Category Archives: Growing the Beloved Community

My Mental Health Story

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I am 42 years old, and I have been diagnosed with ADHD. Not only do I have ADHD, but I tested to have extreme ADHD. My ADHD was easy to miss when I was younger, because I am quirky, and I appear to be smart, and I seem to fit in with a neurotypical world. See, when I was a young adult in my 20’s I knew there was something wrong with me. I was filled with a desire to learn so much but couldn’t sit down to read most of the books I had to read.

Remember when I said I appeared to be smart? I graduated middle school with a C average, high school with a very low B average, college with a C average, and Seminary with a C average. But I looked smart, and I showed a reasonable command of the subject matter, so no one was really concerned. However, during Seminary I had my first panic attack, at least the first one I remember so, I took a step back from ministry and entered counseling to help me with what I would later understand was depression and anxiety.

After seminary, I entered a Clinical Pastoral Education (hospital chaplain) program where there were no grades, no tests, just experience, there was a lot of reading, processing, and group work, and I was more successful at that than at anything else in my life. In hindsight I know that is because the educational model of CPE is very neurodiverse. We are given multiple paths to learning, and I could even see this. I realized I need to read, watch, listen, and experience to really learn something.

I was in my 30’s when I was fired for the first time because my mouth often moved faster than my brain. I made an honest statement that was inconsistent with the culture of the organization for which I worked, regarding the role of chaplaincy. Two weeks later, I no longer worked there, and that was the first time I hit rock bottom. I remember posting online, “I have never been so full of emptiness.” I found myself homeless surfing couches and going back and forth between jobs and government assistance. Though I got through that, it left me with post traumatic stress.

This PTS would go on to entrench me in depression and anxiety for all the years hence. I would find different ways to relive that trauma over and over again. The most recent time during the Covid Crisis, but I’m jumping ahead. I could generally keep my depression and anxiety at bay and finally found a faith that made more sense to me. And though faith is a balm for a weary and broken soul, it is not often the only necessary medicine.

Years after completing the long process of fellowship with my new faith, I found myself deeply entrenched in depression again. I looked up from a sermon after a panic attack and said, “Why am I preaching about depression again?” I had always been a proponent of medication for mental illness, for other people. I never realized that I would have to fight myself to become a proponent of medication for my mental illness.

Once medicated life returned to normal, I wasn’t sad all the time, but I still found myself hyper focusing on trauma and anxiety from the past. When the Anxiety got too bad, I would find a different hobby, and I would hyper focus on that hobby so that I could continue to work, then when that hobby stopped being new I found something else. Of course, I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. I had the opportunity to become a cyclist, a hiker, a vintage computer guy, and a game master. In fact, I still love those things.

But when the pandemic hit many of my coping mechanisms dried up. I no longer had Sunday Service where I would cut up with teens, I didn’t have the energy to hike or cycle. I watched people play down the corona virus and I began to isolate, I felt completely alone. Then the financial issues started, the AC went out in the summer, the refrigerator a few months later, the dryer before all that. My half time career, (which working half time always causes me internal shame) was not cutting it financially, and it constantly felt like we were a month from losing our house. But I couldn’t figure out what was different.

During that time my depression and anxiety put my job in jeopardy, I was having multiple anxiety attacks a day. I had gained 50 pounds and hurt all the time. I felt alone, and began to feel paranoid, and I had my very first nervous breakdown. When I look back to that time I shudder, because I was in a pit, and I couldn’t get out. Then we had to put down two dogs, the first we expected and the second we didn’t.

I had already called my doctor, he had already doubled my medication, which is probably why I am still here today. But I was still having regular panic attacks. I think I might have burned a lot of bridges during that time, and I think a lot of people were worried about me, but very few of them said anything in a way I could understand, I think most people just tried to avoid me. By this time, I was very publicly saying, “I’m not ok.” But I didn’t know what to do with that.   

Over time, medication, and therapy I began to find my way out. I became ok, but I was still exhausted all the time, I still focused on gloom and doom all day, I still struggled to work, and my therapist, reminding me I was depressed also mentioned ADHD.

Through her office I took a test. I remember the therapist asking, “Do you have a problem with losing track of conversations?”

