Talk Stigma

Hello, everyone on Cadre. My name is Seth Perry. I'm a pastor. I'm in recovery from addiction, and I live well with bipolar disorder. And I'm here in one of my comfy chairs in my office. And today my question is about family. Welcome, Jules. How are you? I'm going to be talking a little bit about family, but. And again, update. I'm so glad that you're here. Say hello. In the chat, the big question, what does family mean to you? And I'm not talking about, you know, your relatives, really. Okay. Good afternoon, Jules.

Thank you. And update. Hello. I'm not. So I'm not. What does family mean to you? I'm not necessarily talking about people you're related to. Okay, so where are some other places that you see family? Some people at church are a part of a family. They say it's my church family. Some people at work say it's my work family. But here's the caveat. Sometimes when people get introduced to the idea of church family, and this is something that I think about, about the stigma of healthy practices and mental health boundaries in a church family.

Sometimes when people talk about a church family, they are doing so to coerce people into volunteering, into coerced people into taking a massive swaths of their time to give to the church, to making huge sacrifices for the church and for a particular loyalty to faith communities where, you know, unethical practices sometimes have happened in the past. And I, I could talk about all sorts of type of abuse that has been justified in, in the faith family world. And, and I'm sure that there's some that come to mind.

So Jules says family would be those that are close to me that matter the environment they come from. Yeah. Okay, that's. That's beautiful. Thank you, Jules. And if anyone else is wondering one way that they could define family for me, go ahead, tell me another definition of family. Right? Yeah. So church, family, work, family has not always been under, you know, the, the healthiest lens, I would say. And so I tried to redefine that for some people today and also for them to start thinking about expanding the boundaries of your family of faith.

Who are you excluding? Who are you including? We want to have an inclusive definition. And in our world today, when we're thinking about people's wellness, I want us to include those people that are being excluded. So people who are being deported from this country, I'm going to say we need to care for them, their mental health matters, or people whose gender identity is not being respected. We need to include those people to our family. Why? Because those people are going to be a blessing in your life.

I guarantee it. I guarantee it. If you talk about the experience of people who are oppressed, you are going to have a spiritual experience. I guarantee it. So here are three questions that I asked during my children's sermon and I want to share that with you. And again, as you're watching right now, if you've been thinking, just go ahead, throw it out there. What is your definition of family? Ray Ray, if you have something and you know, who else did I see in here? Speak. Wonder if you have a definition of family you want to throw in there.

I'd love to hear it. But here are the three questions that I gave my children's sermon today. And the kids did really good with this. First of all, do you have to like the food that your family members make you? I asked the whole congregation, all the adults, and I got a mixture of no's and yeses. And it's a difficult question that doesn't have a simple answer. And I like to think of it this way. You know, when we're growing up, we got to eat what we got to eat. We got to eat what our parents give us.

Also, one thing that is important is if you are traveling, like when I've been traveling, you'll be asked into someone's, you better eat that food. Definitely, absolutely. If you're not allergic to it. I have, I ate a lot of food that was very different for me when I've been hosted in other countries and it's always been a blessing. It's been an awesome experience. So that's the first question. It was tough for some of the kids to think about that because some of the kids didn't like certain foods.

All right, here's another question that's valuable. And Ray Ray, thank you for the comment. I will. And to. I will announce that to everybody after this question. So here's this question. Do you have to agree with members of your family? And isn't it a blessing to just be freed of that? You don't have to agree with members of your family. Yeah, I think part of being a healthy family is being in respectful disagreement and being able to navigate that healthily. It's tough, but I think it's important that I ask that today.

And again, everyone in the church with that one said yes. Now, Ray Ray says family are those who love and support each other over time. Absolutely. It has nothing to do with necessarily being blood related. And if we applied this comment that Ray Ray said, to our communities right now, to our communities that need to support each other, to our communities that need to connect with other communities, to support neighboring communities. If we just said love and support each other over time, all right, each other, as in everyone, I think that we'd have a stronger culture, a stronger society, and we would have a lot less people feeling lost.

Yeah, exactly. And then. Speak Wonder. I'll get to your definition of family in a moment, but I'll just tell you the last question that I asked my kids this morning at church. Was this, Is it a blessing to have a relationship with someone in your family? Is it a blessing? So it doesn't have to be a good relationship. It doesn't have to be a relationship on speaking terms. It doesn't mean that you aren't in conflict with that person. It doesn't mean that maybe even there's some past trauma with that person.

And boy, what a difficult question that is when you boil it down to all the different things that it could mean. And ultimately, I have benefited from considering the family members in my life, just considering that they are a blessing to my life. They are still. Regardless, I like to see that I can experience spirituality. I can experience my higher power through relationships with other people in my family by just interacting with them. It doesn't have to be perfect. I have had many fallings out with numerous people in my family.

But still, as things are right now, I am looking at each of those familial relationships as a blessing. And I hope that you can think that, too. Here's what Speak Wonder has to say. Family. It often changes over time. Not exclusively blood. The people who welcome me unconditionally. And I want us to carry that throughout the week. Carry out the unconditional welcome. Carry out the role as advocate for other. Okay. Being an advocate for other humans is something that I think is lacking. When you read the news, when you pick up your phone and you scroll through the things that are happening in our country, in our world, we do not have people welcoming others who are unconditionally welcoming others unconditionally.

And Luke, happy Sunday to you and thank you. So I got a lot out of this myself, talking to you all, just thinking about we can interact with other people, and we need to start thinking that those interactions are blessings. Either they are blessing us or we are blessing them. So just knowing that there's a lot of hurting people in the world right now, you know, I went to an AA meeting. Some folks that were from the trans community spoke up and said, it's been a real bad week. I'm thinking about them and I'm praying for them.

I had coffee with a colleague of mine who is a pastor of a Latinx congregation. And what we need to do right now is understand that we can bless our friends that are immigrants or are relatives of immigrants in this country. And people say that's political. It's not. It all comes down to the mental health, our neighbors. So go out there, get inspired, bless someone else in just a little way. And then also, if you pray, if you meditate, hold those people in your heart. So I'm Pastor Seth. I've had a great time, and get out there.