2026-09-14T21:57:48+00:00

Season Opener

September 14, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

We all had our hearts broken last night, when the Dallas Cowboys lost. And not only did they lose, but they lost to the New York Giants, the only team in the NFL everybody hates. (You may notice I am not a man that refers to the Dallas Cowboys as “us” or “we,” I do not play, I’m not on the team. I have no say in the decisions they make. They don’t know my name, don’t care about me or my family. In fact, they appear to hate me.)

This comes after an offseason and pre-season of promise. The defense would be better, they would be solid, together, the team chemistry would be terrific, and of course, a Super Bowl run was probable, maybe inevitable. And against all reason, I started to believe. This would be the year, again, finally. The pieces would coalesce into the most beautiful masterpiece. (We all stopped using the word “could” and used “would” instead. This is it, baby, they’re ready, let’s goooooooo!)

Did you know in the last 9 years, the Dallas Cowboys were 16-2 against the Giants? They were totally average, but at least they always beat the Giants. There was always that. They had an offseason to come out hot and justify all of the promise and hope, and didn’t. Did you also know the last 3 seasons, the Giants were 6-11, 3-14, and 4-13? 13-38 overall? Did you know that?

And I’m stuck thinking about why, why do I continue to do this? Why do I keep thinking this year is different? What kind of nonsense tricks any of us into believing sports fandom is any different from any other kind of consumerism?

Let’s say you have a favorite restaurant, where you’ve had years of fantastic meals, and made so many great memories. It’s your favorite by a million miles, you’d wear a t-shirt and talk in a tv advertisement, you’d tell all of your friends and write about it on your personal blog, and you’d do this all for free. As a matter of fact, it has even become a part of who you are, your personality, this restaurant just fits you like a pair of old jeans. Ok?

Now, let’s say that restaurant starts to serve absolutely garbage. They fire the chef and the best servers, bringing in new ones that they promise better suit the vision. They’d disrespectfully refuse to pay market value for the best one, sending him to the Green Bay Packers. The portions keep getting smaller and smaller while the prices sky-rocket. They assume they have your business no matter what happens, so they stopped caring about you or any other customers. It is no longer a quality product, it has become no more than an altar to the owner’s ego.

You might go for a while, maybe quite a long while, remembering how it was and crossing your fingers that it could be that way again. But eventually…eventually, you’d find a new restaurant, wouldn’t you?

You’d change dish detergents if Dawn stopped getting your dishes clean. Even if you have had Fords your whole life, you’d consider a Toyota after enough lemons. We are a disposable society, we get rid of our spouses if they stop making us feel good for a weekend! But not our football teams?!!??? Why not?? This is absolute nonsense.

One of the best people I know is a Cleveland Browns fan. Why would anyone ever do that to themselves?? But, then again, why do I? Why do I hang around, hoping that the Dallas Cowboys will turn it all around and start serving great food again? There is no evidence that this could happen, but even if it did, who’s to say I couldn’t just go back?

We’re mostly all bandwagon consumers, aren’t we? So, why is that such a terrible thing only in sports?

The more I think about it, I’m never leaving The Angel. Ever. The baseball team I like is the Detroit Tigers because Alan Trammell and Sweet Lou Whitaker were the SS/2B combo in the late ‘70’s/early ‘80’s. Morrissey is my favorite in music, and I wait and listen to his singles and albums the day they come out…his latest, Make-Up Is A Lie, is so bad it’s aggressively offensive, and I just heard there is a new album coming our early next year and I am so excited to listen. Even though he is on a clear down slide, maybe it’ll be his best yet. I use a phone that is pretty hopelessly out of date; sometimes we stream our Sunday services and, inexplicably, there is no sound. I’m not getting a new one, this is my phone. There are holes in all of my socks. I don’t know that I would change dish detergents or find a new restaurant. I haven’t bought new jeans in years. I don’t know that I am a bandwagon consumer…

I wouldn’t call it loyalty or anything positive, I’d probably call it a disorder. I’ll likely keep getting bitten by this same Dallas Cowboys dog every year for the rest of my life. (Really, losing to the Giants?!!!????) When I’m 65 or 85 or 105, I’ll be saying, “I think this is their year.” And I might still have this phone, too, but that doesn’t make it right. That Cleveland Browns guy should totally move on, if he knows what’s good for him.