I said, “I have a story about that!” I began to tell a tangential story, then after a few minutes said, “Wait, what was the question?” Apparently, I had answered the question. It turns out my level of ADHD was in the “Extreme” range. Over the years, my ADHD, along with the anxiety, depression, and trauma magnified each other. The isolation of the pandemic exacerbated the issue. It became a perfect storm of despair.  I think if not for my wife and step-children along with a few very good friends and a therapist, I would have become lost in myself, because what happens after your already broken, do you become more broken, or do you return to dust?

I take medication now for my depression, anxiety, and ADHD, and see my therapist regularly. I have multiple colleagues that I reach out to on a regular basis and always have somewhere to check in, and for the first time in a long time, I feel joy. I believe I can accomplish things again, and I’m not exhausted. I am beginning to embrace my new label, neurodivergent, because why would anyone want to be typical?

You may be wondering why I am choosing to share this now. Because I know I am not alone. I am a neurodivergent living in a neurotypical world, and that feels lonely. I am also telling this story because there aren’t enough people in leadership who do. We still live in a world that stigmatizes mental illness and I wonder, if more leaders would share their stories, would more people get help.

The hardest thing to learn is that mental illness is an illness like any other, and no one should avoid treatment because of the people who don’t understand. I also think it is important to note that it isn’t anyone’s fault that this happened to me, or that I am like this, not my parents, my family, or any other relationships, and it is nothing to be ashamed of.

So in my final word, you don’t have to be alone.

Reflections on Being an Ally

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“In every age, no matter how cruel the oppression carried on by those in power, there have been those who struggled for a different world. I believe this is the genius of humankind, the thing that makes us half divine: the fact that some human beings can envision a world that has never existed.”

-Anne Braden

Anne Braden was a white civil rights activist in Louisville, Kentucky; one of very few white American’s Martin Luther King, Jr. was quoted to say that he trusted to have his back. I was introduced to her legacy while attending the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2013. Her story quickly began to weave its way into my soul. If you don’t know much about her there is a wonderful documentary about her life. This post is not about Anne Braden, but her life story is very important when we consider what it means to be an ally.

Sadly, in our generation being an ally is a learned ideal. With the recent news from Arizona, Kansas, and a myriad of other states our ability to stand with others will become very important. Civil rights leaders have fought a long embittered struggle through the latter half of the 20th century to end one form of segregation only to be met with segregation anew in the 21st. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people have been fighting an uphill battle for many years and they must be gaining ground because opposition to equality has really kicked into overdrive. In the United States we look to Arizona reinstituting Jim Crow. Russia now makes demonstrating for the LGBTQ community a crime, and different countries in Africa calling for prison and death–all for people who just want the right to be themselves. Now, this new segregation is making its way into Mississippi.

When I was a child I never understood why two people of the same sex couldn’t be married. When I was in high school very brave friends starting coming out, and as I grew to be an adult I found that I knew more people in the LGBTQ community than I had imagined. Human beings–not faceless masses huddled in alleyways–but friends, family, and loved ones. I noticed that when I needed an ear, they listened; when I needed a shoulder to cry on, they offered; and when I needed support, they provided. They are different than me, but not really. Our hearts beat the same, our blood pumps the same, and when it comes down to brass tacks, we want the same thing– love. In fact I find the continued use of the terms they and them in this post problematic. I feel limited by language, but then in reality isn’t that just a reflection of the privileges I am granted automatically by being white, male, and heterosexual?

The happiest day of my life was my wedding, and it is a terrible tragedy that weddings only come to those born within a narrow range of acceptability. Love shouldn’t be allowed only for the privileged. Over the years being an ally has meant different things, but the core has always been the same. People I love are being marginalized and mistreated because of who they are, and I find that unacceptable. Perhaps a better word is shameful. But we have to continue to work together with that vision of a different world– the one we write poems about, the one we sing songs about. Staying in the struggle and the power will enable us to get there together.

