Become More Like a Child

Listen: “We’re Going To Be Friends” by The White Stripes

I was telling my therapist a few weeks ago how my whole life feels awkward right now. Since my “mid-life crisis,” I have felt like I am starting over again in so many areas: vocation, relationships, faith, and community. I feel awkward like a teenager at times, and it is so uncomfortable—even scary. At the same time, this crisis in my life has sparked a new hunger for learning and growing. Maybe there’s an upside in the long run.

I have always enjoyed learning—life-long learning has always been a core value of mine. I have a natural curiosity about the world in which we live, and I have always valued both formal and informal education. On the formal side, I have either earned a degree or worked on a degree every decade of my life (BA, MDiv, DMin, PhD). On the informal side, I have been a voracious reader my entire life. My personal library has over 6,000 books not counting all my kindle editions. I also believe I can learn something from every person I meet by asking good questions and listening.

However, when it comes to learning, nothing works like the brain of a child. No computer on the planet can acquire and assimilate and adapt to information like the brain of a child. Children are naturally curious about their environment, and they learn at phenomenal rates. It turns out that neuroscience studies of the brain confirm this fact. It’s called neuroplasticity, and the human brain develops at phenomenal rates up through the mid-twenties. (Read Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain by David Eagleman.)

Even though young brains are incredibly malleable, studies show that adult brains still have an incredible capacity to learn and change in both healthy and unhealthy ways. Neuroscience of the brain is a fascinating field which is exploring issues like habits, addiction, feelings, memory, learning, meditation, sleep, focus, and perception of time. It’s an exciting field of study with many practical applications.

One of my favorite demonstrations of neuroplasticity is a video called “SmarterEveryDay: The Backwards Brain Bicycle” by Destin. In the video, a bike is engineered so that it steers opposite. When you turn right, the bike turns left; when you turn left, the bike turns right. Destin’s young son learns to ride the backwards bike in a few days while Destin took eight months (working at it a few minutes a day). I showed this video in church one weekend and an engineer made a backwards bike for me to ride. Me and many of my cycling friends took turns trying to ride the bike and not one of us could conquer it in a day—we couldn’t even turn one full rotation of the peddles without falling. However, if we would have worked at it every day, we could have rewired the algorithms in our brain and conquered it. Adult brains are learning and rewiring all the time, just at different rates of speed than a young brains.

This brings me to my main point: as adults we need to become more like children. Not in the sense of childish behaviors like selfishness and temper tantrums, but in the most admirable qualities of children like wonder, curiosity, faith, vulnerability, humility, discovery, creativity, and adventures. J. M. Barrie, who created Peter Pan, said, “All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust….The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.”

Jesus spoke of the importance of becoming more like a child. In one episode, parents were bringing their children to Jesus for a blessing, but the disciples were acting like bouncers. In essence, they were saying, “Don’t bother Jesus with unimportant children!” Jesus corrected the disciples and said, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them. For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children. I tell you the truth, anyone who doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it” (Mark 10:13-16; NLT).

Steven Hawking said, “I am just a child who never grew up. I keep asking these ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions. Occasionally, I find an answer.” I was listening to a podcast in which Brene Brown was interviewing Dr. David Eagleman, a neuroscientist (“Unlocking Us with Brene Brown,” December 2, 2020). They were talking about memory, dementia, and how to keep the brain malleable. It turns out that forcing yourself into uncomfortable situations in which you have to learn new skills is like exercise for the brain. Learning a new language, a new mind game (chess), a new sport (pickle ball), or a new social environment (a small group) is good for the brain. It helps you stay young even though you might feel awkward. At the end of the interview, Brene summed up the conversation and said, “Staying malleable is staying awkward, brave, and kind.” I’m game for that. Maybe awkward is not so bad.

While writing this blog, I remembered a song written by a friend of mine. Here are the lyrics:

Awaken my soul, come awake

   To hunger, to seek, to thirst

Awaken first love, come awake

   And do as you did, at first

Spirit of the living God

Come fall afresh on me

Come wake me from my sleep

Blow through the caverns of my soul

   Pour in me to overflow

To overflow, overflow, overflow

            (written by Jeremy Riddle)

I first heard this song recorded by another acquaintance of mine, Samuel Lane. It moves me every time I listen. May we return to childlike wonder.

Shalom

©realfredherron 2020

What Do Trees Teach Us About the Dangers of Isolation?

Listen: “One Friend” by Keb Mo

Just ask the animals, and they will teach

you.

Ask the birds of the sky, and they will

tell you.

Speak to the earth, and it will instruct you.

            (Job 12:8,9; NLT)

I’ve always felt at home in the woods. As a kid, I could play long hours exploring creeks, catching snakes, and finding bugs and animals to harass. In my teen years, I fell in love with backpacking and camping. Throughout my adult life, I have loved spending time in the forests of Missouri, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. I love hiking through Aspen forests in the fall when their leaves are turning yellow. It’s magical. I can still be found riding my mountain bike through the woods around Kansas City and occasional mountain biking trips to Arkansas, Arizona, and Colorado.

While I have always felt at home in the woods, I never understood how much we could learn from trees (although I have known for years how Aspen forests are interconnected). Last year I came across a book entitled The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, a German forester. (I discovered Wohlleben through an article written by James H. O’Keefe, MD in From the Heart, “Lessons from Kindhearted, Intelligent Trees.”) I found it fascinating. It turns out that all tree families live together as neighbors—communicating, supporting, and caring for each other.

Trees live together because they survive longer and healthier in community. Isolated trees are more vulnerable to life-threatening conditions and have much shorter life spans. This is true for people as well. Depression, addiction, and other adverse mental health issues accelerate and intensify in isolation. Trees accomplish their life together through proximity and communication.

Trees communicate with each other in two primary ways: (1) trees emit chemical gases from the leaves that warn against attacks from insects or herbivores which activate toxic tannins in their bark and leaves; and (2) trees use chemical signals sent through the fungal networks around their root tips. Trees in a forest are in constant communication with each other.

Fungi are a species between plants and animals. (Let’s hear it for mushrooms!) “Over centuries, a single fungus can cover many square miles and network an entire forest,” according to Wohlleben. Dr. Suzanne Simard calls it the “wood-wide-web.” There is a fungus in Oregon over 2,400 years old and 2,000 acres in size, making fungi the largest know living organism in the world.

Trees function altruistically. They help each other when times are tough. Wohlleben says, “The trees, it seems, are equalizing differences between the strong and the weak. This equalization is taking place underground through the roots. There’s obviously a lively exchange going on down there. Whoever has an abundance of sugar hands some over; whoever is running short gets help. The fungal networks are acting as gigantic redistribution mechanisms.” Trees also know how to ration their use of water, especially after they have suffered damage to their trunks. Trunks crack in drought times, and the root system puts out warning vibrations which signal a healing response in the tree. Trees know how to come to the aid of their sick, weak, and vulnerable members.