Now, What You Hear Is Not A Test

September 9, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The Angel & I spent last weekend’s holiday at a Labor Day party/picnic/bocce ball tournament. The food and company were excellent, we lost both of our games badly, and I got to spend some time with my family. The soundtrack for this sacred time was a best of the ‘80’s playlist. During the Sugar Hill Gang’s classic hit “Rapper’s Delight,” I watched my cousins sitting next to each other across the yard. They weren’t talking, they were just moving individually, in perfect time (with the music and each other), and mouthing every word (which is really saying something, “Rapper’s Delight” is very, very long). This continued for quite a while, covering quite a few songs.

My family hasn’t always been this close, there was a too-many-year period where we were estranged. We used to live next door to each other, then we moved, things happened, grudges & resentments happened, distance happened, then another thing happened, that distance didn’t matter anymore and we were reconciled. As I watched them, I thought of all that. I thought of my sister, and the language that close relationships have that transcends language and time. I thought of us and how much we all missed, and how much we still miss, deciding some sort of thing or another was more important than this.

So, then, I started to think about the relationships we share, and the reasons they end (or are placed on pause). I wonder if we even remember the reasons. We remember the times we spent, the fun we had, the memories we made, together, but we usually have a much harder time remembering the nonsense that keeps us apart.

We’ve taken to reading the “love chapter” in 1st Corinthians 13 every Sunday. Love is patient and kind and doesn’t keep any record of wrongs and never fails. Do these characteristics describe each of our interactions & conversations, do they even describe our homes and/or marriages?? I said earlier that the holiday was a “sacred time,” and the worship music was “Rapper’s Delight,” and that was true. Every time love becomes the cause and the effect, the motivation and the result, of our lives, God is the main character, and we may as well call those spaces church. Every time our love asks us to lay our own interests, vanity, control, and need to win, down, and we respond by doing just that, it is absolutely church. When we hold each other, listen, laugh, play, cry, these things are all church, and wherever they happen is the temple of God.

I’ve been in churches full of bitterness and unforgiveness and I’ve been in bars and gyms full of support, encouragement and capital L love. Monday, that yard was a temple, a monument to the God who made us and sustains us.

You know what else I thought? That we live in a world (comprised of millions of homes, streets, neighborhoods, communities, districts, states, countries, planets, and galaxies) in desperate need of the message of Jesus, the love of Jesus, the Gospel of Jesus. And we need to be the so-called (for lack of a better term) “brand ambassadors,” of the Gospel. We need to sing & dance along to this divine Story, over and over again, being living examples of possibility instead of clinging to our own little stories.

I realize that this, of course, doesn’t come easy (and spiritual attack is, sadly, very real), and can be quite painful, but that is also part of the Story we happen to be in. That’s why we simply can’t continue to miss the most beautiful, inspiring parts just because we’ve chosen to be somewhere else, divided by who cares what. These are our lives and we are our people, church is anywhere & everywhere, “Rapper’s Delight” is awesome, and I am truly grateful for (or in) all of it.

A Day of Possibility

August 24, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site is asking what my favorite recipe is, and I bet that is interesting to a certain group (even a very large group) of people, I’m just not sure that it’s me. We’ll talk about Mrs. Davis, instead.

Mrs. Davis is a fantastic Peacock limited science-fiction series that was released in 2023 and that I watched 2 weeks ago. Mrs. Davis is an Artificial Intelligence that has, essentially, become a god to the world. There is a nun on a quest to find the holy grail, and if she does, she intends to shut down Mrs. Davis. Her husband is Jesus, an ex-boyfriend who leads a group of “alpha” males, a horse, a mom who we all hate until the last 5 minutes of the last episode, and David Arquette as her dad. The show is truly original. I don’t remember the last time I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen.

