Latest / DA CREW Podcast / SEASON 1 BONUS EPISODE _NOVEMBER 2023 _ HOST TRIVEDA HARRIS

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SEASON 1 BONUS EPISODE _NOVEMBER 2023 _ HOST TRIVEDA HARRIS · DA CREW Podcast

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started with writing that book. I bleeve queen, it wasn't sweet sweet sweet,
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I've no, it wasn't the sweet sweet sweetest I've no. Good evening
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and welcome to Believe in the Journey podcast where I'm your host Trevita Harris,
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and tonight I am going to be talking to Benjamin Kentish. He is a
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canter and a chaplain and a music teacher. In addition to his involvement in
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the theater, he is a songwriter. He has played in Life Review.
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That was his first musical that he ever created. He has a love for
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singing and performing on the stage since he was a youth. He graduated from
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Brown University with a concentration in Judaic studies. He's a Graduate of Studies Jewish
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Theology seminary includes his Masters in Sacred Music along with contorial degree. Kentish recently
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completed his fourth year and chapelain Cease training, having both in hospice and elder
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care facilities. Most recently he has become a music teacher in College Park,
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Maryland. He currently lives in Columbia, Maryland with his wife and his daughter
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and their dog. So that's gonna be my guest tonight. But you know
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we cannot do anything without going to God first in prayer. So please buy
3:14
your hands with me and we go to God. Dear Heavenly Father, thank
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you for bringing us together tonight, as you do each and every time we
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step in front of you. Please allow our words to touch those who are
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in need. And we are going to be talking about music tonight because You've
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given us so many different talents and so many people who are able to use
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music to speak to you and to speak to the world. So we thank
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you, and we honor you and everything that you do and everything that you
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make possible for each and every one of us, and your precious name.
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I pray amen, hur right, can we have mister Benjamin kent Tish come
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forward? Hey, I'm here and I'm not sure if you got an on
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mic, but there is a beautiful amen for the beautiful prayer. So thank
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you for beginning with that. Thank you. I cannot do anything without going
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to him first, because with him, I'm everything, and like I said,
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with him, without him, I'm nothing. So welcome to the show.
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And I did the title for our conversation tonight, God's music because after
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reading your bio, that's the main thing that stuck out to me. You
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know, music is the best guitar, old fashioned music, minister cancer type.
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Yeah, sorry, it's okay. Music. I feel like touches everybody
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and it speaks to people in ways that using words oftentimes doesn't. I'm gonna
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ask a couple of questions. First, you, when I was reading your
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bio, it said that you have been doing this since you were a kid.
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What made you get drawn to music? So I think it's I have
5:01
to give credit to the wonderful music teachers I grew up with. I grew
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up in a beautiful little town in the Hudson River valley north of New York
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City called Nayak. It's one of these historic river towns, pretty Victorian houses,
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and it kind of draws a lot of musician types and so forth,
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and the schools have historically had some wonderful music teachers to go with that scene.
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So I don't know if I, like innately, had more musical talent
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than the next kid. Like my parents like music. There, neither of
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them are musicians per se. But I had wonderful music teachers coming up.
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And I remember from a very young age loving to sing, both in my
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public school where I had this great teacher and in a Jewish setting. So
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my family was religious, you know, Jewishly involved, so we would sing
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as part of our worship Friday night or Saturday morning. The Hebrew school,
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which was you know, sort of like a Jewish Sunday school. The rabbi
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would lead sort of sing along on the guitar, and I thought that was
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like the coolest thing ever. It's funny because I remember as a young person
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watching him sing and play guitar and thinking like that's amazing, Like I could
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never do that, And of course it would turn out that I would grow
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to be an adult who is a very expert song leader, not an awesome
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guitarist, but I'm a very good song leader. It's two different skills kind
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of. It was definitely the music teachers who inspired me, and they like
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they saw they saw that spark, They saw that I could sing well,
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that a little bit of razzle dazzle, like therot of performance skill years and
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certainly comfortable in front of adults. And so a lot of the who saw
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that in me and encouraged me, they let that that flourish. Yes,
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and I could just for meeting you in this small amount of time, there
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is nothing that I could ever say that would give me the shyness from you.