Dr. O’Keefe combines ancient wisdom and science. He reminds us that about 2,600 years ago Lao Tzu said, “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” At the same time, scientific studies of the brain reveal how connection, love, and kindness light up the brain in functional MRI images with a warm glow. Even small acts of kindness have a positive impact on a person’s overall health.

Forming loving and supportive community networks are vital for human health and wholeness. During this season of Covid, community is even more vital. We still need to build healthy networks of friends and family through communication. We’ve had to get creative in this season of social distancing and masks. Zoom meetings are better than nothing; and small groups are creating safe bubbles for proximity. Humans thrive in loving networks. This is why faith-based groups, recovery groups, therapy groups and social groups of all kinds (sports, books, crafts, etc.) are vital to health and wholeness.

Brene Brown has written an excellent book on the quest for true belonging entitled Braving the Wilderness. She points out how our desire for connection is spiritual in nature. We are hardwired for community, not isolation. If you read my blog entitled “Spiritual Adventures,” you will see that connection is at the heart of spirituality. Brene’s definition of spirituality is “recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion.” How are you doing with community and connection?

Shalom

©realfredherron 2020

Death and Resurrection

Listen: “The Light That Never Fails” by Andra Day

There’s always hope for healing. Even in my darkest days (metaphorical death), I held on to my belief in the possibility of new,  resurrected life. Why did I hold on to hope in the face of what felt like emotional and spiritual death? Here’s a glimpse into my thinking. Death leads to new life on a cellular level and at the cosmic level. It seems that life and death are intertwined in every facet of the world in which we live. In fact, death can be “swallowed up” with new life (Isaiah 25:8; I Corinthians 15:55). This is our hope, our longing for the redemption of all things.

One of the most vivid images of the message of Jesus is death and resurrection. As a metaphor it resonates in nature and in mythology. It also inspires us when we hear echoes of this theme in the story of someone who travels to death’s door and then comes back to life again. We love a comeback story.

In nature, we observe the cycle of life and death everywhere we explore—whether in the plant kingdom or the animal kingdom—the death of one species becomes material for new life. Even the ever expanding cosmos goes through cycles of devastation and rebirth (The End of Everything by Katie Mack). In the Midwest, we experience the four seasons as an annual witness to death and new life as Fall/Winter emerges into Spring/Summer.

In mythology, it’s not uncommon to have a god of fertility who annually dies and rises again (such as Osiris) or a god with a more elaborate story of death and eventual life that emerges from death (like Dionysus). These gods are, in effect, agricultural gods who are believed to bestow fertility and prosperity. Modern mythology (in the form of comic book super heroes) is full of examples of super heroes who die and come back to life again (like Superman, Batman, Oliver Queen, Spider-Man, and Nightcrawler).

In movies and real life, we love a story where a person is on the brink of death or immense suffering and comes back triumphantly. I might recall the story of Simba in “The Lion King,” or I think about the survivors of the 1996 Everest tragedy told by Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air). My new favorite climbing documentary is an amazing come back story: Meru. If you haven’t seen Meru, do so. Stick with it. The last half of the documentary is simply extraordinary. Jimmy Chin, Renan Ozturk, and Conrad Anker accomplish a real-life, super hero feat (and Andra Day’s song is magical). Their commitment to each other and their tenacity against impossible odds is a story of legends.

Where does this place the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus? Some people have claimed that his death and resurrection is another myth. It represents a universal truth, but should not be taken literally. We are to draw inspiration from it as we would from any story of this kind.

One of my favorite authors of the twentieth century is C. S. Lewis. Lewis was an atheist who came to believe in Jesus. Lewis taught mythology and literary criticism. He wrote modern myths like The Chronicles of Narnia (for children) and Till We Have Faces (for adults). He was also a prolific Christian author. One of his short essays was entitled “Myth Became Fact” (essay in God in the Dock). He writes about how many people argue that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a myth because it represents a universal truth. However, Lewis turns the argument around. If something is eternally true, wouldn’t you expect to find echoes of it everywhere? Maybe death and resurrection is at the heart of ultimate reality because it reflects something deeply true in the heart of God (or the Universe), and it is revealed spectacularly in Jesus.

You can ponder that. Suffice it to say, there is always hope for healing. There’s always hope for a comeback, even in the darkest of situations. Death and resurrection is hardwired into the Universe and into our hearts. Creation. Death. Re-creation. It’s our story—my story. It’s our hope—my hope. Communities and friendships thrive when they are built on this hope for healing and redemption.

Shalom

©realfredherron 2020

Dark Journeys

Listen: “Black Sun” by Death Cab for Cutie

Caveat: Many people have gone through deep depression or a life crises that completely altered their worldview. Maybe not you, but a friend or relative. The purpose of this blog is not to wallow in darkness or hopelessness, but to provide hope. Knowing that “you are not alone” is a powerful point of connection and hope for people going through a dark journey. It also creates hope to realize that even the darkest of journeys can find light.

Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell
About those woods is hard—so tangled and rough
And savage that thinking of it now, I feel
The old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter
And yet, to treat the good I found there as well
I’ll tell you what I saw…

—(The Inferno of Dante: A New Verse Translation by Robert Pinskey)

In the recovery community, hell is not a threat. “We’ve been through hell” is a common phrase. And perhaps it’s a journey we all face. In my darkest of days, questioning everything I ever believed, I ran across this translation of Dante’s epic poem. “That’s me.” I thought. It’s the opening lines of Dante’s epic midlife crises, a journey he takes through hell, purgatory, and paradise. All of the symphonic drama of life captured in an epic poem—one written seven hundred years ago, but still resonates with the human condition. (For a modern classic on adult developmental issues, see Daniel Levinson, The Seasons of a Man’s Life and The Seasons of a Woman’s Life.)

We don’t like the theme of darkness. I don’t like spiritual darkness. In 2019, if “ten” represents feeling on top of the world, victorious and in the light, and “one” represents the depths of darkness, suicidal thoughts streaming—I was a “two.” Day after day I woke hoping I was in a bad dream, but I wasn’t. The darkness was real. The hole I dug for myself was caving in around me. Day after day.

Yet darkness is a part of the spiritual journey. We don’t sign up for it. We don’t want it. But it comes to us in many forms and ways; sometimes our own doing and sometimes not. What do we do with the darkness? Can we embrace it without being consumed by it? Can we learn from it? Even make friends with it?

Virgil spoke of the journey thirteen hundred years before Dante, and Virgil was a companion with Dante in his journey. Virgil writes:

            It is easy to go down into Hell;
night and day, the gates of dark
Death stand wide; but to climb
back again, to retrace one’s
steps to the upper air—there’s
the rub, the task.

