2021 Year In Review :: Favorite Television

As I mentioned in my movie roundup, I have a lot of kids, so a lot of my time is spent with kids. That doesn’t always leave a lot of time for other watchings, but here are three televisionings that really stuck out to me this year.

Like last year, my “favorite television” list includes Ted Lasso and Joe Pera. As I wrote last year, both shows were (for me), a shot of much-needed positivity.

But, to be honest, the show that stood out the most for me this year was a bit darker. Midnight Mass on Netflix captivated me on so levels. Regardless of what you think of vampire stories (SPOILER), this is a powerful allegory about spiritual abuse which is unfortunately quite timely.

Ted Lasso:

Midnight Mass:

Joe Pera Talks With You:


  • Browse my favorite albums of the year

  • Browse my “2021 Yearly Wrap-it-Up” which is really a ramble about seeing Phish

  • Browse my favorite books of 2021

  • Browse my favorite movies of 2021

  • Browse my favorite television of 2021

  • Listen to a nearly 5-hour very low quality mix of one song from each of my favorite albums of 2021 called “Soundtrack to the Collective Meltdown”


2020 Year-End Cultural Thoughts

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I have never been more disenfranchised from “American Christianity” than I have this year (though the previous 4 years leading up to this are not far behind.).

I have watched as many family and friends have given themselves over not only to blind allegiance to one political party, but to conspiracy theories and the dehumanization of those who disagree.

The religious tradition I grew up in (vanilla wanna-be mega-church influenced by Focus on the Family) often implicitly carried with it the notion that “to follow Jesus was to be Republican,” but that heresy has never been louder than 2020. People claiming to be “Christians” have not only supported the most divisive, vulgar, criminal, sexually immoral, irreligious president of our time (who tear-gassed a crowd of protesters so that he could take a picture with a bible in front of a church or re-tweeted one of his supporters shouting WHITE POWER at people protesting systemic racism) and have called in to question the very election they were counting on, all while claiming that being asked to wear a mask to protect their neighbors is an “infringement” of their rights.

This year has crystallized the heart-wrenching fact that many people cannot tell the difference between Americanism and Christianity, and if you question them, they will say you are neither. “Pastors” are claiming persecution when all they’ve been asked to do is the bare minimum to look out for others. (Read my piece “Love Your Neighbor, Wear A Mask (Americanism Is Not Christianity)

Al Mohler has led other SBC seminary presidents in an ill-advised crusade against Critical Race Theory while allowing things like ESS (Eternal Subordination of the Son) to be taught in our seminaries. That, on top of a year when Mohler has refused to rename seminary buildings, he has been revealed to have supported chattel slavery, condemned Harriet Tubman, and admitted he has been influenced by the Lost Cause theory of the South. In his bid to become president of the Southern Baptist Convention, he has wholeheartedly given himself to the Republican Party without apology. (Read my piece “MLK, Trump, "White Moderates", Abortion, And Christian Witness In America”)

And all the while, we have seen the emboldenment of (White) Christian Nationalism erupt like Mount Vesuvius. The “Proud Boys” ripped BLM flags off of churches while the police stood by and anyone who believes in Systemic Racism is apparently a Marxist and hates America. (Read my piece “Nationalism is Anti-Christ” // from 2019).

And it’s hard to understand why so many “Evangelicals” continue to endorse this lying, conniving, sexual assaulting, conning, grifting president. The only answer can be that many American Christians have felt their position of cultural influence slipping away. Why else would you be mad if the grocery cashier doesn’t say “Merry Christmas” or if there are nativity scenes on public property? But these are the very things “pastors” like Robert Jeffress (whose church trademarked the “hymn” Make America Great Again) claim to be persecution. (Read my piece “The False Persecution Complex of American White Evangelicals” and yes, this one was technically from 2019).

I don’t know what 2021 will hold, but I don’t see the waters of Evangelicalism calming any time soon. And this makes me thankful and hopeful. God’s Church will prevail and not even Christian Nationalism, MAGA, or a sexual-predator, White-power president overwhelmingly supported by White Evangelicals will change that.

Untitled Poem For Grievers

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It doesn’t take much
for me to lose myself in grief;
the hurt of loss and the fog of loneliness
wash over me until I don’t know where I begin.