7:13
It seems like you like to be out in front doing something. Yeah,
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for sure. The joke is I've never met a microphone or a stage
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or a camera. I did not like. I can definitely tell that,
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and that's a good thing because I feel like, you know, if you're
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comfortable in that space, You're always going to flourish no matter where you are,
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and no matter when you get into the room or that space, you're
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gonna have a good time. I mean, certainly in this sort of venue,
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I'm comfortable talking with a new friend on a microphone on camera all that.
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I'll tell you though, that even though I'm super comfortable on camera and
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on stage performing, I also am very introverted after the show is over.
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I think a lot of performers are, because you like pour out yourself through
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the little white dot if you're on the computer, or you know, out
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into the fourth wall of the theater, or the congregation if you're working as
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the cancer or whatever. But like when I finished doing a bar mitzvah,
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if it's like a service that I'm helping to lead, Yeah, after I
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get the snack, I go somewhere quiet and I hide for real. And
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like, I don't know if people thought that like the canter was anti social,
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that's not it. It's like the work you see your music minister and
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your pastor your rabbi, whatever your faith tradition. What they do on the
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stage is high energy work, whether or not they put on a big show
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yes, but extra if they do, and I did, you know,
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like singing with guitar all of that, and there's a lot of like nodding
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and eyebrows people's yea with music, Like I definitely sweat through my clothes on
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a lot of days because I'm singing and dancing with the children, so there's
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a lot of pouring out that energy. I enjoy it as an entertainer,
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but then I also need the quiet time when I'm done, and I can
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definitely relate to that because this right here, most people don't think that I'm
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really shy when it comes to this kind of stuff, but I am really
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really shy when it comes to speaking in front of people or just meeting new
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people or anything of that nature. And every time I say that, people
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look at me weird and they're like, yeah, that's not possible, But
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it really truly is because I am not at least I don't see it,
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but everyone else does. So I guess that's what makes it, you know,
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good, and makes me good at what I do, because I honestly
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say that I'm the little shy person that's always in the corner, like I
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can mingle and do everything that is necessary of but as soon as like when
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this camera goes off and everything, I am sitting in the corner with a
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book or something, I'm not really doing much of anything else. Yeah for
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real. Yeah No, there's like the whole reason why there's a green room
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for the artists. It's so they can have a quiet place when the show
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is over. Because it's almost regardless of your personality, if you're someone and
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anyone who's listening tonight, if you're a performer of any type, you know
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what I mean, when the show is over, like, because a good
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performer naturally feels that's swelling adrenaline as they go. And depending on the type
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of performer you are, the type of venue, like, there's some moments
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that are even like peak adrenaline, where like you can sleep. I don't
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have you ever had an interview like where it's such a good conversation. It's
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it's almost like you like you've had three or four cups of extra coffee or
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something. Yes, yes, I've heard that after great performances the night,
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you know, when we get talking about the Crazy Journey of Life review,
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you'll hear about this big workshop that happened right before COVID so that was like
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one of the great nights of my life, along with getting married and having
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a child. Like it was that exciting. And no, I didn't sleep
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till like sunrise the next day, and I didn't even have a party to
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go to, but I was just so freaking excited because the adrenaline overflow.
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Yeah. Yeah, Now the life review you wrote that I did. How
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was that and what led up to you actually doing math? Great question?
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So Life Review The Hospice Musical is an original musical comedy that I created along
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with the team of composers. The story was inspired by real life events that
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I experienced as a beginner chaplain working in residential hospice facility. The real life
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place was called Center for Hope, a shout out to Union County, New
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Jersey, where I trained for one year as a beginner. I later moved
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to Maryland. I did some work in Eldercare, and my fourth year of
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chaplaincy training, I was back in hospice. So a lot of time in
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both the hospice and eldercare worlds in addition to congregational work and school work.
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So I've done lots of jobs. But back to the story. It was
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in that first year of chaplaincy when doing a standard interview technique that is known
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as life review. So I did not coin that term. I just took
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it to use as the title of my musical. I found it rather poetic
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when I first heard it. It's just evocative in the political sense. A
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life review is a chaplain or a social worker or a counselor yes, encountering
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a patient at the end of life or just maybe an older person, and
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they use a structured interview to kind of get them to tell the story beginning
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to end of their life, what I call the highlight reel of a person's
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story. I did did this technique with dozens of patients over the course of
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my chaplaincy internship in this hospice facility. So in doing so, I unpacked
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these amazing stories. You know, I met a guy who claimed to be
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Cia and Mosad I can't verify. A woman who is married to a band
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leader and traveled the country watching him play. And then like people with far
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less glamorous lives, like a man who just was a roofer and paid the
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mortgage and his kid went to community college and he kind of had like a
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working man's pride, and kind of everything in between. Because what's the commonality
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that all of us have? And this is the central teaching of our play.