                        —The Aeneid, Book VI, line 192

To journey through it, to learn from it, and to ascend despite it; this is the challenge. Matthew Fox describes how most of us are addicted to the light. “We whore after more—more images, more light, more profits, more goodies.” Yet human growth takes place in the dark. Under ground. In subterranean passages. “A light-oriented spirituality is superficial, surface-like, lacking as it does the deep, dark roots that nourish and surprise and ground the large tree” (Original Blessing by Matthew Fox). 

If you’ve grown up in a belief system which provides quick, easy answers in black and white, then the answers fail you, the confidence ebbs away and you’re left with—nothing it seems. It’s pitch dark. You grasp to feel, to touch objects, to find a path; but nothing, air maybe, light has dissipated. Questions lead to questions.

Listening in the dark, to the dark, in the absence of noise is terrifying, yet letting go leads to—a strange peace. Grasping to control, we give up. Go still. Silent. Maybe just floating, in a dark nothingness. (I’ve never tried a float tank, but maybe I should.) There’s something there. Not nothing. Can I learn to hear?

Listen to Rilke in “The Dark Hours of My Being:”

I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.

 Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that’s wide and timeless

 So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a gravesite
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots
embrace:

a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.

I long for the “knowing to come” so “I can open to another life that’s wide and timeless.” Through this journey of darkness, I have hope. In the words of T. S. Eliot:

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving\
Into another intensity
For another union, a deeper communion

            —“East Coker”

 I’m on journey, learning to read the darkness. Shadows hint of light (Psalm 23).

Shalom

©realfredherron 2020

Spirituality Adventures

Listen: “Something to Believe In” by Young the Giant

In 2019, I found myself in a crises of faith, and I needed some community support for my own sanity and sobriety. In addition to attending church services, I decided to connect with a few recovery groups in Kansas City for the support I needed. Day after day I sat in groups of people and listened to them tell their stories and talk about their struggles. I’ve listened to drunks and addicts and prostitutes and atheists and rabbis and pantheists and Buddhists and doctors and prisoners and homeless and LGBTQ peoples. By listening to personal stories I’ve realized that everybody is spiritual, and I have been inspired by every type of person as they wrestle with dignity, with the issues and questions of life. I have found courage and hope in the strangest places.

Spirituality is vital to recovery. This truth can be challenging to the atheist, the agnostic, or the religious person who is angry at God. In 2019 as I was struggling with my own faith, I developed some content for just such a group of people. About fifty percent of the people who need recovery are atheist or agnostic and can’t tolerate religion. The course I developed was on “Spirituality and Recovery.” I have taught the Bible and focused on Jesus for over 40 years. The challenge of this course was to teach spirituality without Jesus or the Bible as my foundational text. It was a challenge, but one that I enjoyed. I feel like I learned as I prepared (most teachers learn more than their students). I discovered that regardless a person’s religious orientation or lack thereof, there are some universally recognized strategies for nurturing spirituality.

So first, what is spirituality and is it different from religion? If you look up these words in the dictionary you will find that they overlap. “Religion” means a reverence for and belief in a God or gods. In this sense, all of the great traditions of faith would be a religion like Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity. Religion can be used in a positive sense as representing devotion to God/gods and compassion for others. A passage in the New Testament says that true religion is caring for the widow and orphan (James 1:27). “Spirituality” means a concern for the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things. It speaks of a journey to connect with the infinite, a higher power, or something beyond. It involves connection with self, others, ultimate reality, and values that arise out of this pursuit.

In popular American culture, “religion” has taken on a primarily negative connotation and “spirituality” has taken on a largely positive connotation. This is true in the recovery community and in the culture at large. I have asked the question in many group settings, “What is the difference between religion and spirituality?” Answers vary but a pattern emerges: religion is depicted as an organized, rigid, dogmatic belief system which has injured and harmed people. In some cases, the offense comes from a rigid emphasis on rules over against loving relationship. In many cases, religion is seen as an oppressive force for violence, hatred, exclusion, conformity, tribalism, rejection, condemnation, and unkindness. Every major religion has failed to live up to its best values at various times in history (so have individuals who represent them). Spirituality, on the other hand, is seen as a personal or communal pursuit of ultimate meaning and purpose. It subscribes to an orientation of life which affirms the deep longings of the heart for love, beauty, goodness, meaning, purpose, and connection with something greater than self.

The fastest growing demographic in the rapidly changing spiritual landscape of America is “spiritual but not religious.” Most people around the world embrace spirituality. Open, curious, loving discussions with people about spirituality is a window to the soul. Most people love to talk about spirituality in a loving, nonjudgmental context. What’s interesting is that the topic of Jesus invariably comes up without forcing it. Jesus is known and recognized as a spiritual teacher around the world—as are Moses, Buddha, and Mohammed. These four spiritual teachers have influenced the spiritual and religious landscape of the world in which we live.

Spirituality Adventures is the name I am using for what I am doing to enter into this space in our culture through online platforms. Spirituality Adventures is a nonjudgmental place to explore spirituality. I will be interviewing people on various topics like “Recovery and Spirituality” and “Health and Spirituality.” I will be asking people from all walks of life questions related to any given topic. I will be listening intently to the stories people tell, and I will tell some of my own stories.

I have been a follower of Jesus since my late teenage years. I am certain that if Jesus were walking around today, he would be hanging out with “spiritual but not religious people.” He would listen and ask great questions (just read the Gospels with a focus on the questions Jesus asked). Jesus would also tell many spiritual stories (parables). He would hang out with people of high and low reputation and his heart would bend towards the most vulnerable and marginalized among us, regardless of their beliefs or lifestyles.

I encourage you to join me on this spiritual adventure. I am truly excited about the journey and those who would walk with me. Stay in touch and thanks for your support.

Shalom

©realfredherron 2020

Therapy

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Listen: “The Hype” twenty one pilots

Shame was one of my dominant feelings in 2019. Because my public meltdown involved “moral failure,” it tarnished my role as pastor. I was drowning in private shame and public humiliation. My identity as a pastor was formed over a forty year period starting in my late teens. While I knew I wasn’t perfect and tried to let people see my imperfections, I still believed I was a good pastor with a good heart—a good shepherd. My moral failure, public humiliation, and shaken faith caused me to feel a tremendous amount of shame. Now I felt like a bad pastor, a bad person—“never good enough” is the phrase Brene Brown uses to help us understand the core of shame.

I also had issues of shame around the taboo of sex stemming from my childhood growing up in evangelical communities. I experienced an early version of the purity culture (the evangelical sexual purity culture exploded in the 90’s). For the most part, you just don’t talk about sex; you shouldn’t think about sex; and you better not do it. All kinds of bad things happen if you do it. On top of that, pastors should be bulletproof when it comes to sexual temptation. Sexual transgression was one of the worst sins for pastors in the evangelical world, almost as bad as murder (but even Moses is forgiven for murder). Now I was a “fallen mega-church pastor” and the whole world knew I wasn’t bulletproof. My shame was on steroids. 