The waves come and they go,
the tides seem random (but they’re not)
sometimes its:
the scent he used to wear,
the song she used to love,
the rhythm and jangle of everyday life
the shadow in the corner eye.

And the waves come
And the waves go
And sometimes I don’t know where I am
And sometimes I don’t know where to go
tossed and battered
wounded and scarred
but still hoping to still be hopeful.

And as the tide swallows itself
I’m left with the song,
or the scent,
or the pain of life without you,
And I know
that this feeling
is my love for you
with nowhere left to go.

So please remind me of our connection
and give me something to hold on to.

And as the tide retreats,
I exhale the emptiness
and breathe in our love
and my heart can again see the light.

Though you’re gone,
You’re not.
You are always with me.
We are always together.
It’s just different.

It doesn’t take much
for me to get lost in our love
because though you’re gone,
that’s still where I find myself
and I’m no longer lost.

Even in the waves, 
I know 
that our love
remains my anchor.


  • ©Brent Thomas, 2020


The Complicated Grief of COVID

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I have served in the hospice world for a while now; first as a Hospice Chaplain, then as a Chaplain, Bereavement Coordinator, and Volunteer Coordinator all at the same time before stepping in to my current role as a Bereavement Counselor late last yer.

Throughout it all, I have tried to maintain a tender skin and tough skin. I get to walk alongside strangers in their toughest moments, but as a Bereavement Counselor, my role is only “interventionist”. I am a Bereavement Counselor. My role is to help people through the immediacy of Bereavement. That includes Grief counseling, which I do a lot of, but that not is my primary role. Let me explain how understanding the nuances between grief, bereavement, and mourning can help us help others through the complicated grief of Quarantine.

Grief is the natural reaction to any significant loss or change. Most often it is something/someone meaningful in our lives (though not necessarily that we love).

Complicated Grief is grief that does not resolve in a healthy way or time-frame. This can include grief long after the loss, but it can also include “complications” in the grieving process itself. The Complicated Grief website compares complicated grief to getting an infection after a wound:

“You can think of healing after loss as analogous to healing after a physical wound. The loss, like the injury, triggers a pain response which can be very strong. Injuries also activate a healing process. Loss does too. However, a wound complication, like an infection, can interfere with healing. So, too, maladaptive thoughts, dysfunctional behaviors or inadequate emotion regulation can interfere with adaptation to loss.”

During most times, most people will not experience complicated grief and most will not even need a Grief Counselor or long-term counseling. But these are not most times, are they? We are in the middle of a global pandemic which has many not only quarantined but isolated and separated from common mourning practices. As if their loss were not enough to bear, COVID is complicating the grief many people experience.

Without getting too far in to the weeds with definitions, I want to offer this quick outline of ideas:

Bereavement is the act of losing someone/something we have relationship with or attachment to (not necessarily that we love).

Grief is the natural reaction to any significant loss or change (often including conflicting emotions).

Mourning is the outlet we try to give to our grief. This includes family/religious/cultural memorials and events like funerals, wakes, or even informal things like reminiscing or even crying with others, etc.

As our culture has moved further and further away from a clearly delineated, cultural norm of mourning, grief has often become more complicated. Mourning is the outlet or process we try to give our grief. This often culminates in a memorial/funeral/graveside service, but can include things like mourners (people publicly displaying both their bereavement and grieving) may wear black or subdued colors. Public rituals like flying a flag at half-mast. Some people wear armbands. In some cultures, widows wear black for a long time following the death of a spouse. Some people get tattoos. Some will hold wakes. Some cultures will cut their hair. Some cultures will seclude the bereaved for a period of time. 

All of these are part of the mourning process. They are public displays that we are bereaved (separated from) and that we are grieving. And the fact that they occur publicly is important. After a significant loss, our world is shattered. And, for a time, we are “different” from everyone else. They don’t know what we’re going through. They may have lost someone but every grief is different. And as we learn to accept and incorporate our loss in emotionally healthy ways . . we close the casket . . . we throw the dirt . . . we cry together . . . we grieve and feel the pain of our loss and then, someday, gradually we wear black less often . . . we take the armband off . . . we return from seclusion. And we move back in to community (although this process often takes place with a community along every step); we are “restored.” And we have moved through our grief.

But COVID has shut down most large gatherings. Most people have cancelled or put put funerals on hold. Large memorial gatherings are prohibited. And for the safety of the community, many people are being forced in to complicated grief. In community, or with the appropriate cultural cues, most people grieve appropriately.