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It's a spoiler alert. Everybody dies in the end. So that's that's
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a funny opening number, and it's an essential truth of being a human and
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an essential truth of my play, right, that everybody dies in the end.
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Thank God, this guy, the young chaplain, does not die by
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final curtain. I'm still going strong, but I will eventually, as we
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all do. But all the main characters who are patients we have to say
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goodbye to along the way. It is a hospice, but as we get
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to know them. I'm now jumping ahead to the story. Basically, I
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was back back to the uh the Genesis when I was visiting I heard these
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stories. One night I called my wife. I said, honey, I
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think these stories they want to be songs, and she said, get writing.
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So that night I opened one of those black and white composition books like
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the Kids, right, and I started scribbling out a song inspired by a
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poem of the same title. I called it Will It Still Snow? Okay?
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And it's sort of a ballad a woman imagining life after she dies.
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Okay, thinking this is like I imagined it as a New England woman who
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used to go skiing in Western mass and thinking about sort of the seasons of
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life, and like after I go, is life going to keep going?
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Which is as I wrote it, a very specific song like this one woman,
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but the fear is very universal. I've found that when people are dying,
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some of the most essential concerns include what happens to me, because you
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know, heaven, hell or just nothing. You know, none of the
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snow. Despite what we believe, we don't really know. And a lot
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of people worry about the loved ones, the survivors, the spouse, the
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children, the parents got to commit if it's a child dying, And I
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think some people also get even bigger and they wondered if life continue, does
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the world continue? Because you think about it, all of us exist in
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the space between our own ears. Yes, all of humanity, even though
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there's eight billion and change other people, it's really all the universe is what
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we personally perceive. So like when you imagine your own death, you might
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go to a place where you're like, wait, is there any world left
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after I'm gone? So that's some of the big stuff. This, this
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song wrestled with fast forward to the first time I shared it. It was
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a few months later at a Jewish education conference and the person who had become
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a friend named Sue Horowitz, wonderful singer songwriter. She organized a little song
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swap where musicians could share song in development or whatever. This song wasn't even
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fully cooked, and half of the room was in tears by the time I
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was done, and she came up to me. She said, Ben,
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I think you've created something of great power here. Yes, And I said
17:14
thanks, And she said is there more material? And I said there is
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And she said, listen, I need you to promise me that you're going
17:22
to keep working on it and next year, come back in another year to
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this annual conference. I'll give you a spot at a late night and you
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can do two songs or three songs. And she did that and she liked
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what I brought, and she said, next year you get a stage.
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And that following year I had a workshop with ten songs a professional Jewish musician
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like touring artists like Yeah Laces. And six months after that we had our
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big quote full length musical that was sixteen songs with dialogue that was with your
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talent. And if this story is fascinating, you can read an even longer
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version on the website Life Review Musical dot com. Yes that about eight years
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of this ten year plus story, I ran out of deuce putting the story
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up. During COVID we had this amazing workshop. Absolutely I performed for other
18:18
populations, especially the one man show, which I'm now able to stream.
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Great question is that black diamond or black a diamond? How do you pronounce
18:27
her black diamond? Black diamond? Beautiful spell? And I love it?
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Yes, yeah, yeah, perform for all kinds of venues. So during
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right before COVID, we had this exciting workshop and I felt like the project
18:42
was like taken off. It was exciting. That was the night that I
18:48
never slept because it was just so thrilling. Unfortunately, a month and a
18:52
half later, all of Live Theater shut down because of COVID and quarantine,
18:56
So we hit that brick in terms of a development process. But after a
19:03
few months of feeling rather sad and discourage, I was working with this wonderful
19:08
creative coach. She said, Ben, either you're going to take the project
19:14
and put it in a drawer and just wait for who knows how long or
19:18
you're gonna pivot. I know, when we were warming up before the cameras
19:22
were rolling, Trevita, you told me that you did some of your own
19:25
performance during COVID, So you know, it was like kind of a weird
19:26
situation, but it was also like some really exciting and creative opportunities. So
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this when I took a sixteen song show that ran to twenty with dialogue and
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about eight to ten ensemble cast, made it a one man show, eight
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songs, camera facing with narration in between, like a cabaret. I've learned
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that about ten or eleven times. Before quarantine was lifted, I did some
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professional conferences. I did some senior centers. One of your friends asked about
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that. Yeah. One of the places where I did two of my four
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years of chaplaincy is the largest Jewish affiliated elder care facility in Metro DC area
20:10
called Hebrew Home Washington. So I worked there, you know, rehab,
20:14
memory care, as hasted living, all these different units COVID. I call
20:18
up the activities person, I said, are you guys doing virtual things?