Talking about my negative emotions is not my favorite way to spend time, but I assure you it is important if you have lived a life suppressing or avoiding your negative emotions. Negative emotions (like all emotions) tell us something important about ourselves if we are willing to listen to them. This can be a scary journey for sure, but it has great rewards if you make that journey with a good therapist. Most Americans fall into one of two opposite extremes—emotional dysregulation or emotional over-regulation. Most of the time our experiences of and responses to childhood trauma (even small ‘t’ trauma) knock us off balance when it comes to expressing our emotions.

I fall into the emotional over-regulation group. This is not unusual for people in Western culture: “Emotional invalidation, particularly of negative emotions, is an interaction style characteristic of societies that put a premium on individualism, including individual self-control and individual achievement” (DBT manual p. 8). Learning to identify and express negative emotions in a healthy way provides a pathway to emotional health and healing.

Therapy can be one way to explore negative emotions with a person skilled in listening to your story and helping you navigate the interior of your emotional world. Some of the best therapy models take into account the best studies regarding the neuroscience of the brain. My current favorites are Internal Family Systems developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz (Internal Family Systems Therapy), AEDP by Dr. Diana Fosha (The Transforming Power of Affect), The Change Triangle by Hilary Jacobs Hendel (It’s Not Always Depression), and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy by Dr. Marsha Linehan (DBT Skills Training Manual).

Through my years of pastoring people, I found that many Christians shied away from therapy. They had the false belief that if they had enough faith they wouldn’t need a doctor (for physical health) or a counselor, therapist, or psychiatrist (for mental and relational health). I believe that healthy faith recognizes all the resources for health and healing that God has provided for us.

Therapy is an important resource for mental and spiritual health. I needed to work on two critical issues: (1) negative emotions and emotional over-regulation in relation to fear, anger, disgust, shame, guilt, and anxiety; (2) radical acceptance and change. Ann Voskamp says, “Shame dies when stories are told in safe places.” Talking about shame and identifying how it shows up, how it manifests in our bodies, and how it makes us feel is important work. A good therapist helps us explore our own stories and feelings in a safe place and helps us begin to hear the voice of our true dignity and worth, our true self.

I’ll leave you with a quote from my favorite author and researcher on shame. Brene Brown reminds us, “Owning your own story is the bravest thing you’ll ever do.” I hope you will join me on this journey of faith and discovery. (Read Daring Greatly by Brene Brown if you haven’t done so already.)

Shalom

©realfredherron 2020 

Recovery

Listen: “Rise” Eddie Vedder

When I was in High School I was a cross country and track distance runner. We had one of the best distance teams in the state of Missouri. We trained hard. We ran long miles every week; we did speed workouts regularly; and we competed on a regular basis during the season. My coaches knew the importance of the combination of LSD (long, slow, distance) and speed work (interval training). My teammates and I were so competitive that even our LSD days (10 mile runs) turned into a competition. On top of that, my coaches weren’t sophisticated in their understanding of recovery—this was the late 70’s and distance coaching was continuing to undergo advancement in the science of training, diet, and recovery. As I look back, I was chronically overtraining in my early competitive career. This was common in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. I remember one track meet in which I ran the Mile Relay, the Two Mile Relay, the Open Half Mile, and the Open Mile on the same day after a hard week of training. Recovery is just as important as training. The four minute mile was broken for the first time in history after Roger Bannister took an extended period of rest. (Read The Perfect Mile by Neal Bascomb.) Physically speaking, peak performance requires the right balance of training and recovery.

Recovery is important for emotional, relational, and spiritual health as well. It seems that God hardwired recovery into the rhythm of the Universe. In the Creation story, God separates light and darkness and builds rest into the rhythm of day and night. Furthermore, God himself creates in six days and rests on the seventh—Sabbath means “rest”—so there is a weekly rhythm of rest and recovery. As one reads further into the story of the Hebrew Bible, there are a variety of annual holidays (holy days) like Passover, Pentecost, Yom Kippur, and Tabernacles for a yearly rhythm of remembrance, rest, and worship. God even established creation care for the earth; the land receives a Sabbath rest every seven years (Leviticus 25).

It seems we all need appropriate rest and recovery from work and stress. Let’s admit it. We are not always good at this. While rest and recovery are essential for our wholeness and well-being (Shalom), we tend to push our own limits. We exhaust ourselves with constant work and worry. We are not good at recovery.

As I have shared the story of my meltdown through blogs and videos, you might realize that I didn’t do recovery well. I certainly tried to do recovery well, but I wasn’t prepared for the perfect storm. In 2016, I was dealing with insomnia, Xanax, alcohol, ministry burnout, and marriage issues all at once. I probably needed a seventh-year Sabbatical, like a year off of ministry. I had been going hard at everything my whole life. But I put it off. I thought I would bounce back like I always did, but I didn’t. I ended up with a “forced sabbatical” of miserable proportions (but hopefully redemptive in the long run).

All of us need a daily, weekly, and annual rhythm of recovery—physically, relationally, emotionally, and spiritually. It’s vital for our well-being and health. Each of us is unique in how we recharge. Some need quite prayer and meditation. Some need large amounts of physical exercise. Some need long conversations with friends who replenish us. Some need time in nature. Some need to sing or write or paint or create. We are all wired differently, but we all need rest, replenishment, and recovery.

We all get off course, develop poor habits, and end up empty because of it. We self-medicate to feel better with substances (food, alcohol, drugs) or behaviors (like gambling, sex, shopping, social media, gossip, binge watching). Every person needs to discover their own unique routines of recovery instead of harmful self-medication. You can learn from other people’s routines and try different things, but you have to stick with what works for you. (For an excellent discussion on this topic, read The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Lehrer and Tony Schwartz.)

When we get off course we need to recognize it and change. Recovery implies that something in life has gotten off track and needs to be returned to a place of health and wholeness. Shalom needs to be restored. “Repent” in the biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek signals a need to change and return to God—the One who can restore and refresh us. Jesus calls us to repent or “change” in preparation for the experience of the kingdom of God (Mark 1:15). Returning to God involves change and transformation. We’ve lost control and gotten off track.  The Apostle Paul challenges us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2). The Hebrew word for repent implies restoration and refreshment (Psalm 19:7). The Apostle Peter calls us to repent so that we might experience seasons of refreshment from the presence of God (Acts 3:20).

Human beings need periodic seasons of change (repentance) that leads to recovery, replenishing, and refreshing. Twelve step programs have been around for 85 years for substance addiction (AA began in 1935), but the twelve steps for recovery are biblically oriented and universal—regardless of your faith tradition (or even if you are an atheist or agnostic)—and can be applied to any situation (even if you just want to stop eating junk food). Some of the best practices involve the following:

1.     Honesty and surrender. This can be the hardest step in recovery. We have to get brutally honest with ourselves and admit that our management has caused us to be out of control. This honest evaluation leads to surrender to a “high power.” Something or someone greater than ourselves that is loving and caring.

