Grounding

Something interesting happened at San Diego Comic-Con. The cast of Fantastic Four: First Steps graced the stage as a part of Marvel’s big presentation. That’s normal though. Nothing spectacular in what Marvel doing what they have been doing for more than a decade. The most intriguing moment is what transpired while they were on stage. During the F4 segment, actor Pedro Pascal had a moment of panic and reached out to touch the arm of co-star Vanessa Kirby. Understanding what was happening, she took hold of him and the two continued hand in hand.

To the inexperienced eye, this might seem like an innocent gesture, perhaps even romantic. After all, they do portray a married couple in Fantastic Four. It wouldn’t be the first time an onscreen couple developed a real life relationship. However, those of us who battle anxiety, depression, PTSD, and/or autism witnessed something familiar. We recognized the change in Pascal’s demeanor. We watched as one moment he was smiling and totally fine then a second later he most definitely was not fine. His look of panic has also flashed in our eyes. Sometimes for obvious reasons but often without cause. As we’ve struggled with mental health, we have faced occasions where our amygdala short circuited and triggered our fight or flight instincts. One second we’re OK then the next we need something to bring us back to earth.

Pedro Pascal has been open about his mental health struggles. He’s admitted anxiety being a part of his psyche since he was a child. In press interviews and red carpet events, you’ll often see him with his left hand over his chest, a coping mechanism he’s learned to keep himself centered. In extreme moments of panic, he needs to hold someone else. Not inappropriate touching condemned by HR offices everywhere, but a steady and platonic grasp - like holding the hand of a colleague. Vanessa Kirby understood the assignment and allowed Pascal to ground himself through her.

Unfortunately, the trollish side of the internet is mocking the situation. Some are claiming Pascal’s experiences with anxiety are fantastical inventions of his imagination. Others are saying it’s a sign of weakness. Meanwhile, I’m over in my corner of the universe with nothing but respect for Kirby and Pascal. One human in crisis expressing their vulnerability, and another human reciprocating their need with kindness. I have never wanted to be friends with Pedro Pascal more than I do now.

If the toxic half of the internet could shut up for a few minutes, there’s a couple lessons we could learn from Pascal’s interaction on the Comic-Con stage.

First: depression, anxiety, and trauma do not discriminate. It can strike anyone from any socio-economic class. It doesn’t care about your politics, your race, your gender, or your religion. No amount of success, wealth, fame, or acclaim can protect you from mental illness. It strikes rich and poor. It affects beautiful people as much as the ugly dudes. It weighs on the hearts and minds of CEOs and janitors. It is a curse upon the righteous and the unrighteous. And here’s the weird one - even happy people can struggle with depression. I know, because I am one of those happy depressed folks.

Pedro Pascal has a career many actors envy. He’s been the lead actor in celebrated franchises for Star Wars, DC, Marvel, Kingsman, Game of Thrones, and The Last of Us. He’s won a Screen Actor’s Guild Award, two MTV Movie & TV Awards, and a People’s Choice Award. He’s been nominated for Golden Globes, Emmys, Teen Choice Awards, and more. He’s universally loved and respected by those who work with him. He’s made enough money to retire comfortably. Yet despite all his successes, accolades, admiration, and popularity he still battles anxiety.

The other moral of Pascal’s time at Comic-Con is the importance of grounding. Electricians know grounding as a safety method of connecting a powered system to the earth. The therapeutic definition is much the same, but instead of electrical components it connects humans to the terrain. Grounding grounds us. In the simplest sense, grounding is nothing more than touching soil. Walking barefoot through grass or along a sandy beach, wading into a lake or river, lying down in a field or meadow.

One of my favorite podcasts shared a story from a listener who overcame a phobia by grabbing a handful of dirt and allowing it to fall through her fingers every time she had a fear induced panic attack. I have a therapist friend who advocates taking your shoes off outside at least once a day to improve your mood. I’ve even discovered an odd calmness after running my fingers through needles on boughs of pine, fir, cedar, and spruce trees. Psychologists and patients in treatment have praised the use of grounding to treat a wide variety of both mental and physical conditions: depression, anxiety, PTSD, insomnia, hypertension, and chronic pain. It’s not a cure for anything, but it’s an excellent boost when in distress. Kind of like a shot of espresso for a sleepy driver in the middle of a road trip.

Another form of grounding is human contact. My dad preaches the benefits of a good hug. As for Pedro Pascal, finding balance is as simple as holding someone else’s hand. There are times when the feel of the earth isn’t available, no forest or beach or lawn near enough to touch. In those moments, what you need most is the gentle kindness of someone else’s grasp.

It is my hope if you ever find yourself in a time of suffering you have someone like Vanessa Kirby near you, a person understanding and willing to hold your hand to steady your nerves and anxieties. I pray I never reject the needs of a fellow human when their emotional state necessitates a stable platonic touch.

