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| Image: A pale wood box with a gold clasp sits slightly open, with the opening of the box turned 20-30 degrees to the left. Text in graphic: This Week in the Rector's Note "We are all wounded. Self-awareness, honesty, and trusting community help us turn our wounds into gifts of wisdom, sensitivity, and compassion. ...Again and again in pastoral caregiving at St. Martin’s I encounter wonderful people who are adding suffering to their suffering because they think they are the only one struggling in the community." - Stop Hiding, Open Up those Boxes. 9.26.2019. Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Episcopal. |
A journalist asked Brad Pitt the following question during an interview about his upcoming movie, “Was Ad Astra a way to work through some of the loneliness you may have been experiencing?” His answer was vulnerable and revealing, “The fact is, we all carry pain, grief, and loss,” he said. “We spend most of our time hiding it, but it’s there, it’s in you. So you open up those boxes.”
The article then gives the back story which I quote at length:
It was reported that the final straw in Pitt’s 11-year relationship with (Angelina) Jolie came in September 2016, when they fought about his drinking while aboard a private plane. Now, Pitt is committed to his sobriety. “I had taken things as far as I could take it, so I removed my drinking privileges,” he told me. After she filed for divorce, Pitt spent a year and a half in Alcoholics Anonymous.
His recovery group was composed entirely of men, and Pitt was moved by their vulnerability. “You had all these men sitting around being open and honest in a way I have never heard,” Pitt said. “It was this safe space where there was little judgment, and therefore little judgment of yourself.”
Astonishingly, no one from the group sold Pitt’s stories to the tabloids. The men trusted one another, and in that trust, he found catharsis. “It was actually really freeing just to expose the ugly sides of yourself,” he said. “There’s great value in that.”
I am grateful for the brave honesty Brad Pitt displays in this interview. My hope is that his example helped hundreds, maybe thousands of people, come out of hiding and into spaces transparency, trust, healing, and growth.
“We all carry pain, grief, and loss.” We are all wounded. Self-awareness, honesty, and trusting community help us turn our wounds into gifts of wisdom, sensitivity, and compassion. Hiding, avoiding, and denying cause wounds to fester into self-destructive behaviors and acting out which passes the harm to others. God’s grace transforms our despair over our wounds into hope for progress and growth into a “new creation.”
Again and again in pastoral caregiving at St. Martin’s I encounter wonderful people who are adding suffering to their suffering because they think they are the only one struggling in the community. They tell me that they feel that “everyone else” must “have it all together;” “have it all figured out,” or “have it easy.” When we only present ourselves as happy, high achieving, successful, and winning - that is, when we only share one side of our life - without knowing it we may be increasing the isolation of someone who is struggling. One of the most helpful things we can say to someone is, “You are not alone.”
I want St. Martin’s to be a community of love, acceptance, and grace where people feel free to come out of hiding and find the healing we all crave. Our church is called to be this way because Jesus was this way, and he continues to give us what we need to brave the journey into honesty and vulnerability.
In God’s presence there is no hiding, no deception, no masks, and no facade. As the Prayer Book says so beautifully, God is the one, “unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.” We are transparent before God’s pervasive light and all encompassing love.
Blessings,
The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Rector
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If you'd like to know more about addiction and recovery, please join us at Parish Forum on Sunday, October 6 where Steele Stevens will lead a discussion on Understanding Addictions. Learn more on our Parish Forum page.