2.     Going to meetings, community. We all function better in community. If you want to grow spiritually, develop a new exercise routine, eat healthier meals, start a meditation practice, or stop a destructive habit, chances are you will be more successful if you do it with other like-minded people.

3.     Sponsor, accountability. Find a sponsor or accountability partner. Ask someone that you respect who is further down the road from you in the habit that you want to start or stop; or maybe a friend who has the same goal. Have regular conversations with this person. Check in and give an account of how you are doing, both successes and failures. Failure is part of the process so don’t get discouraged.

4.     Therapy. Sometimes we have deep issues that need to be identified, typically emotional responses and belief systems that are connected to trauma of some sort. We self-sabotage for reasons that frustrate ourselves. A good therapist can help us work through these deeper issues of the heart.

While these steps are not complicated, they are challenging. Honesty with ourselves can be challenging, but worth it. I am working at making the steps of recovery a part of my lifestyle. Hopefully, we can walk this journey together.

Shalom

©realfredherron 2020

False Self, True Self—A Good Death

Listen: “Mask” Matt Maeson

Caveat: I will be sharing my story from my perspective. I realize that some of you may have been disappointed or even deeply hurt by my actions. If this is the case for you, I truly seek your forgiveness and would encourage you to reach out to a professional therapist to process those issues. If you and your therapist think it would be helpful, I would be willing to make personal amends.

Tristan, the protagonist of the story “Legends of the Fall,” is said to have had “a good death.” Is there a good way to die and a bad way to die? Physically speaking, many people reflect on it; but what about spiritually? All of the great religious traditions speak of the importance of shadow boxing. There is a part of our self, our ego that is a “false self.” A persona built on a shaky foundation that needs to die or be transformed. There is also a “true self” that needs to emerge. The real you.

If you are from the Christian tradition, you are aware of the Apostle Paul’s writings. He talks about dying to the self quite often. One of the classic chapters on this is Galatians 5. Paul writes, “The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions” (Gal. 5:17). Then he describes the fruit of the sinful nature: “When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these” (Gal. 5:19-21). Notice that the fruits of the sinful nature (or false self) are a list of behaviors. These behaviors are symptomatic of the false self. They are not a list of core emotions (with the exception of anger, but the focus is on the outburst not the anger itself).

I think this is an important distinction that could lead to a good death or bad death of the false self. For decades I tried to “die to self” by subduing, ignoring, or battling my negative emotions. I was thinking this was the way to die to bad behaviors. However, the opposite is true. Suppressing negative emotions leads to a host of other issues like depression, anxiety, guilt, and shame. (See Hilary Jacobs Hendel, It’s Not Always Depression.)

Let me explain through a traumatic childhood story (what Hendel would call a small “t” trauma). Between my kindergarten and first grade school experience, we moved to a new neighborhood in Prairie Village, Kansas. I would walk about a mile to school (even in the snow, uphill, both ways). On the way home, I was bullied virtually every day. A large, heavy set third grader would confront me on one of the corners and beat me up almost every day on my way home.

I would arrive home in tears, and I didn’t want to go back to school. My dad decided to teach me how to box. He taught me how to make a fist, how to throw punches, and how to avoid punches. He sparred with me in the living room. I remember when he thought I was ready—he looked me in the eyes and said, “Now Fred, if the kid tries to beat you up again, you fight him back. Don’t come home crying again, or I’ll give you something to cry about.” Now I was really scared. It was like double jeopardy. I went to school the next day and could not concentrate on anything. All I could think about was the fight. I was a nervous wreck.

Well sure enough the kid was at the corner and started to bully me again. I made a fist and started swinging. I had never fought back. I caught him off guard. He fell backwards to the ground and I sat on his chest and just started pounding on his face with my fists. All my fear and anger were poured out in that moment of violence. I don’t think I was strong enough to hurt him, but his pride was wounded in front of his friends. I exhausted myself and let him up. He ran home crying.

I walked home on an adrenaline rush. I felt like I had defeated my biggest fear. I gained the respect of all my peers. Nobody messed with me again. I had fought back and won.

My dad loves me with all his heart. He’s my greatest fan. I’ve often thought about what I would have done in his shoes. He knew if he went down to the school and tried to fight my battle for me I would not gain the self-respect I needed. It was a different time culturally in America (1967) and most dads in America would have done the same thing. Even if I got beat, my dad knew that if I put up a good fight I would gain respect. Like two MMA fighters hugging after a bloody fight.

Interestingly, I didn’t become a bully. In fact, that’s the only physical fight I have ever had my entire life (with the exception of karate matches). I learned how to stand up for myself and gain respect in other ways. My dad taught me those skills as well. But thinking back, it did have a negative consequence. I learned how to subdue my negative emotions through battling them and fighting them. I never learned how to listen to my negative emotions with love and respect. What are they telling me? When I linked up negative emotions with negative behavior, I felt like it was my fight to battle and subdue them.

This is not a good death spiritually or emotionally. Suppressing, ignoring, or fighting negative emotions does not work in the long run, and it causes a multitude of other problems. A good death to the false self sets us free; it integrates and transforms us. A bad death just makes us more ill.

While Paul in Galatians teaches us about the struggle between the false self and the true self (very real), describes the fruit (symptoms) of the false self and true self, and points to our resurrected self in Christ as our hope; he does not provide a model for dealing with negative emotions. It wasn’t his focus.

The psalms of lamentation are the best place in Scripture to learn how to deal with negative emotions. There are about forty-two psalms of lament in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). If you read through these psalms you will see a pattern: invocation, complaint, request, hope, and praise. The complaints express every negative emotion in the human repertoire. (Hendel identifies core emotions as fear, anger, grief, excitement, disgust, and sexual excitement. The famous “Feeling Wheel” developed by Dr. Gloria Wilcox identifies core emotions as sad, mad, scared, peaceful, powerful, and joyful. Core emotions are hardwired in our brain and body. Hendel identifies inhibitory emotions as shame, guilt, and anxiety.) This pattern of expression of negative emotions is a healthy pattern. We need to learn to listen to our negative emotions and express them. We might share them with God, with our journal, with a friend or partner, with a support group, or with a therapist. But it is important to hear and to understand our negative emotions. It’s also incredibly important to end up in a place of hope and gratitude as we express our negative emotions. That can take effort—even a daily gratitude list when we don’t feel grateful.

The psalms of lament give us a mentally healthy pattern. At times these psalms are messy and raw and vicious. They express doubt and anger towards God. They question God and challenge God. I have talked to many people who don’t like these psalms—they are too raw. But it’s so important for emotional, spiritual, and relational health. The individual and communal psalms of lament make up almost a third of the book of Psalms. Jesus quoted from Psalm 22 on the cross. Even Jesus felt utterly abandoned by God and expressed it.

