Talk Stigma

Hello, everyone. All right, so, hello. Here I am. My name is Pastor Seth Perry, and I'm in recovery from addiction. And welcome, everyone who's joining right now. Welcome to the live stream. So, like I said, I'm in recovery from addiction. I'm a pastor, and I also am in recovery from bipolar disorder type one. So that's who I am. Through my life in recovery, I became a pastor. And this is sort of just how I've decided to work with others to help them along in their recovery. I said, hey, could I be a counselor?

Or maybe I could become a pastor. So when looking at getting my master's degree, I decided to get one in theology, and so I became a pastor. That's what I am and what I do. So the question for all of you, here's my question. What happens when our spiritual recovery and our spiritual life looks messy? What does that mean for you when things look messy? And also from a perspective of being respectful of the spiritual trauma that other people go through when we see something that we think is messy, how can we maybe overcome that thought, overcome the thought that other people's messiness might just be something we don't understand or maybe haven't started a process of understanding or relationship with that other person?

And I'll get into a story around that in a bit. But to introduce the whole concept, right now, I'm in my room right now, my office, and, like, I put a picture up on the Cadre posts. So if you look back, there's a post from just a little while ago, and it shows boxes. And I got boxes right here. And I got boxes over there. I have a blanket over there from nap time. I was up at 05:00. I did two services this morning and then had a little quick nap before going live on Cadre. So I nap right here. So again, I got a blanket over there from my nap.

Not necessarily everyone in their office has a blanket. Yesterday, I did a wedding, and so I have some of the clothes from the wedding yesterday. Cause I kinda came in here and it was so hot, the wedding, it was very humid. We were in a smaller space. So, yeah, my wedding clothes kind of bunched up right over there on the. On the I. So I got a little tidying to do. You know, my suit jackets over, hung up over there. Probably not the way that I would want my office to look if I was counseling someone.

I have a Bluetooth speaker that was used in the wedding kind of in the middle of my office, and. And then my desk is not overrun with paper and paperwork and stuff like that, but it needs a tidy. So there is a little bit of mess and chaos. But sometimes that's the way that a pastor's office looks. Some pastors are completely neat and tidy all the time. So here's my story, though. My great uncle, he had a saying, and I learned this about him after he passed. And my dad said to him, to me, you know, Ken, your great uncle, great uncle Ken, he always had a philosophy that your desk needed to be completely tidy, that everything needed to be filed away and organized, and you couldn't start your day or start a new meeting or do anything unless you have tidied your desk.

So on the desk could be one writing utensil and a completely blank legal pad of yellow lined legal paper. And that was it. That's all that could be on your desk. It was a philosophy and a rule, and that's how he approached work. And he worked for the Bell phone company. And, Jules, I really appreciate this. Sometimes mess and chaos, open doors. Yes, absolutely. Beautiful observation. So that was his very sanitized look at work. So you think that my dad would pick up on this and that that would be his, you know, his.

His method, you know, because my dad passed this information on to me. He didn't say that he had completely adopted Uncle Ken's approach to keeping a tidy workspace. He didn't say, and this is now how I do things. My dad didn't say that, and I'll tell you why. So, like I said, uncle Ken, he was a vp of the Bell phone company before it split off into all of its different subsidiary companies. So there were quite a few vps, and there was just sort of a company policy that that was the way things were in corporate America.

Pre 1955, we'll say. You know, he climbed the corporate ladder in that time frame. Well, there was really one way to do things corporately, kind of a lot like faith and religion. You know, for so long, there's just been one way to do things, and I think that it's valuable to kind of think about all the different way we do things. So my dad did not get a corporate job. He kind of went in a different path than everyone else in my family. My grandfather and his brother Ken, they thought my dad should follow the footsteps and become a businessman, maybe in the family business.