Justin

I have a Quick Question

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When I was new to Unitarian Universalism a lot of my friends and family wanted to know more about the religion. After doing a fairly “shoddy” job of explaining it I would get the response, “So it’s not really a religion then.” I was always confused by that statement, because after my time with the UU church I came to see what many would call “true religion.” My Christian heritage actually defines true religion, and I have seen it as long as I have been a UU.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

-James 1:27

In fact there are two big things that strike me the most about this statement: first, UU’s do this without having to fear God will strike them dead or send them to hell–care is part of our nature; and second, we are not afraid to make it part of our politics. UU’s generally try, though partners and members, to make this list a little longer. We argue on behalf of those who are unable, and we help let others know their voice matters.

In fact, one of the most important things “religious” people do is practice their religion. Okay, maybe that sounds a little cyclical. Let’s take a look at it. Most people define religion very narrowly. I notice often that many have a hard time defining a religion to be a religion without invoking the name of Jesus. UU’s go one step further and don’t even require members to invoke the name of a god.

In so doing, we still use words like faith, communion, and even prayer. I believe UU’s do something revolutionary and extremely honest. We set a basic set of principles and ask that while we work together we abide by them. Religion for us then is not about belief or necessarily even G/god–it is about being part of community and our responsibility to that community.

For Unitarian Universalists, religion is about what we do. What does the existence of G/god even matter when we let children starve, prejudice to be defended, and the innocent die? What makes us strong is that we work together so we don’t have to be afraid, even though we rest in the minority.

Many religions are also defined by their daily practice–whether that practice be prayer, reading, or doing good deeds. Unitarian Univesalists do this as well. We just let others decide their own practice. While some may practice through reading or prayer, others do so through feeding the poor. Still others define practice through revitalizing their community. What is your daily practice, and why is it important to you?

Justin

Fear of God

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When I was new to Unitarian Universalism I learned a new “Fear of God,” not the fear to believe, or the fear of God’s glory, but the fear to mention his name, the fear to appear too theistic to those who are not. I was shocked then when I read “Our Chosen Faith,” the book given me during the celebration of my membership, that God was all throughout the book.

After doing research into the matter I found that Unitarian Universalism was working toward reclaiming religious language including God. So I sat down today in my office to write a few words about this reclamation. I started with a simple Google search, and was taken down a rabbit hole of history that I found very educational.

In 2003 Rev William G Sinkford, self-proclaimed atheist and President of the UUA, made the national news as he declared that Unitarian Universalism would begin reclaiming religious language. He said in 2003 that it would be his goal to reclaim the “language of reverence, in the association,” citing his issue with the lack of spiritual language anywhere in our principles or traditions.

In a sermon in January of 2003 preached to First Jefferson Unitarian Universalist Church he said, “I believe that Unitarian Universalism is growing up. Growing out of a cranky and contentious adolescence into a more confident maturity. A maturity in which we can not only claim our Good News, the value we have found in this free faith, but also begin to offer that Good News to the world outside these beautiful sanctuary walls.” Later in that sermon he points to one of the problems he sees with our refusal to claim religious language “Our resistance to religious language gets reflected, I think, in the struggle that so many us have in trying to find ways to say who we are, to define Unitarian Universalism.”

But he was very clear that Unitarian Universalism was not going to adopt the picture of God in the Christian Sense. In his 2009 book, The Cathedral of the World, Forest Church defines God this way “’God’ is our name for that which is greater than all and yet present in each.” These two men are very clear to define God differently than modern Christianity.

Living in the American South this idea takes on a completely different flavor. In Jackson, Mississippi, public atheists still work against prejudice. Mississippi is not in a world clearly enveloped in humanism or atheism. Many schools still begin their days with Christian prayer and becoming politically active is difficult if not backed by Judeo-Christian identification.

And for this reason I think it is important to reclaim religious language as a whole, but respectful to all parties willing to join the meeting: to understand conversation of faith, belief, and salvation–not in the popular sense but an even more traditional sense. It is important to talk about sin, but sin as the negative action against each other not divine judgment against the self in regard to things we cannot control. It is important to talk about salvation from the prison we build around ourselves that doesn’t involve changing the core of who we are. Most of all it is important to talk about God–whether we mean the deity that teaches us to become better or the Spirit of Life that drives us, let us talk of God, without fear but with love. As we reclaim the language of our UU forbearers we may find that we really aren’t that polarized after all–even in Mississippi.