The Jesus character was the most fascinating to me, for what might be obvious reasons by now. He is beautifully written and played as a loving, kind Savior (and restaurant cook/server). There are a few things, about Him and His story arc, that would definitely be considered blasphemous by some folks, but far more that is in keeping with the Jesus of the Bible. One of my very favorite exchanges is: Simone: Do you love her?!!? Jesus: I love everybody!!! It stops her and forces us all to look at His heart. I loved it, you should watch it immediately. Great art inspires us to run and makes us think we can totally fly.

I’m going to subscribe to Apple TV+ and start Ted Lasso this week. Nearly everyone I know has told me that I HAVE TO WATCH IT. So, I will, and I’ll tell you what I think. I imagine I’ll tell you how much I loooove it. If they’re right, I’ll tell you that.

Today is everybody’s 1st day back to school . The Angel works at an elementary school, and students came back today. My youngest son started his classes for his sophomore year at college. And my oldest is cramming for his next opportunity at work, which will begin next week. And here I am, listening to Rise Against, writing and catching up.

A very good friend and I recorded the 1st episode of a spirituality podcast yesterday. I plan to finish the book I’ve been working on forever (called We Have A Weight Problem, which isn’t about numbers on a scale at all) by Christmas. There’s a new space at our faith community that I just love (to clarify, I “just love” the space AND the faith community), where we create space to ask our questions about God, the Bible, and our spiritual lives.

It’s a new season that feels like possibility for so many of us. Many of those in my circle are choosing new pathways and leaning into who they are becoming and who they will become.

I’ll paraphrase my favorite Dr Seuss book, Horton Hatches The Egg, again: “And they sent me home happy, 100 percent.”

Top 10

August 19, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site wants to know my Top 10 Favorite Movies… In no particular order: Fight Club, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Pulp Fiction, Lord of The Rings (for sure, Return of the King, maybe both others), Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi, Point Break, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Avengers, The Big Lebowski. That’s 9 or 11, depending on the first 2 LOTR movies. As I think about them, they are all there for different reasons.

I’ll admit Point Break is not the best movie any of us have ever seen, but I did see it probably 10 or 15 times in a theater during the summer between my 10th & 11th grade years of high school. It makes me think of my friends… Later on, you don’t usually have friends like the friends you have in high school. Maybe that’s because everything that happens to a teenager is in neon or caps lock. Everything seems so intense and meaningful, because we are all exposed nerves trying to figure out how we’re going to live our lives. We’re bulletproof AND totally fragile. We’re FBI agents AND surfers. We live in a suspended hyper-reality. It makes me think of my friends.

The Avengers is a great time, it’s just a really fun time. It isn’t deep or affecting, it’s awesome. It’s spectacle, relationships, conflict, good v. evil, sacrifice and victory. Pulp Fiction is fun AND a Brilliant, Great Film. It’s probably the best film on my list. You don’t need friends to love it, it stands on its own, above and away from context. Eternal Sunshine broke my heart – I remember crying to the Angel afterwards, holding her so tightly, desperately, promising no one would ever take her (or her memory) from me.

You know, I just wrote a post for my other site (bridgefaithcommunity.com) about presence and the inextricable tie between love, pain, and gratitude. I wonder how much this film cemented my 2 hands philosophy. The pain of loss was so great, he chose to erase her from his memory. In the beginning, it was fine, the memories went in reverse, so eliminated first was the destruction of the relationship and the heartbreak. But as the memories worked backwards, the wonder, beauty, the love, he didn’t want them to go and desperately tried to hold on to them. He couldn’t, they took all of her. It was devastating. Love hurts. Big, real love can hurt more. It’s worth the risk.