Healing comes by releasing negative emotions in a healthy way. Hendel gives a simple four step process which can be applied throughout the day: (1) pause and breathe; (2) tune in and listen to your body; (3) Identify underlying core emotions and name each one; and (4) think through best actions. I have had to work on this process in a deep way through therapy and journaling and prayer.

Our negative emotions are important and they must be integrated into our true self. They will teach us important truths about ourselves. Our negative emotions can lead us to positive change at work, at home, and at play. They have a purpose. I am learning how to do this, but quite frankly, I’d rather just beat up my negative emotions. Sharing them makes me feel weak, but I’m telling myself that’s not a bad thing—feeling weak. It’s a good death.

©realfredherron 2020

What to Do and Be When I Grow Up?

Listen: “Fell On Dark Days” by Soundgarden

Caveat: I will be sharing my story from my perspective. I realize that some of you may have been disappointed or even deeply hurt by my actions. If this is the case for you, I truly seek your forgiveness and would encourage you to reach out to a professional therapist to process those issues. If you and your therapist think it would be helpful, I would be willing to make personal amends.

This is perhaps the hardest blog for me to write. Mostly because I have gone through so much darkness—still going through it in some ways—but there’s always hope for healing. However, the darkness complicated my desire to move forward.

So first let me describe the darkness. When I was sent to rehab on November 10, 2018, I felt utterly lost. By that, I mean I felt disconnected from my identity in every role or context of my life. I even felt disconnected from myself and God. While I was in rehab I confessed to my wife that I had been sexually unfaithful to her (the four rehab drugs I was taking did not help my sensitivity). While I had been faithful to her for over 35 years, this confession was traumatic for her and those she told. (My wife understandably confided in my board of directors at Vineyard Church.)  I had a panic attack (which I’d never had before) and they put me on suicide watch for a couple of days in rehab (even though I told them I was not suicidal). What I shared with my wife in private on approximately November 13, 2018 was on the front page of the Kansas City Star by December 6, 2018 before I could process privately with my family and friends. At the end of a 30-day rehab, I was sent to a second 90-day rehab. I wanted to return to Kansas City and face the harsh realities of my sinful behavior. During the 90-day rehab, I was not allowed to call my wife. Two things happened while I was in rehab that changed my life forever: (1) my wife filed for divorce in February 2019, and (2) my board of directors called for my resignation.

Needless to say, when I got home February 28, 2019 I was angry, hurt, embarrassed, and humiliated. I was primarily angry at myself. I was angry at God. I was angry at people whom I felt betrayed me in certain ways (a personal feeling statement). I was not blind to the irony: the one who had betrayed others felt betrayed. But the anger was off the charts, and here’s the difficult thing, anger was never an acceptable emotion for me. I always suppressed, avoided, or ignored anger. I don’t like anger and resentment or shame and guilt, but I was drowning in these negative emotions.

Once I got back to Kansas City I wanted to leave in shame and embarrassment, but I felt like I was supposed to stay largely because of family and friends. In 2019, I resigned as the pastor of the church I founded and labored over for 28 years. Due to a series of bad choices, I lost my marriage of 37 years, my vocation of 42 years, my community, and my faith. I am so thankful my mom and dad, my sisters and brother-in-law’s, my nephews and nieces stuck with me. I wanted to run like Jonah. I did in a way. I worked for a medical marijuana startup company in Missouri. I raised investment capital and learned much about the business of marijuana. Emotionally, I felt like an atheist. If god existed, I was angry as hell at him/her/it. I was like a wounded animal. I tried church. I tried counseling. I tried recovery groups. I just couldn’t connect. I honestly didn’t let anybody in too deeply (not wise). It was too dark, even for me. I had always sporadically journaled, but in this state journaling was a constant companion through which I poured out my unedited feelings. Here is a quote from my journal:

I’m in a free-fall. A deconstruction of Fred. WTF. Who am I? I’m clueless. What am I to do with my life? I have felt so depressed today.
So lost in myself. So frustrated with my new story. Rohr quotes Paula D’Arcy: ‘God comes to you disguised as your life.’ This really sucks.
For me. For most people. Necessary suffering. It feels like such bullshit. Is god really in this story of mine? Can I trust a god like this?
How do I have faith in chaos, death, pain, even evil? Sounds like bullshit. Tastes like bullshit.

I woke up every morning hoping I was in a bad nightmare.
After my divorce was finalized in July 2019, I finally got serious about the hard work of shadowboxing. I started attending church, recovery groups, and therapy regularly. I was praying every day to a god I wasn’t sure I believed in. But I surrendered to the emptiness as though God might be found in it. I was asking for guidance and direction and hope. What do I do with my life? Nothing. Silence. Long silence. And more silence. Days and months on end. Nothing. I networked with business leaders in the city hoping something might crystalize. Nothing. Discouragement. Most of my suffering was my own fault. Self-hatred ensued and the darkness was still real, even if self-inflicted. I came across this quote from Richard Rohr in the Universal Christ:

God creates the pullback too, “hiding his face” as it was called by so many mystics and Scriptures. God creates a vacuum that God alone can fill.
Then God waits to see if we will trust our God partner to eventually fill the space in us, which now has grown even more spacious and receptive.
This is the central theme of darkness, necessary doubt, or what the mystics called “God withdrawing his love.” They knew that what feels like
suffering, depression, uselessness—moments when God has withdrawn—these moments are often deep acts of trust and invitation to intimacy
on God’s part.

Hard for me to believe. Whether or not suffering is self-inflicted or inflicted by fallen human beings or a fallen world, we still process it emotionally. I was experiencing mostly enormous darkness. The darkness engulfed me and made it challenging to move forward. I continued networking with business leaders in Kansas City but still nothing opened up. I attended an African American church (my home church for over a year), and during the month of February 2020 we celebrated black history month. We sang a song every week that brought me to tears entitled “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” It’s called the “Black National Anthem.” The song speaks of the dark struggle for freedom from slavery, but it also speaks of the gospel of freedom. I was experiencing my own dark bondage and as I identified with my faith family the tears flowed as we sang:

  Lift every voice and sing
‘Til earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning skies
Let it resound loud as the rolling seas
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has brought us
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on ‘till victory is won

Stony the road we trod
Bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died
Yet with a steady beat
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered
Out from the gloomy past
‘Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast

I finally started asking, “Well, if god isn’t there or doesn’t make it clear what I am supposed to do, then how do I move forward with some sense of purpose bigger than myself?” And then something clicked. It was very subtle. I was reading a book by Parker Palmer entitled Let Your Life Speak. Palmer’s main thesis is that God speaks to us about our vocation from the depths of our life, even the dark places of our life. We need to learn to listen to our life. I had been getting in touch with my negative core emotions (fear, anger, grief, disgust) and my inhibitory emotions (shame, guilt, anxiety).  So listening to my life, even the darkness, seemed like an easy task at this point.