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She's like, it's the only thing we're doing. So if you have streaming
20:25
whatever, let's do it pipe it in through all the TVs. So hundreds
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of patients got to see the show, and it was special for me because
20:37
you know, like I had an affinity for the institution where I'd put in
20:41
several hundred clinical hours. You know, asked how hard was it to do
20:47
a one man show. I think it was in the warm up where I
20:52
talked about sweating my tail or maybe it was during the show. Yeah,
20:56
So it's a lot, Black Diamond, It's a lot. So even though
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it's funny, I'm a total overachiever. So I will say something like it's
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just eight songs, but like my opening number has like five verses because I
21:14
like I wrote a lot. So I finished that opening number and I'm rather
21:18
used to sit down and have some ice water. But guess what I get
21:22
to do the song number two next. So yes, yeah, they you
21:27
know, Black Diamond, they say I'm very lively, So yes, if
21:33
they say you're very frayless, which is well, I got another question to
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ask you, Like, I know it's hard to deal with like hospice patience,
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Like I've just recently lost my mom in June and so hearing her story,
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you know, like when the chaplain would come in and talk to her
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to get her life story and things of that nature. Music was one of
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the things that always helps because I've worked in a long tim short term facility
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with bulgerly patients and everything, and that was a tough job for me because
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I got attached to my patients and one thing that was a common denominator is
22:22
why they fell in love with me. It was because I would also ask
22:25
the questions about their life, what they did before they got to that facility,
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and what type of music did they like to listen to, And so
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we would always bond over music, which is why I said in the beginning.
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Music transcends everything and it can bring people together in ways that you never
22:45
thaw or imagine. So when you deal with the long term term patients and
22:52
the hospice patients, do they request certain music from you or is there just
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certain things that you like to give to them. Wow, you went,
23:04
you were going a certain direction and then you turned somewhere different. So I'm
23:10
going to enter the end, but then I want to come back to the
23:11
beginning. The end is I use a guitar that's over one of these shoulders,
23:21
and I had in a backpack gig bag. So as I had my
23:25
rounds weather in hospice or elder care facilities, I would do something that was
23:30
similar to other chaplains, as in Knock Knock Hello, would you like a
23:33
visit? And if they were up for a visit or if they weren't,
23:37
but like the loved ones wanted some time, I would also visit with the
23:41
the visitors there was interest. Yeah, but I you know, the the
23:49
guitar bag may have been a visual cueue for some, but I didn't say,
23:56
like, hey, it's the it's the Candor Ben show, you know
24:00
thing, which is very different, say from Tona. Like I teach k
24:04
for music and sometimes like what I'm on the cart for the kindergarteners and I
24:10
will enter singing, right, So like that's a different, different kind I'll
24:15
tell you later in the program black time and you're you're popping off with the
24:18
questions, I'm my God in my mind is like toom toom squirrels. Yeah,
24:23
anyway, what was the question again? All right? So music?
24:26
What did they like? I tended to focus on what I called the groovy,
24:30
mellow and sacred like that was almost like my holy trinity. Okay,
24:41
groovy like because I had this small I don't know if I have a copy
24:45
of it here. I probably do in the music room on the other side
24:48
of the wall. But the famous song leader's book called Rise Up Singing.