The Big Lebowski is hilarious with one of the best characters in modern cinema, we all sort of want to meet the day as the Dude. Everybody hates The Last Jedi, and they’re all wrong. It has the 4 best scenes in the Star Wars universe. Luke dies, the Rebellion/Resistance lives. It’s perfect. The Winter Soldier is the movie you make your friends watch that think superhero movies are dumb. Fight Club is The Most Spiritual Movie Ever.

I have no idea how much impact these films have actually had on me, if they were truly integral in building the Chad that I am. What I know is that my life would not have been as cool without them, and I am thankful.

Slip

August 10, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Over the last few weeks, I watched a show called Slip. (This show seems to have originally aired on Roku, I watched it on Peacock.) It’s weird and quirky – if I were to describe it here, you could only infer that I really loved it. It is everything I look for in art, a new perspective that is challenging and deep and speaks to my own life. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 100%. It must have been awesome. But I’m not sure I did love it.

There’s a married woman, Mae, who “slips” into parallel worlds (I guess it’s not that weird to us, we understand this from the MCU and it’s multiversal phase), where she has different lives, different marriages, partners, habits and values. The woman (Zoe Lister-Jones, who created, wrote, directed & starred) has something to learn (about life, in general, maybe, but certainly about her life) and she does. Lister-Jones is wildly talented. In episode 7, she even sings a version of “Every Breath You Take” that will stop you and bring you to tears. It still sounds like I loved it. I wonder if I did.

A website called Den of Geek writes, “Essentially, the mystery points back to the exhibit in the pilot, where Mae tells us about the Hungry Ghost. She says they are beings living in six different realms of existence in a state of chronic deprivation and longing. They crave nourishment (both literally and figuratively), but they’re incapable of digesting it. This perfectly symbolizes Mae’s journey: no matter what alternate reality she’s in (with multiple different versions of who she could be), she’s unequipped to find peace and acceptance without looking for a solution within herself. She has to face and address her own struggles and internal suffering head-on to find the kind of life that can make her happy.”

Maybe our culture makes sure we’re all always in a state of chronic deprivation and longing? What do we do when what we crave doesn’t provide the peace and acceptance we’re searching for, and we’re left with our own struggles and internal suffering? We don’t like to face things, especially our own emptiness and sense of meaninglessness – what if the “new” and “more” don’t fulfill? Then what? Probably, we keep walking the same paths “new” and “more,” keeping the noise loud and fast so we can’t hear our hearts break.

I may spoil it here, so beware…Her original, episode 1 life was simple and what can look like what we are sometimes told is the boring monotony of commitment. But it was that relationship that she sought the rest of the journey, and to which she eventually returned. This was fairly surprising. Hollywood has a very hard time showing the beauty of a connected marriage, after the peaks and above the valleys, once we settle into real life. Maybe Lister-Jones isn’t married, but I’m guessing she is, and I suspect she might be very happy and full. She says to her husband, “we weren’t perfect, but we were a team and there was a lot of love and support.” That’s every marriage. It’s a lie that passion and spontaneity and surprise doesn’t happen in long, loving marriages. The passion is deeper and weighs so much more without any superficiality. And as we each grow and change, we are never without surprise, it’s just that we stop looking, listening, and learning. “More” and “new” might seem cool, but we end up just looking to slip into something more substantial.

Still, it sounds like I loved it, and I keep thinking that might not be accurate. Why? Why can’t I just say it? I want to say “it’s complicated,” but the more I consider, it’s not too complicated at all. I watched a show that was interesting – I thought about BIG spiritual concepts, about meaning and purpose, it made me think of The Angel, and a million other things. This show has me thinking about it the next day and might for a while. Of course, I loved it.