Bless the Artist

In the process of deconstruction, my relationship with the Bible changed. It evolved out of necessity. While some people deconstruct to get away from God, I deconstructed to follow God. I had to figure out how I could still take the Bible seriously when the loudest Christians around me (including many who taught me biblical lessons when I was a child) were not living the way scripture says they should.

How could I believe in the Jesus of the gospel when so many Christian influencers portrayed him to be a gun-toting, power-hungry, hate-filled, bro-dude wearing a red hat? How could I follow the texts so many of my elders claimed to be the exact voice of God when those same leaders actively defied the instructions contained in those supposedly sacred words? How could I embrace Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth when much of the religious right wants to use it as a weapon to harm and control people I love?

This was not an easy exercise. It wasn’t (as celebrity pastor once Matt Chandler called it) a sexy thing to do. Deconstruction is often lonely and terrifying. It is painful and difficult. You lose friends, confuse family, and get ridiculed by the church faithful. In the end, you hope to find truth and freedom but those elements come with a cost. It changes you.

I won’t bore you with the step by step details of how I arrived at my renewed fondness for scripture. Instead, I’ll share the end result because it is (in my opinion) more stunning than anything I was taught in childhood Sunday School.

When I began this journey, I already knew the Bible was a collection of books: stories, poems, letters, records, and law written by at least 40 different authors over a time span of fifteen centuries. I understood every author wrote these books for a specific historical audience for a very distinct reason. It would be foolish to believe we (modern peoples) were the target demographic for these biblical writers. To better understand scripture, you must discover why the stories were originally told.

As I researched a way to answer this question of why, I began to see a pattern, an ongoing theme. Yes, it’s about Jesus. And yeah, it’s about how all these individual authors related to God. But there’s more. My faith was revived when I realized the Bible – start to finish – is a story of creation.

Most church folk will tell you the creation story is the first chapter of Genesis but it stops there. That can’t be it though. As you read the Bible (all of it and not just the parts that make you feel good) God is constantly doing something different. God is relentlessly creative. Sure it starts with creating something from nothing – the heavens and earth, the times of day, birds and fish, all of the animal kingdom, and people created in God’s image. After resting on the seventh day, God had more to accomplish. God wanted to make all things new.

The word “new” appears 280 times in the Bible (NIV translation), and you see this newness everywhere. When Adam and Eve left the garden, they were given new instructions separate from the rules of Eden. After the flood, God did something peculiar – a divine assurance was made, something not done by any other gods worshiped by humans. When God called Abraham, there was a promise a new nation would come from Abraham’s descendants. When the Israelites left Egypt, they were given new laws and new territory. God installed new leadership, new judges, new kings, and new prophets to lead the new nation into a new way of existing. The prophet Isaiah quoted God as saying “behold I am doing a new thing … making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” When Jesus came, God established a new covenant. Jesus regularly spoke about new things. He told the crowds “You’ve been taught to do this, but I tell you something new and better.” He demonstrated a new way of living. At the end of his life, Jesus told his followers to change their focus from the nation of Israel to all nations. Peter was given visions which convinced him to break old laws and traditions in favor of something new. Paul was given a new name and a new profession. In his letter to the church in Corinth, he said we are made new creations in Christ. He told the Galatians church old traditions didn’t matter - what mattered is the new creation. The author of Hebrews detailed a new way of doing religion, a way we could approach God directly, making the old rituals of the high priest obsolete. And the book of Revelation foretold of a new heaven and a new earth.

This is beautiful to me. If God is real, then God is a creative God. If God is real, then God makes all things new. This is something I can believe in. This is something worth living for.

In the gospels, Jesus told his followers “If you believe in me, you’ll do the work I’m doing - and you’ll do even greater things.” To believe in Jesus, who Christians claim is God in human flesh, to follow him we will do what he did. To follow the footsteps of someone who taught new things and new ways, we must do the same. Jesus gave his followers instructions to continue God’s work of creation. Creating something new is perhaps the most holy thing a Christian can do.

So God bless the artist, the sculptor, the painter, the doodler. God bless the storyteller, the novelist, the raconteur, the poet, the bard. God bless the singer of songs, the vocalist, the rapper. God bless the musician, the instrumentalist, the producer. God bless the rhythm maker, the drummer, the beat boxer. God bless the photographer, the videographer, the audio engineer. God bless the crafter, the woodworker, the jewelry maker. God bless the actor, the actress, the costume designer, the director. God bless the artist.

Now ...

For the Love of Ghosts

As soon as Independence Day passes, Halloween becomes the next big holiday. Summer is the start of the spooky season. Granted, retailers call this back-to-school time, but depending on who you talk to …

Regardless of what dates you accept as the official beginning of the spooky season, I believe horror is something to be enjoyed year round. Winter, spring, summer, and fall (perhaps especially the autumn) scary tales are a gift for all seasons. Time and time again, good humans confront evil in forms of beasts and monsters and terrible people.