24:52
All of you people out there who love to have sing alongs, I bet
24:56
you have a well worn copy. If you're learning guitar and you don't have
24:59
Rise Ups Singing, go buy it when you're done with this show. It's
25:02
amazing. And what's so cool about it It doesn't have the music, just
25:06
the lyrics, which you can supercompact. And the normal travel version like fits
25:11
in a gigbag, literally has over a thousand songs, so you can look
25:15
up. You can go to the table of contents by themes, so you
25:19
like go into a room and do it as a veteran. And he has
25:22
flags everywhere. You could, like on a hunch, say do you like
25:26
patriotic songs? And you know page twenty and you're like, you're a grand
25:30
old flag, You're a high flying flag. You better believe it. That
25:33
guy is gonna eat it up. You know someone who talks about being a
25:41
union guy. And I once ministered to someone who is like a major figure
25:45
in a national Union. I can't drop his name because of confidentiality, but
25:51
I assure you he was very famous and he loved it. I knew some
25:55
Union songs and I was like, ooh, Union, that's page seventy two.
25:57
And so it was a powerful resource, a little bit analog. I'm
26:03
sure a lot of Chaplains use one of these, you know, smartphone or
26:07
or what do you call it. An iPad has replaced a lot of analog
26:12
books. But I digress, point being that it was just a helpful resource
26:17
to be able to say, like, what are you interested in? And
26:22
then we can like look for some songs on that topic. And it could
26:26
be as granular as like I used to be on a farm, like oh,
26:29
I've got eight songs about farm life here, and you know, Home
26:32
on the Range and Old MacDonald and whatever, So that that would be very
26:37
specific. More general though, if people were kind of low energy, which
26:42
is common in hospice care, like let's name that. Despite what I do
26:47
on stage to the magic of theater, real life hospice tends to be quiet.
26:52
It tends to be low motion because people are dealing with end of life
26:56
situations, their energy is low. I would do a lot of lullabies.
27:00
I would do folk ballads and like, just personally I love the singer songwriters
27:07
of the seventies, you know, think Carol King, you know, Paul
27:11
Simon, that kind of stuff, James Taylor, so like you know,
27:18
good Night, Moonlight, Ladies, Rockabye, sweet Baby Change, Yeah,
27:23
gorgeous, wrong, and it kind of it like it's written as a lullaby.
27:29
It is on the low section of that book, and it's just so
27:32
evocative. I enjoyed it so like part of the answer, maybe the surprising
27:38
part of the answer is I sometimes picked stuff that soothed me. Back to
27:45
the other part of your question. There we go. That's a nice little
27:48
backward segue. So there was repertoire meant to entertain and engage. That would
27:55
be the topical stuff that went with their interests. There's stuff that was meant
27:57
to soothe, and that would be like mellow genres or mellow sounds. And
28:03
there were some things that were meant to be I don't know, maybe transcendent
28:07
or prayerful. Yes, active, and that would be probably a more conventional
28:15
chaplain angle, right, a chaplain for those of you who don't know the
28:18
term so well, It's like a religious professional in service of people in distress.
28:23
That's how I find it most famously on TV. If you're older than
28:29
I am. I'm forty three, but if you're like fifty plus you might
28:32
know mash So there was a priest. He was the who are the sts?
28:37
On Match? I'm told there are other TV shows for younger generations.
28:42
But like I think, in a lot of prison dramas where someone's on death
28:49
row, there's often a chaplain character who comes in and has some like deep
28:53
conversations with the Bible. That's a chaplain. Yes, they're chaplain prisons in
28:59
jail. Yeah. And then in like real life outside of TV and movies,
29:04
chaplains work in most clinical health facilities, So a big hospital will typically
29:10
have a chaplaincy staff, nursing homes, elder care facilities, and certainly hospices.
29:18
Anyway, I digress a tiny bit. I'm an over explainer. That's
29:19
part of being a teacher. It's okay, Now I got another question.
29:25
Now, this question is the next question I'm going to ask is do you
29:33
because if you work with kindergarteners and then you work with the end of life
29:37
hospice, how do you find yourself being able to manage that because it's the
29:47
beginning and then you see the end, and that that is a if you
29:55
asked an original question, well done, that's a quality question. It even
30:02
made me go, hmmm, strog Yeah, I'm not doing that type of
30:07
question. I'm sorry. The word is, if you can get people without
30:12
facial hair to do the beer stroke, then you've really got them thinking.