You know, the family business was in furniture. Well, that's not what happened. You know, in my father's sophomore year, he became in love with language and linguistics, German specifically. And he actually excelled at it. He was such a gifted student in that that's a little bit of a different way of thinking than business. And so my dad was very analytical slash creative. Like, that's who I think my dad is. To be a linguist, you have to both be creative, because I think there's some creativity that goes into the language, but also analytical because in many ways, linguistics has rules and is in many ways sometimes like mathematics.

In a way, it confuses me, someone who's a pastor and a complete creative mind. So when I would go to my dad's office, and this is the key part to the story, my dad had two desks in his office, and one desk looked exactly like Uncle Ken's desk. It had the exact yellow legal pad of paper, and it had one writing utensil on it. But of course, my dad was always doing research. And then he had stacks and stacks of computer stuff and stacks and stacks of photocopied paper and stacks of books on a larger desk, those over to one side in his office.

He did have a filing cabinet, but he also had this space in his office that was chaotic, that it was like a filing cabinet. And so, for transparency's sake, this is the way things are looking right now on my desk. And it may look differently come Monday morning. It may look differently. It may, may not. I'm not sure I'll be coming back into the office by Tuesday. If by the end of today I have time, that may get organized. But like I said, you know, I've had service planning for two sermons this week.

I've had a planning service for one wedding. And sometimes chaos is gonna look like that. Everything went the way that it was supposed to this week. And, you know, people were, like, coming by, dropping off stuff, stuff for me. There's a bag there that has gifts for me that I just said, well, the best place for it right now is, you know, there's wild rice and some jam that can stay on my office desk amid the chaos of this week. What else did I get? Oh, there's four apples on there. Fresh apples.

Well, I mean, that's fine. Those four apples can be on my desk. That's a gift to me. Someone said, hey, I picked apples. I have extra for you. There you go. You know, I have a bunch of resource material in stacks of paper from the walk for recovery yesterday, and I'm going to distribute them when I have time. But that time isn't now. And it certainly wasn't an hour ago when I needed to take a nap. So there is some beauty in the chaos. And Monday, my desk is organized, but Friday, it is a mess. Jules, your.

Your questions and your comments are always the most valid, and they kind of really affirm every week what. What the message is and to hear it from someone else, I think it's important. It's important to acknowledge that chaos and mess are okay. So to flip the switch and then just sort of think a little bit about church and religious trauma, specifically people from different cultures, people of different backgrounds, and people with a different story, might look messy to someone who has a narrow spiritual view on life.

And. Thank you. Naps are restorative. Absolutely. Naps take chaos and kind of turn them into order, I find. And so more adults taking naps, please. And so what I was thinking is that in many ways, the predominant spiritual narrative in North America right now, I feel as a pastor, is that, you know, it is taking other people's messiness and turning it into order. But instead, my view right now is let's look at what we think is messy and see what's holy in that. Let's see how we can affirm where amazing spiritual things are happening.

Whatever you might call it. If you call it God or if you have other viewpoints, if something you initially feel is a little bit messy, like get curious, get involved in it, and just observe and let it be. And maybe there's some great lesson in there for you, because I'm starting to see that happen with me. Right. I'm in recovery, and so many people have different approaches to recovery, and they're not my same approach. As a white, male Christiane pastor with a background primarily in Christianity, that's it.

I need to get curious and see what other people are up to and what's nourishing them. And it might look like a mess to me first, but when everything is, you know, introduced to my eyes and my senses, I think that I often learn a wonderful lesson. So I'll leave you with that. I've had a wonderful morning. Morning. It's 01:00 but I just woke up from a nap, so I guess, yeah, in many ways, it is a morning. So stick around. This week, I'll be checking out Anila, and I'll be checking out Evan. I want to see both of them and what they're doing this week.

I know Anila is doing evening on Wednesday nights, so end your night with Anila and Evan. I love checking out Evan on. On Fridays, so I have that earmarked. So join me and maybe we'll see each other in the comments. Cadres fear. It's been a wonderful Sunday. And just be kind to yourself, be gentle with yourself, and I'll see you next time. Peace.