Bait & Switch

August 3, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I started Money Heist, a Spanish drama series on Netflix, last week. I thought there were only 5 episodes of this intense story of a gigantic crime (I have no idea why I thought that now) so the Angel and I began. There isn’t 5 episodes, there is apparently a million. I just read on the Wikipedia page: “Pina [the show’s creator] was firm about making it a limited series, feeling that dilution had become a problem for his previous production.” I wonder if he envisioned “limited” as limited to a million episodes, or if dilution became a problem for this production, too.

Recently, I wrote about the etiquette of art: Do we finish what we start or can we end whenever we want, as soon as we lost interest? I came to the conclusion that I want to be a man who finishes what he begins. But that was before I began such a massive commitment. Probably I wouldn’t have watched 1 episode. But now what?

While I was on the Wikipedia page (just to innocently pull some details for this post), I read all of the season summaries. I read spoilers, it’s been spoiled, I know what happens and how it ends. Does that change anything about my decision to continue? And as long as we’re on the subject of etiquette, spoilers???? Am I a spoiler person? Could there be anything more disrespectful of an artists vision than a spoiler?

I don’t mind knowing the end. In fact, it can aid in my enjoyment. Here’s an example (with spoilers;) … In The Dark Knight Rises, I thought it was at least possible that Batman dies. I would spend the entire film in an anxious knot waiting for the end, so I asked a friend (who I had to relentlessly convince), who spoiled it for me, and then I was free to enjoy the film without waiting only for the climax & resolution.

But if you ask Christopher Nolan, NO, there probably wasn’t anything more disrespectful to him than what I did.

We live in a new world. The new Spiderman movie was released 4 days ago and it’s all over the internet, nearly impossible to avoid. I don’t think I like that, as a concept, even as I do like it for me. (Thankfully, not everyone is like me.) And maybe seasons of a series in the 80’s, released weekly, wasn’t as overwhelming as discovering a million episodes at once. Actually, there’s no maybe, it wasn’t nearly as overwhelming.

I don’t know if I’ll finish, or even if I’ll finish the 1st season.

This now reminds me of forgiveness. I understand forgiveness, that it’s important to my emotional/psychological/spiritual health, I am a man who is staunchly pro-forgiveness…until I have someone to actually forgive. I finish things, until there’s a million episodes to finish. Hm.

I guess we’ll see who I am together.

Rules of Engagement

July 21, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I recently started watching the 8 episode Netflix series The Gentlemen. This show is created by Guy Ritchie (of the classics Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, and I suppose, of the once married to Madonna fame), which was enough for me. His work is fast, funny, violent, ultra-stylized, and I was very interested to get invested. Also, season 2 is soon to be released, so I would have a deep-ish pool into which to jump.

[I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that Poker Face has been canceled. I know Rian Johnson is shopping it to other networks, but WITHOUT our perfect heroine Charlie Cale – the inimitable Natasha Lyonne. After watching each episode several times, I was happy to find a new cool show to like.]

So. Here’s the situation, a question of television etiquette: The show isn’t that great for me. Of course, it is fast, funny, violent and ultra-stylized, but apparently, those things actually aren’t enough. 15 minutes into episode 7 (out of 8, in season 1), I wondered if I should finish it or drop out. I only had a little over an hour in the season to go…but it is a little over an hour of my life. Was the hour+ better spent finishing the arc or doing something, anything, else? Did I somehow owe it to the Guy Ritchie, the writers, actors, network to see it through?

I had this same question of personal valuation years ago, but then it was about books. If I didn’t like the book, how late was too late to tap out and begin something new? My answer then was never. The commitment to a book is more intensive, longer, and requires more bandwidth, the cost of reading a book that has lost me (or that I’ve lost) is simply too high.

Tv is a different medium, demanding less of us. This seems to suggest that I should finish the season. But as background noise, what is the point? Maybe tv doesn’t really demand less, maybe we just give it less that it deserves. Maybe it is as disrespectful to the art as it is to each other when we work through family dinner, or scroll Instagram during a conversation.

Has the suggestion moved into the realm of not finishing if I don’t have the time, energy, or interest to give my full attention?