While I was reading Let Your Life Speak, I met with a friend who was savvy with social media entrepreneurship. This was before the Coronavirus, and he gave me a challenge. He said, “Fred, just start posting content on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter every day for two months and I will help you figure out how to monetize it.” He also wanted me to read a book by Gary Vaynerchuk called Crushing It. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in this proposition, but I took it seriously. I completed Let Your Life Speak and started reading Crushing It. I also started rereading a favorite of mine called Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. All three books were saying the same thing from different perspectives: (1) spiritual vocation perspective, (2) personal branding through social media perspective, and (3) creative content perspective. I started thinking about the kinds of things I love and the content I would like to put out on different social media platforms. After a month or so of thinking along these lines I was excited about the potential for a vocation built on the things I love and the content I could produce on social media around the things I love. Not earthshaking, but it’s the only thing that has gotten me excited. I’ve never had a plan B, and I have always been a pastor/teacher and storyteller at heart. I’ve also had some painful life experiences to which many people can relate. Maybe God is speaking to me through my life and guiding me on a new journey. As a pastor I heard how so many people struggled with a sense of calling. What is God’s will for my life? Now I understand how difficult that quest can be, especially in the dark.

However, I have some hope for the first time in a long time. I’m excited about the content I want to put out. I hope you will join me on the journey. I think you will enjoy the content I have planned so I encourage you to follow me on all the social media platforms. Thanks for your interest and prayers.

 ©realfredherron 2020

Deconstructing Fred

Listen: “Demons” Imagine Dragons

Caveat: I will be sharing my story from my perspective. I realize that some of you may have been disappointed or even deeply hurt by my actions. If this is the case for you, I truly seek your forgiveness and would encourage you to reach out to a professional therapist to process those issues. If you and your therapist think it would be helpful, I would be willing to make personal amends.

I was a mega-church pastor of one of the fastest growing churches in America and I felt utterly lost (read my description in “What is a Prodigal Pastor?”). I had worked hard at being a good Christian: not that I didn’t understand grace. Grace was the hallmark of my preaching. I knew I was saved by grace (Ephesians 2:8-9) and that everything was grace, but I also knew that we need to participate—that is, work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). So I prayed long hours every day; I studied scripture, earned graduate degrees, started a church, pastored a growing church, helped start churches (wrote a doctoral dissertation on this topic) and spoke at conferences around the world, and led people to Jesus. I enjoyed much of it, but my soul wasn’t entirely healthy. (Listen to my soon to be released series “What Happened to Fred? An Anatomy of an Epic Failure.”) After founding and pastoring a church faithfully for almost 28 years, I found myself headed to rehab in Georgia in November of 2018. The life I had lived with God had collapsed around me. In 2019, I would lose my 37-year marriage, my vocation as pastor, my church community that I loved and labored over for decades, and in some ways I had lost my faith. (Read The Second Mountain by David Brooks for some perspective.)

As my life collapsed around me, I wandered in darkness for months. My divorce proceedings were speeding ahead while I helped a startup medical marijuana company in Missouri. (I was trying to get away from the pastor identity and just ended up being the MMJ Pastor.) I finally got serious about some work on my own soul. After my divorce was finalized in July of 2019, I started attending various recovery groups and regularly seeing two therapists. This was an emotionally dark time. I woke up every morning hating my life and hoping I was in one long horrible nightmare. I didn’t feel or sense God’s presence, and I was having some serious doubts about his/her/its existence. I didn’t even want to read which had always been one of my main spiritual habits for growth. (I did learn an enormous amount about MMJ in Missouri.) My life felt devoid of all purpose and joy.

I did have a thought to contact an acquaintance of mine, Stan Kroenigsfeld. I had met him at the National Prayer Breakfast through one of my board members. I called Stan and we met and talked. He sent me a book by Richard Rohr which proved to be a lifeline to my faltering faith. It didn’t erase my doubts and questions and dark struggles, but it did give me some hope (Falling Upward is the book). Maybe something redemptive could emerge out of all my darkness? It sparked a fresh hunger and I started reading voraciously again.

Through my experience in rehab and therapy, I had become interested in some therapy models—Family Systems developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz, AEDP by Dr. Diana Fosha, The Change Triangle by Hilary Jacob Hendel, and DBT by Dr. Marsha Linehan. My work in therapy helped me sort out core emotions, inhibitory emotions (like a lifetime of shame, guilt, and anxiety), and the need for radical acceptance and change. But Richard Rohr challenged me with what he calls “shadowboxing.”

Every great spiritual tradition has a form of shadow work under different names. They are not necessarily identical in concepts, but their presence does point to the universal nature of this struggle. In the Hebrew tradition you have the “yetzer hara” and the “yetzer hatov.” The Christian tradition talks about the old nature before Christ and the new nature in Christ. In my preaching I spoke about the gap we have between our ideal self (what we want to be based on our highest values) and where we actually are. We all have a gap between the two. Rohr talks about the True Self and the False Self. (He credits Carl Jung and Thomas Merton for many of his insights along these lines. Jung and other spiritual teachers speak of ego and self.)

Rohr talks about our shadow self which is connected to our persona (meaning “stage mask” in Greek). He says, “Your stage mask is not bad, evil, or necessarily egocentric; it is not ‘true.’ It is manufactured and sustained unconsciously by your mind; but it can and will die, as all fictions must die. Your shadow is what you refuse to see about yourself, and what you do not want others to see.” Rohr believes that the more you have lived out of your persona, the more shadow work or “shadowboxing” you will have to do. Our shadow self makes us all into hypocrites on some level—the gap. Hypocrite is a Greek word which means “actor,” someone playing a role rather than being “real.” Rohr believes our true self is who you are “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). Or what the Zen masters call “the face you had before you were born.”

We have to face our shadow self with radical acceptance, love, and grace. This has been hard work for me. I had a public persona which completely collapsed and I had an enormous amount of shame, guilt, embarrassment, and self-hatred. This process of shadowboxing starts with brutal honesty (so does recovery, step one in AA is about honesty). The challenging part for me has been not just focusing on a couple of symptomatic behaviors, but dealing with root issues, core emotions, inhibitory emotions, and defensive behaviors. Sorting out anxiety, shame, and guilt and how these are rooted in my childhood, and how I carried these emotions into my marriage and ministry was challenging for me. One aspect of my “mask” was being an endurance athlete—I believed I could power my way through anything. Just keep peddling, but the peddles fell off. This kind of emotional work proved exhausting, but vitally important.

Mental health is part of the journey to wholeness. Your true self emerges when you get honest with your shadow self. In a sense, you have to embrace your core emotions as they relate to your shadow self and listen to those emotions. Let them speak. They begin to tell a story of who you are. I had to let my shame speak, my guilt speak, my anxiety speak. They are my travelling companions which I ignored, avoided, or suppressed for the most part. I’ve never really treated my false self or my negative emotions with grace. I never let them speak. I always tried to beat them into submission. It didn’t work in the long run.

