to his routine, a routine that includes ignoring his grief about his wife’s death. But he wakes the coroner of a tiny French village in the in the middle of the night to say, “I want to cremate the body,” then he wastes no time. The next day, he begins the walk. As we watch him go, clumsily at first and far too fast, we see glimpses of our own journeys. I did, at least, and that’s when this movie started to make sense in a way it didn’t the first time round. We’re never prepared to dive into life’s pain. “The Way” calls to mind the unexpected trips we’ve made, how life can take sudden, sorrowful turns. In the faces of Avery’s companions, we recognize people we’ve met, and how sometimes, surprisingly, strangers become trusted sojourners. As we watch Avery haul his deceased son’s backpack down the Camino de Santiago, sprinkling handfuls of his ashes at this shrine and on that cairn of rocks, we see the baggage we carry through life and how we let go of it when we’re ready. It’s the transformational journey we take when we are willing to give suffering over to God be used as soil for growth, rather than allowing the suffering to bury us.

As Richard Rohr says, “One of the enlightened themes that develops in the Judeo-Christian scriptures and reaches its fullness in…Jesus is the recognition of the transformative significance of human pain and suffering…how to hold, make use of, and transform our suffering into a new kind of life instead of an old kind of death.” (Transforming our Pain) Perhaps, that’s what’s so powerful about this movie – we see ourselves in Thomas Avery and how we too have experienced “new life instead of an old kind of death”.

We didn’t expect to be making this trip.

We didn’t expect to be joined by these people.

We certainly didn’t expect to walk this road with the ashes of memories, misgivings, and missteps strapped to our backs.

We don’t expect life to turn out like this, but it did. It does. It will. And when we open ourselves to the journey, we’re changed by it.  That’s always the way.

Even if you don’t keep Lent as a practice of faith, watch “The Way” sometime before Easter, would you? “The Way” will give you a new way to walk through this life.

 

Blessings, y’all….

Pop Culture Preacher

 

P.S. A big thanks to Dr. Marcia McFee whose Worship Design Studio series, inspired by this movie, prompted this post.

P.P.S. You can catch “The Way” on Netflix. Do it.

P.P.P.S. Four days after I re-watched “The Way” one of my congregants told me she is walking part of the Camino de Santiago this spring – crazy serendipity at work! She agreed to write a post about it when she returns.

Slice: the Work of Remembering & Being You

Posted on by PopCulturePreacher

{Warning: this post contains mild spoilers for The Walking Dead, Season 6, Episode 9, No Way Out}

When my mom died, I thought I would break. I felt fractured, like her death fissured my soft middle into sharp pieces, which stayed held together by my skin. The brokenness rumbled, poking from the inside out. Stabbing. Slicing. That’s how grief felt: like the pain would kill me. I didn’t think the sadness would ever leave.

There’s no fast forward button on grief.

I hate that.

It’s completely inconvenient that we’re allotted mere days to mourn in this modern life before we’re expected to be back at work, back in full swing, back to life as usual. Body and soul, heart and mind – they move on when they are ready to move on and not a minute sooner.

Meanwhile, the brokenness inside keeps stabbing. Without warning – slice. Something you see or hear or smell or taste or touch — some something you were not expecting — bumps up against your life. One of those sharp edges from the broken contents of your inner self cuts through a thin place in your skin. Slice. That mask you maintain so well gets slashed, from inside, and suddenly, you’re vulnerable. Conspicuous. Anyone who’s looking can see the big gaping wound.

That’s what I saw in actress Katelyn Nacon’s character, Enid, during the mid-season-six premiere of The Walking Dead. When she read the inscription over the church’s door, “Faith without works is dead. – James 2:26,” it bumped her. Slice. Oh, Enid, babe. I see you. I see how those words, for some reason, broke open the thin skin.

Slice.

How do you survive in this life when the people you can’t live without are gone?

This is the question Enid struggles with every day. When her character was first introduced, I thought she was just another moody teenager, because surely teenagers are allowed to be moody in the zombie apocalypse. Especially teenage girls, right? (I mean, for real, y’all, can you imagine your 16-year-old self on your period in Alexandria – I would’ve taken people’s heads off.) But, seeing Enid’s backstory, we see she’s not moody; she’s grieving. She’s surviving, somehow. Enid is orphaned. All alone. Even in a room full of people, she’s by herself. How will she live life without the people she’s never lived without?

Something about that phrase over the back door of the church bumped her. Slice. Glenn, masterfully portrayed by Steven Yeun, sees. He responds. “People you love,” he says, “They made you who you are. They’re still part of you. You stop being you [and] that last bit of them that’s still around inside who you are — it’s gone.”

Glenn, where were you five and a half years ago when I needed to hear that?

I struggled so much after my mother died, which may come as a surprise to you since I’m a clergy person…aren’t pastors supposed to know the secrets to life’s deepest mysteries and sail through this existence with Zen-like peace and tranquility? Well, if that’s what we’re supposed to do, I missed that lecture in seminary. Somebody send it to me.

In the years after my mom’s death, I felt like I was losing her constantly. When her yellow Tupperware bowl got put in the dishwasher, erasing her signature from the “This dish belongs to…” sticker on its bottom, I cried for days. When the lone voicemail I saved from her got accidentally deleted, then permanently deleted, I did not think I could go on. When my kid got sick, and all I wanted to do was call my mom to ask, “What should I do?” even though I am an adult, who is quite skilled in adulting, who has been adulting, proficiently, every day for YEARS, I crumbled. I needed to talk to my mom. Each time I got reminded of her and felt like I’d lost her, the wound busted open from the inside out.

Each time – slice.

But, then, that pain started to change. I’d be talking to my girls and hear her voice echo in mine, her practical brand of wisdom winging in my words. Or, David, my husband, would make me laugh so hard I’d snort. The snort-laugh: it’s so unbecoming and absolutely perfect – the way my mom laughed when something really got her. See, she shows up in my life all the time. When I’m being creative, speaking the truth, noticing the little details other people skip over, and doing other things I inherited from her, she’s there. She shows up, too, when I’m doing things she never dreamed of doing herself, but would be awfully proud of me for trying and testing, even if I don’t succeed.

When I am who I am, it’s like my mom is alive.

When I forget who I am, I start to forget who she was, too.

“People you love,” Glenn says, “They made you who you are. They’re still part of you. You stop being you [and] that last bit of them that’s still around inside who you are — it’s gone.”

So, here’s the truth, y’all: God needs you to be you in this world. No one else is going to be you. Who you were made to be by the Divine, and molded to be by the people who love you throughout your life, no one else can ever be that. You have to work at it. It’s easy to get swayed, thinking you have to be someone else, or that you should be a better, shinier, more perfect version of who you already are. It takes faith to believe in yourself, and that’s work, but when you do, you come alive, and so do the people who you’ve lost. “People you love…they made you who you are. They’re still part of you….” You stop being you and you’ll disappear right along with them.

So, Love, believe me when I say this: don’t disappear, the world needs you too much.

Blessings, y’all,

Pop Culture Preacher