30:18
So I want to start by acknowledging the first half of the last question,
30:25
where you said what about getting connected and you acknowledge how it was hard to
30:30
get connected to patients and then losing them. I deal with that quite heavily
30:34
in my play because that's part of the work and it's part of my real
30:41
life journey befriending and losing patients. But when we think about it in general,
30:47
in life, the part of this journey called living that inevitably people you
30:55
love will die before you, and then people who live longer, then you
31:00
will be sad when you die. So no matter where you are in that
31:07
order, like, there's gonna be people ahead of you who die who you
31:11
love, and you will be sad and hurt and bereft. And I'm not
31:15
trying to minimize grief, Like it's very difficult, but it's just a part
31:18
of the existence. Like when you're a little kid, if you have any
31:22
great grandparents, they go real quick, and then grandparents go maybe when you're
31:27
a kid or a teen, and when you're in college. If you have
31:30
any grandparents left, they start to die in your twenties and then they're all
31:33
gone typically and then hopefully, depending on the spacing of the generations in your
31:40
parents' health, maybe they hang around for a long time. Maybe not,
31:45
who knows. But like it is where meaning like wherever we are on this
31:51
march of life. Yeah, it's ahead of us. That is scary and
31:57
difficult, but it's also part of the Yeah, it's the beautiful I call
32:04
death. It's basically the beautiful lie of life that we never discuss, you
32:09
know, because it's the reality about it. Yeah, it's the reality.
32:15
Like we all have an expiration date, and I tell people to celebrate the
32:21
small moments because every day we're passing our death date. We don't know the
32:25
day or the hour, but we're passing it every day that we still here
32:29
are to living. But it's like people say, well, I'm not celebrating
32:34
my birthday this year, I'm not. I don't really think, well,
32:37
you need to celebrate every day because every day is not promised to us,
32:42
but it is a gift that God grants us. So be joyful in that
32:45
moment because you're going to pass this day and the people that are left behind
32:50
are going to be here to remember that date. So remember that, you
32:54
know, be mindful of the people that you leave behind, because they will
32:59
know not only your birth date, but they'll know your death date as well.
33:02
You know, it's beautiful. You know. There's a Jewish prayer called
33:07
mode Ani that hearkens to ancient times when there was a different understanding of sleep.
33:14
Ancient people's believed that when you slept, your soul left your body in
33:19
kind of this metaphysical way, it was like a half death. In fact,
33:22
a lot of old poetry uses the word death and sleep interchangeably. I
33:27
digress, but Modi is a prayer where we say, I am thankful God
33:32
for returning my soul to my body so that I may rise again, and
33:37
I sent you for the miracle of my life and for this new morning.
33:42
And it's part of like the beginning of a morning prayer service for a Jewish
33:45
person mode. I don't say it every day. There were certain times in
33:50
my life where I when I was a bit more pious and I prayed more
33:53
more regularly. But I like the uh, I like the idea of it,
34:01
and I think, you know, a lot of people ask me how
34:08
do you stay buoyant working in hospice care, which, finally, I think
34:13
returns us to the current question. I'm not currently working in hospice care full
34:19
time. I'm a full time music teacher and I only play a hospice chaplain
34:22
on the stage and I talk about it quite a bit on podcasts. But
34:28
I will tell you when I worked in hospice care, I found it to
34:31
be an incredibly lively place, despite when I mentioned earlier about it being a
34:37
bit quiet lively, because I found the staff to be very high energy.
34:43
Yeah, the top silly, but you have to be a certain kind of
34:49
buoyant, cheerful person to do certain kinds of work. Yes, I've heard
34:55
the same set about people who work nick you p people who work you know,
35:01
pediatric cancer, Because think about it, if you are baseline was a
35:07
little bit dark or a little bit depressed, you would not survive a week
35:12
in a place that is a little bit dark and depressing. You need to
35:14
be someone like maybe above average tearful, and then your job brings you down
35:17
ten percent and you're still safe. The other thing is I think humor,
35:24
which I lean to heavily in this view, is not space musical. I
35:29
think that is a critical I guess you could call it a survival technique,
35:32
but I also think it's just psychologically healthy. Yeah, you know, I
35:40
I'm of a different ethnic background. It would seem as you are, Trevida.