Let me close with a couple of more quotes that resonated with me: 

An inevitable though often ignored dimension of the quest for ‘wholeness’ is that we must embrace what we dislike or find shameful about ourselves as well as what we are confident and proud of.—Parker Palmer

But this person [a spiritual guide] did not tell me that the path to humility, for some of us at least, goes through humiliation, where we are brought low, rendered powerless, stripped of pretense and defenses, and useless—a humiliation that allows us to regrow our lives from the ground up, from the humus of common ground.—Parker Palmer

One of the great surprises is that humans come to full consciousness precisely by shadowboxing, and making friends with their own mistakes and failings. People who have had no inner struggles are invariably both superficial and uninteresting. Shadow work is almost another name for falling upward. Lady Julian put it best of all: “First there is the fall, and then we recover from the fall. Both are the mercy of God!”—Richard Rohr

So I am on a new journey—one of grace and compassion with my shadow self and one of finding and embracing my true self. It’s a journey we are all on whether we realized it or not. I hope you’ll join me as we grow together.

©realfredherron 2020

What is a Prodigal Pastor?

Listen: “Lost” Coldplay/Jay Z

Caveat: I will be sharing my story from my perspective. I realize that some of you may have been disappointed or even deeply hurt by my actions. If this is the case for you, I truly seek your forgiveness and would encourage you to reach out to a professional therapist to process those issues. If you and your therapist think it would be helpful, I would be willing to make personal amends.

For those of you who do not know me, I am Fred Herron. You will learn much more about me if you follow me on social media, but here are few facts for now. I was the founding Pastor of Vineyard Church in Kansas City, Missouri from 1990 to 2019 (foundation to my resignation). The church grew from a few people to several thousand people whom I greatly loved. In 2019, due to a series of bad choices, I lost my 37-year marriage, my vocation, my church community, and in some ways my faith. (Read The Second Mountain by David Brooks for some perspective.) Through blogs and podcasts I will begin to unpack this story.

I can’t define “Prodigal Pastor.” It’s just a name I procured for myself, and I will describe what it means to me. The definition of “prodigal” has two nuances: (1) is the reckless or wasteful use of resources and (2) is the giving of something on an extravagant scale. The Bible contains a classic story called the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32).  It’s about a son in the ancient Near Eastern culture who asks for his inheritance early (very inappropriate) and spends his inheritance on wild living. He winds up slopping pigs (about as low as you can go in Jewish culture) and decides to return home. His father sees him, runs to him, embraces him, and throws a party for him (extravagant and inappropriate for social norms of the period); however, the prodigal’s older brother is disgruntled. The older brother has obeyed all the rules and his father has never thrown a party for him. He resents his brother and he resents his father. The story is a classic because it reveals how grace can restore a wayward life; it reveals the extravagant heart of God towards wayward children; and it reveals how the “rule-followers” are wayward in their anger, resentment, and self-righteousness. (See Prodigal God by Tim Keller.)

I was a prodigal teenager when, at sixteen, I encountered Jesus and felt called to be a pastor. I never imagined I would find myself in a second prodigal story in my fifties, but I did. As a pastor of a progressive Evangelical mega-church, I always had a heart for people outside the church regardless of lifestyle or belief systems. I never really felt above them or superior to anyone, but I did feel like I had something to offer them—specifically Jesus and a faith community. However, in my darkest moments I lost this confidence.

By late 2017, I was a mega-church pastor of a growing faith community and yet I felt lost. By lost, I mean I felt disconnected from God, my wife, my vocational calling, and myself. Utterly lost. In November of 2018 I was “sent off” to Georgia for 120 days of rehab because of prescription Xanax and alcohol abuse. I also confessed to sexual unfaithfulness to my wife. When I returned to Kansas City in March 2019, I was full of shame, embarrassment, and anger. I felt shame concerning my failures, shame because I had potentially hurt several thousand people, shame concerning my broken marriage, and shame concerning my infidelity, my misuse of alcohol, and my lack of faith in what I had always believed and taught. I was an emotional wreck and in a very dark place. (I’m guessing there are pastors reading this who can identify with this description.)

In the midst of my journey of recovery, why do I still call myself a pastor, even a prodigal pastor? I actually tried to run from this identity when I got back from rehab. It was hard. I grew up in Kansas City. My parents and sisters and brother-in-law’s and nephews and nieces and great nephews and nieces attended Vineyard Church. I had people in my church with whom I went to elementary, junior high, and high school. I preached my first sermon in Kansas City when I was seventeen and was ordained at my home church at eighteen. Tens of thousands of people in Kansas City knew me as a pastor. Even though I haven’t done anything publicly or on social media until now, I would bump into people every day who would ask, “How are you doing, pastor?” People would meet with me and relate to me as a pastor even when I explained to them how lost I felt. I also found that I still cared for people in a pastoral way even though I felt so wounded. I was a wounded shepherd who still cared for wounded people. I was still concerned for people and their hurts, health, and wholeness. For example, during the first rehab I tried to disguise my identity as a pastor and by the end of the thirty days the most outspoken atheist asked everyone to read the gospel of Matthew in my honor and consider Jesus. (I was in two rehabs back to back, a thirty day and ninety day.) I only revealed my pastor identity and spoke of Jesus when directly asked and then reluctantly. Running from my pastoral calling wasn’t working, so I thought, “What kind of pastor am I?” Maybe a prodigal pastor.

A prodigal pastor should probably believe in God, but I was questioning everything. Every value and belief I’d ever had was coming under scrutiny by me. If there was a God, I hoped he/she/it was an extravagant God of grace. I needed it. In the Bible story, the father puts aside his dignity and runs to greet his wayward son with unconditional love—beautiful no matter what your belief system. I needed some unconditional love.

This brings me to my final thought (for now) about this “prodigal pastor” description. Perhaps a prodigal pastor identifies with prodigal people in need of a Prodigal God. This doesn’t mean I have all the answers. I am less certain about so many things. The consequences of my actions shattered everything for me and the losses were staggering. Now I find myself with doubts and questions. I still read broadly and I listen to people from all walks of life and spirituality. I’ve listened to drunks and addicts and prostitutes and atheists and rabbis and pantheists and Buddhists and doctors and prisoners and homeless and LGBTQ peoples. I’ve realized that everybody is spiritual and I have been inspired by every type of person as they wrestle with dignity, with the issues and questions of life. I have found courage and hope in the strangest places. So while I am less certain about many things, I am still extremely hungry to experience life fully. My new mantra is brutal honesty about everything. So I am on a journey of honesty and spirituality. I hope you will follow me on this journey, even if you feel like you know all the answers. We might learn some things and grow together.

©realfredherron 2020