However. In a culture that struggles to commit to anything, maybe finishing anything is the ultimate act of rebellion, revolting against the faithlessness of the day. Maybe completing something (even as trivial as a Netflix series) is building the type of character I happen to value.

I asked 2 close friends, my boys, and the Angel, for their opinions. Ultimately, though, the decision was my own. I knew what they would do, but what would I do? To use a spiritual term, what weighed more to me? And was the character-building connection real or just me trying to artificially pump meaning into an inherently meaningless act?

I did finish it. Of course I did. And it was the character argument that tipped the scales – there is no artificial pumping because nothing is meaningless, everything matters. I’m rethinking my stance on books, too. I am going to be someone who shows up and stays. So? It wasn’t disappointing, but it wasn’t great, either. I will not watch season 2. I’ll probably watch the 2 seasons of Poker Face, again, instead.

Lovemaxxing

July 15, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The hosting site, in their daily prompt, is wondering what bothers me and why. I have an answer, there is something that bothers me A LOT. I’ll tell you in a minute.

1st, let me tell you about a documentary I watched about incels, a relatively new term (what does “new” mean in a world in hyper speed?) describing “INvoluntary CELibates,” usually young male teens/adults. It’s disturbing and inextricably linked to another phenomenon/movement called looksmaxxing (the more X’s, the better, I guess.) This whole thing is about believing worth is tied to appearance, that women only want the most beautiful (i.e. not them), and that keeps them home, online, and fearing/hating women. It’s also tied to a thing I wrote about before called “the manosphere,” where cartoon-caricature macho males celebrate misogyny and their own thinly veiled insecurity. Looksmaxxing operates on a scale:

“The looksmaxxing scale, often referred to as the PSL scale (an acronym for either Pretty Scale Level or Perceived Sexual Market Value Scale), is a subjective, crowd-sourced 1-10 scoring system used in aesthetics-obsessed online communities. It evaluates physical attractiveness based on four core metrics: harmony, dimorphism, angularity, and miscellaneous features (such as skin clarity and eye color).

The Tier Breakdown. The scale translates to specific categories based on perceived genetic value and physical traits:

1–3 (Subhuman / Low-Tier Normie): Individuals with severe facial deformities or an “ordinary level of unattractiveness”.
4–6 (Normies): The vast majority of the population. People in this tier have average features with a mix of minor flaws and proportional benefits.
7–7.75 (Chadlite / Chad): Considerably above-average features, high facial symmetry, good dimorphism, and strong jawlines.
8–10 (True Adam / Gigachad): Extremely rare outliers who possess top-tier structural genetics.

“Chad” is a weird kind of idea, it’s mostly a term of derision based in envy. It’s also my name, which I may change to “Gigachad,” from now on. I wonder how the Angel will feel about that. I wonder how she feels being married to a “Chad.” I wonder if she knows I am apparently at the tippy top of the Perceived Sexual Market Value Scale.

I just want to point out that yes, you did read that there’s a category called “Subhuman.”

Some looksmaxxers try to jump categories by physically changing their looks by, for example, hitting their cheekbones with hammers until they become more Chad-like. I guess this type of focus, -maxxing, is what drives the plastic surgery industry, too. I wonder if it also is at the deepest roots of my Running post last week. Is any form of visual self-improvement (weightlifting, makeup, brushing our teeth, BBLs, hammering our faces, etc) -maxxing? Are they all attempts to outrun, or outmodify our own poor self-images?

I don’t think so. I don’t think running on a treadmill is the same as surgery (but maybe that’s because I run on a treadmill and haven’t had even one cosmetic procedure yet). However, I can see a through-line that will become my answer to this curious site.

Whether it’s advertising or social media, so much of a world who’s religion is consumerism is designed to make us (the consumers) feel a lack, which would need to be filled (through some sort of product). We are born and raised to feel a lack. We compare our real lives to the filtered, pretend lives on Instagram, then operate out of that false comparison to achieve the fictional lives on our screens. So, we’re inadequate, in some way, by cultural design. We think our value is found in the brands we wear, our mates, or our jawlines, and we move around wearing masks, afraid and hiding.