Bu without a formal mourning process, we often do not not know how to process our grief. Without the cultural landmarkers of things like “viewing,” “memorial”, “graveside service/burial”, we lose little but key perspectives of time and healing like: “it’s been a week since we all gathered together; remember when Aunt Dottie shared that story none of us had heard before, and remember how hard cousin Bill took it, I didn’t realize he would be affected so much . . . “

Isolation and lack of cultural cues has led to complicated grief for many people. Chances are, someone you know is hurting and processing some type of grief. And chances are, someone you know feels like they have to do it alone. Grief and grieving are things everyone will go through but no one talks about and no one teaches us how to do. Most of us muddle our way through it somehow, but many are trapped in isolation right now. It’s not that they’re not going to make it through, it’s just that it’s going to be more of a slog than it has to be. I don’t know that our culture has yet had time to consider the many ways COVID will affect generations to come.

So, if chances are that someone we know is processing grief alone, then the obvious answer is to love our neighbors and consider others better than ourselves. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Send a hand-written letter. Send a care package. More than anything, let someone know you care. Memento Mori, friend; remember that we too will die. That shadow pushes us to share the light of hope of the Love of God.

Don’t offer advice. Don’t tell them you know what they’re going through (especially if you think you do). Don’t tell them “time heals all wounds” or that they “just need to get over it.” Don’t tell them no to cry. Do not say: “Well, at least you had all the good times” or: “Well, they’re in a better place now”. Do not give them a time-frame and do not judge someone else’s grief by your own experiences.

Listen.

Ask a few questions.

And listen.

That’s all you need to do.

“I’m just calling to check on you and see how you’re doing . . . “

“I hope you don’t me asking, but are you eating and sleeping OK?”

“Have you been able to have any public mourning event?"

“Do you have a support system in place; people you can share with?”

“Where do you find strength for times like this?”

Let the griever guide. You’ve already shown that you care and that you’re willing to be whatever presence they need. If they need to talk, they will. And you’re willing to be present with someone in the midst of their isolation and ask simple questions like the one above and have the patience to listen, you’d likely be surprised how many seeds of hope we can spread.

COVID is having impacts we will not understand for years. I wonder how many people’s complicated grief might lead to other issues down the line and what we can do about it.

Let’s all be good neighbors. We’re all hurting.

Who needs to hear from you today?


Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream Speech"

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“The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the March on Washington, or The Great March on Washington, was held in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans.”

Many have heard the highlights, but did you know you could watch the entire speech for free? I highly recommend doing so.

And, if you haven’t had a chance to read King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” I cannot recommend it enough. Please read it.

Grief, Kintsugi and The Art of Precious Scars

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I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but I live in a city without a lot of historical context. When buildings get old, we tear them down and put up a Starbucks. But when we lived in Louisville, there were buildings that had been there for a hundred years and people could tell you the story. Part of that is that I live in one of the youngest states in the Union, but part of it is cultural. Some cultures preserve history better. Tradition.

Some cultures hold on to things better than others.

I won’t talk about grief all of the time. But, as a Hospice Chaplain, it is something I deal with every day. Grief can begin long before a loved one’s death and last long after. It is the price we pay for love. It shows that our hearts are alive, despite our mind’s assertions otherwise.

Grief is something we will all experience and yet we will not all grieve the same. This includes how we finally come to grips with our grief and how we view ourselves in relation to grief. Some people try to “just get over it” and try to just get back to life without really allowing themselves to pass through grief. For some people, grief is viewed as just that time of crying when someone died, and now I’m back to life. But for others, it is the result of love and it is evidence of the hole that is now left right in the middle of our lives. It is something that shapes us.

The question becomes whether we identify grief as part of our beautiful story or whether we try to hide it.

In some cultures, we try to hide our scars. Makeup. Clothing. Plastic surgery.

We try to hide our brokenness.

Some people are more comfortable with brokenness than others. Some of us want to sweep it under the rug and keep on pretending that no one trips over the big pile under the middle of the rug.

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed or dusted with gold. Sometimes known as “gold joinery,” “golden seams,” or “gold repair,” this is more than just repair. This method brings new life to pieces by highlighting their brokenness. My Modern says:

Beautiful seams of gold glint in the cracks of ceramic ware, giving a unique appearance to the piece. This repair method celebrates each artifact's unique history by emphasizing its fractures and breaks instead of hiding or disguising them. Kintsugi often makes the repaired piece even more beautiful than the original, revitalizing it with new life.