Horror has a diverse population or villainous characters. There are the slashers: Freddy, Jason, Leatherface, Chucky, and Michael Myers. Universal introduced us to the classics: Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, and Creature from the Black Lagoon. There are countless stories about zombies, demonic possessions, serial killers, alien invasions, and ghosts.

For most of my adult life, I thought zombie fiction was my favorite sub-genre of horror. Yet, looking at my favorite scary books and movies, they tend to be ghost stories.

The Shining, The Ring, Stir of Echoes, The Haunting of Hill House, Mexican Gothic, The Frighteners, The Sixth Sense, The Canterville Ghost, The Fall of the House of Usher, and … well, it’s a long list. There’s something about ghost stories captivating our attention. They haunt us long after the final page or closing credits. They tug our heartstrings and trigger our fight/flight responses. They thrill us, terrify us, fill us with wonder, and remind us our residency in this world is only temporary.

When it comes to tales of hauntings, there is a familiar trope most of these stories follow. A spirit of the recently deceased lingers after a tragic death. Their presence frightens any new tenants in their domain until a person of either high intelligence or spiritual sensitivity moves in and seeks to understand the specter of the abode. From there they find the remains of the dearly departed to either solve the mystery of who killed them or provide a proper burial. This story arc has existed for as long as pop culture has regurgitated ghost stories. But where did it come from?

Have y’all heard of Pliney the Younger? He was a first century Roman historian, politician, philosopher, and student of his uncle, Pliney the Elder. When the Elder died attempting to rescue a friend from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, his will deeded his entire estate to the Younger who dedicated his life and wealth to the Roman Empire. This Younger Pliney was born high into the Roman aristocracy, influential in both military and civilian circles. He was a prolific writer and orator often addressing emperors, governors, and other noble figures.

In his large collection of epistles, Young Pliney wrote two letters about the Mount Vesuvius tragedy with such great detail and accuracy, they’re still respected by modern volcanologists. While serving as a judge presiding over cases prosecuting suspected Christians, Pliney wrote to the emperor because he’d never investigated the new religion and wanted clear instruction. Their correspondence is some of the earliest extrabiblical accounts of Christianity. He wrote letters explaining Roman administrative processes and his daily life, giving modern peoples a firsthand account of what it was like to live in first century Rome.

Among all of the important historical texts composed by Pliney the Younger, he also wrote the earliest surviving ghost story. Per Pliney’s accounts, he was disturbed by a rouge spirit in one of his villas while he was busy writing. He chose to ignore the ghoul but it kept returning, creeping closer. Rather than dismiss it, abandon the villa, consort with a medium, or seek help from an oracle, Pliney employed his intelligence to investigate. He followed the apparition and discovered a body. Once the philosopher provided the corpse a Roman burial, the ghost was gone - never to return.

We have been following this format for 2000 years. Horror writers are finding new ways to tell the same story and through all ingenuity, we’re maintaining a tradition stretching back thousands of years. We remix haunted tales to create something that is fresh and ancient at the same time.

The notes app on my phone gets a lot of usage. Any time I get an idea for a blog post, short story, novel, or a video I want to make for TikTok, I write a note. For books, some of those thoughts jotted down in digital form are just a notion - a vague “what if?” question that is the basis for all of my book ideas. Others have a very loose outline. A few have character names attached, descriptions of settings, plot points, or more detailed outlines. There’s another note that compiles a list of every book idea I have brewing with the title, genre, and brief synopsis. With 42 titles in that list, I have more plans for books than I have years left to live. Throughout this inventory are ideas for ghost stories.

One is about a single dad confronted with the literal ghosts of his regrets, like Dicken’s Christmas Carol meets Thirteen Ghosts. In another, a ghost falls in love with the living person who bought the house she haunts. There’s an idea about the ghost of a serial killer who possesses the body of a snowman. Or a pair of haunted drumsticks received as a white elephant gift. Then one about a despondent dude taking a cross country road trip with the ghost of his best friend. More proposals exist but you get the point. My special blend of neurodivergence never ceases to generate new ideas. It’s my autistic super power.

These stories sing to me. Tales of the ghosts that haunt us - real or imagined, campfire stories or literary classics, big budget blockbusters or obscure indie flicks - I’m inspired by ghostly fables. Even though I don’t believe ghosts are real I find threads of hope in their legends, the ability to express grief, the power to overcome fear, and a shared lamentation with all humanity.

What is it about these spooky yarns? Why are they so powerful? How to they elicit such strong emotional responses of terror with the comforting sense of solidarity? On a recent episode of Lore, podcast host Aaron Mahnke explained:

There is no better reasoning. Ghosts are dangerous ideas. They are a cancer. They are unfortunate news delivered by doctors and politicians. If we can put our ghosts to rest, perhaps we can also defeat ill intent or survive chemotherapy. By exorcising malevolent spirits, maybe we can expel malicious tyrants and cure malignant disease.