I believe the only cure for anything is love. We find our true identity and worth in God, Who loves us despite our puny biceps and our outdated phones, and that love so fills us that it comes out of our ears, eyes, hearts, and gets all over everybody else, without condition, whether they’re Chads or not.

What bothers me is that we don’t do that. What bothers me is that so many of us are missing something so deeply that we’d hit ourselves with hammers and watch dark-web domestic violence & murder, that we’d be embarrassed to even go outside because our faces aren’t dimorphic or angular enough, that we’d undergo such painful transformations just to try to correct the countless mistakes we think our Creator made with us. I’m bothered that we’re waging war, on others, on ourselves, instead of waging campaigns of love.

We should be lovemaxxing, and it bothers me that we’re not, yet. But I promise we will, and there’s no way we’ll stop until we do.

Mean

June 29, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

So, someone in my life is being terribly mean to me. This might sound like I’m a child on a playground, but that doesn’t make it less true. Anytime I speak or ask any sort of question, he/she is condescending & disrespectful, as if I am the dumbest neanderthal that has ever walked the earth. This is not awesome. It also has very little to do with me.

Last week I watched a limited series on Peacock called The Resort. Cristin Milioti stars as Emma, 1/2 of a married couple on a vacation where they end up getting caught up in a weirdly supernatural mystery. She’s also a nightmare, distant, short & nasty to her husband & everyone else. Ms Milioti is a fantastic, magnetic actor (one of the best going, and if you don’t believe me, watch The Penguin series, especially episode 4), but wildly unlikeable as Emma. This can be an obstacle, when the lead actor is so unsympathetic to the audience, but it can also be the catalyst to our own transformation.

You see, later in the show, we begin to learn that she has lost a newborn child and made an impossible decision that left her broken and miserable. This brokenness informs every relationship in her life, isolates, and creates this aggressively aloof person that we see.

I very much like the Marvel & Star Wars universes moving into series television. It gives us time to learn more, to add depth & nuance, leading us to connect on new levels with these characters. Instead of just 1 primary thread, they are able to slowly expand and show more of the full scope of their complicated humanity. (Andor is probably the best example.)

Emma has built walls that make her as unknowable as she is unlikeable. This is not uncommon in our world, and it’s usually here that our shared story ends. We don’t get to see the why. We don’t get the privilege of backstory. It’s up to us if we have the grace to give them mercy, even if only in our heads & hearts.

This person who is mean to me, he/she is clearly lashing out at the closest safe thing. Why? Who knows? It’s obviously based in fear and insecurity. I know this, and so do you. Bullies are never the most self-assured people in the room, and the meanest are never the happiest. Mostly they’re the opposite. But I don’t know, he/she also doesn’t (can’t?) communicate this terror, this inadequacy, this desperate striving to prove his/her worth. If he/she could, we could assure him/her that he/she is already much, much more than enough.

But nobody likes to be a punching bag for someone’s identity work. It makes me angry, and I want to fight. I want to lash back.

But Emma was just so sad that it made her awful. The people that were sharp with her wouldn’t see the broken pieces she was trying to hide behind miles of thick, thick skin. I wonder if we will. I wonder if I have the courage to extend unconditional kindness, caring for his/her currently jagged edges.

Mean people are never born in a vacuum, everyone has a story. The only question is IF we can give them a break and keep loving despite…well, despite their humanity. We’re all awful & mean sometimes, and this is because we’re all broken in ways we might not acknowledge or understand. Our lives aren’t tv, but what tv certainly teaches us is to reserve our judgment, at least for now, probably forever.