The practice itself arises from several different Japanese philosophical concepts: 

Wabi-Sabi: seeing beauty in the flawed or imperfect. 

Mottainai: regret when something is wasted

Mushin: the acceptance of change 

and

“As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise . . . Not only is there no attempt to hide the damage, but the repair is literally illuminated” (Wikipedia)

What if we treated grief as something not just to “get through” or to bury but understood it as part of life and as part of our beautiful stories? What if we all believed that our stories were beautiful? Kintsugi helps us see how brokenness can be beautiful. But what if we believed it about ourselves?

None of this makes grief easier or diminishes its weight. But I hope it helps give us the perspective that it is part of what makes each one of us so unique. No piece of Kintsugi are the same. No two people are the same. And it is our grief that helps shape us.


  • Read my follow-up piece Sitting With The Brokenness (More About Grief, Kintsugi and The Art of Precious Scars).


What Is Grief? And How Can I Learn To Be Thankful For It?

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It has been said that the only sure things in life are death and taxes.

I think we should add grief to that list.

Live long enough and you will experience grief.

And yet, even though we will all experience grief, it is one of those things that no one likes to talk about, much less consider. As such, there is not always a consensus about what grief actually is. It’s troublesome that we don’t talk more openly about something we all face and it’s even more troublesome that many of us are unable to define such a common experience. One of the first things I do is just try to write out a couple of different perspectives. When I began counseling people through grief as a Hospice Chaplain, one of the first things I did was piece together some basic definitions and try to distill them down to as few words as possible:

Deep sorrow, sadness and a mix of other emotions, especially caused by someone’s death.

Grief is the conflicting feelings, possibly including relief resultant guilt, caused by the end of or change in something familiar.

Grief is the normal/natural emotional reaction to loss or change of any kind.

Grief is the natural response to loss or change.

Grief is the natural response to loss or change. This seems like a pretty fair and straightforward definition which also accounts for the fact that grief will not look the same for everyone.

I don’t know how you begin to think about such topics, but once I narrow down a definition into my own fewest words as possible, I like to look at other people’s words. I like to look at quotes. They’re like different sides of a prism. Since everyone is different and, no one grieves the same (though there will be similarities), understanding how other people process grief can help us process grief ourselves.

“Grief is never something you get over. You don't wake up one morning and say, 'I've conquered that; now I'm moving on.' It's something that walks beside you every day. And if you can learn how to manage it and honour the person that you miss, you can take something that is incredibly sad and have some form of positivity.” (Terry Irwin)

“You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.” (Anne Lamott)

“the way I think about grief is that it is the great tug-of-war, and sometimes the flag is on the side you don’t want it to be on. And sometimes the game has exhausted all of its joy, and all that’s left is you on your knees. But, today, even though I am sad, my hands are still on the rope.” (Hanif Abdurraqib)

“Every one can master a grief but he that has it.” - (William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing)

“Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.” (Anne Roiphe)

“Grief is the price we pay for love.” (Queen Elizabeth II)

Every once in a while, you come across a quote that just stops you in your tracks. Grief is the price we pay for love.

Everyone wants love but no one wants to grieve. Grief is the price we pay for love. No one wants to think of love as a trade-off; and it’s not really, not in the strictest sense. But grief reminds us that we care. Grief reminds us that our feelings are alive and that, we are still in touch with life; with relationships; with thankfulness. Grief is proof that we are human.

Grief is the result of losing something that was important to us; a job, a spouse, a position in life, a loved one; whatever it is. Grief is the act of trying to adjust to the “new normal” after a loss. Grief is the process of moving on with life when we don’t want to.

It does not mean forgetting what we’ve lost.

It is far too common to hear people say things like: “You’ve just got to move on.” This is not helpful or true and I may explore why in future posts, but for now, let me just say that grief is one of those things that must not simply be faced but embraced in order to move forward. It must be passed through.

Of course it changes us, and that’s part of the point.

I hope to write more about the idea of grief and the process of recovery, but for now, I’d love your thoughts. Have you experienced grief? How would you define grief? How did you move through it (or did you?)? Did it change you? What did you learn?