Lies

June 23, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I watched 2 documentaries lately. Anatomy of Lies, on Peacock, and Maternal Instinct, on Netflix. Anatomy details the “life” of Elisabeth Finch, a writer on several shows you would’ve heard of, the most popular being Grey’s Anatomy. I put the word ‘life’ in quotes because most of everything she said or wrote about her life was a fabrication, a hi-jack of other people’s actual stories. She was called a “trauma vampire,” sucking other’s traumas and passing them off as her own. Instinct chooses a woman named Taylor Parker as its subject. She also lied about everything, eventually murdering pregnant woman Reagan Simmons-Hancock, and c-sectioning her unborn baby in a strange attempt to, not keep it as her own, but to lend evidence to her 9 months of false pregnancy.

These are interesting, sad stories but they are certainly not unique. There is no shortage of documentaries and “based on a true story” dramatizations of pathologically dishonest pretenders. Sometimes, once the liars are exposed, they apologize in their own non-contrite way. Like the vast majority of apologies, they’re sorry for being caught, not what they did (for which everyone else is to blame). Finch confesses only for things that can be proven false, and nothing else. Parker doesn’t confess at all, the documentarians don’t even ask, they don’t interview her at all.

[For an interesting, related context, I was only able to watch Anatomy of Lies because I subscribe to Peacock, and I only subscribe to Peacock because it has a show called Poker Face. The show is perfect, starring Natasha Lyonne as a drifter named Charlie Cale, who has the beautiful talent we wish we all had: the ability to know when someone is lying. She says, ‘everybody lies, it’s just a matter of finding out why.’]

Think about all of the really humongous relational messes you’ve either witnessed or experienced, how many of them had some level of deceit or dishonesty as the cornerstone? Some very recent, very close catastrophes left me saying, in each case, “If anyone, at any point, had told the truth, and even better, the whole truth, all of this drama could have been avoided.”

But they didn’t. Elisabeth Finch didn’t. Taylor Parker didn’t. And I wonder why. A woman in the Finch doc believes it all comes from an internal lack of worth creating a desperate need to be someone else. That’s probably true.

Of course, we also lie to avoid punishment. If the lamp falls, we say “not me,” so we don’t have to pay for it. That makes sense, right? Well, I mean, it doesn’t, because everybody always finds out who broke the lamp, and instead of just taking responsibility for the lamp, now we’re dealing with the lie, which is much, much worse. But there’s not an awful lot for us to do with this one, people either become adults or they don’t.

But, the other one, tied to a deeply perceived worthlessness, is a bit more interesting. Why do we want to be someone or something else? Why do we want their story or their family or house or money or whatever?

The 10th commandment (You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s) is sometimes read not as a command, but as a reward. If you do the previous 9, you won’t want your neighbor’s wife or donkey or anything that isn’t yours, because what you have will be enough. Enough is sort of a dirty word in America, where we worship at the altar of MORE. There is never enough. We are never enough. We are steadily fed the narrative that we are always lacking, and we’ll do anything to fill that hole. We need facelifts and new boobs because who we are and what we have now is simply not enough, and getting a new whatever is the answer.

Of course, the hole isn’t filled with more stuff or a new nose. We aren’t magically made whole with abs.

I’m increasingly interested in why we keep trying the same methods that don’t work, and have never worked? Why do we keep thinking a new car or jeans or dishwashing liquid will fill our souls? Why do we keep thinking war will bring peace? Or a bigger account balance will bring us the joy & peace that have eluded us for so long? Or that a few well-placed lies will produce the image that will finally complete us?

Finch lied to everyone in her life, it fell apart, she lost those people – the chaos of her broken life was directly related to her truth problem, and yet, she continues to lie. Dishonesty (on any level) builds walls around us while tearing down the chance/hope of intimacy and connection. The lies are a symptom, of course, the fruit of our fear. And until we can be defined by something else, until we can find our identity in something other than terror, we’ll continue to live these same boring loops and keep making these tired documentaries.

Love With A Capital L

A journey towards living an inspired life of love in the modern world

Tag: culture