35:46
But I think one thing that Jewish comedians and African American comedians have both
35:52
leaned into heavily is like how funny the horribleness of life is? Yes,
36:00
and you know, like these horrible people hate us, and let's leave laugh
36:05
at the serious moment. Like That's one thing that I could say that taught
36:09
me is that you're not getting out of this life alive. So learn to
36:15
laugh even in the serious moments, because it's still going to be what it's
36:20
going to be. It's so learn to find that you Yes, learn to
36:27
find the humor in the moment. Yeah, you know you were saying that,
36:30
I was just how I I've worked a lot of funerals in my day,
36:37
you know, a cancer is the one who would would sing and like
36:39
lead some songs at a funeral. So I've worked a bunch and I like
36:45
when people bring the good stories that get laughs. I think that's very important,
36:51
especially if someone dies young or youngish and there's like that extra heaviness about
36:57
the tragedy of the thing. Yeah, and it's like, yes, and
37:04
let's still laugh a little bit about this crazy character, you know, even
37:07
if it's like I'm remembering sadly. Right at the beginning of the pandemic,
37:15
I officiated a funeral. It was a a friend of my I'm going to
37:22
say this in a somewha's the cutest way to protect anonymity, but let's say
37:27
it was like someone my child knew. It wasn't her friend, but a
37:31
parent of her friend. So it was a real tragedy. We learned that
37:37
he had some serious mental health stuff, some pretty serious drug habits, but
37:43
none of that backstory diminished any of the tragedy. Right, It was devastating
37:46
for everyone. And I'll tell you it was one of the hardest funerals I
37:52
ever worked because dude was younger than me, and I was like, holy
37:57
shit, Yeah, like, what do with that? And you still make
38:02
sure your black suit is clean, yeah, and you're ready with your materials.
38:07
You make sure if you're the guy who's singing that your voice sounds nice.
38:12
Yes, and you kind of steal yourself for a room full of devastated
38:15
people. Right. So that was intense emotionally, But I also remember that
38:22
sure enough, the guy who kind of lived hard and died young. There
38:25
were some crazy stories that came up at the funeral, and then everyone laughed
38:30
and it was like this cathartic moment because lately, they're still human and they
38:37
still lived alive, you know, And that's the thing that we have to
38:42
remember, that they're still human in there, and they still lived alive.
38:46
Now, before we get closer to the end, we got to get a
38:51
song from you. So all right, So I gave you some choices,
38:55
Trevida, and we're going with the one that's a little bit more theological.
39:00
I'll set it up while I grab my guitar. Main character is named that
39:02
by David Goodman. He's a chaplain. He's struggling with his own grief,
39:08
and like many religious professionals, he's having his own issues with the person upstairs,
39:15
namely, how am I doing so bad at my job? And how
39:21
did we let my parents die? And how is all this crap happened to
39:23
me? Even though I believe so. If you've ever struggled, even though
39:28
you go to church or synagogue or mosque, maybe you can relate the name
39:31
of the song and a sign and you stay there, folks while I grab
39:36
my guitar. Okay, we're gonna stay here because we're excited and we're ready
39:38
for this because faith is one of those things that we need. M truth.
39:47
All right, m let's see that's pretty decent. H see everything.
40:00
Don't worry about the right God? Can you hear me even when I have
40:21
nothing to say when nothing is going in my way? God? Are you
40:30
near me? Will you be with me whenever I'm stuck in despair and all
40:43
of the world is unfair? Please God see me? God? What if
40:52
by I can't say a word or it comes out wrong? God tell me?
41:00
Have askings absurd? Do you like my son? Send me a sign
41:09
from where you are. Are you near or far in between? I've seen
41:17
so many seekers. I am one to its sign for you to send me
41:27
a sign? Oh, send me a sign? I'm wandering about some big
41:42
things. Can you tell me why you made both my parents did left me
41:52
in pieces? I wanna find out? Tell me how not you feel so
42:02
lone? Whenever rain so sweet to the bone. Answer its raincoats is the
42:14
alessant to learne the frown, the page and all around from the sound of
42:24
tears in the dark. Send me aside from where you are. Are you
42:34
here or far between? I have seen so many seekers. I am one
42:42
too. I turned my heart to you, so please, God, send
42:51
me a sign, send me a sun, send me kay. I love
43:07
that, thank you, thank you, thank you. And that definitely speaks
43:12
about faith because when you go yes, I love that, thank you,
43:17
thank you, thank you. That was just amazing. I heard about the
43:22
faith. What did you hear in that song? Travida instant reaction go.
43:25
My instant reaction to that like it did bring tears to my eyes. I'm
43:29
trying to keep myself together because, yes, because you think about the hard
43:36
things of losing your family member, going through the struggles, the stripes,
43:40
and all of those things that are placed on our plate. But to believe
43:45
in God, to know that even though you're going through these things, God
43:50
is going to bring you out on the other side. So continue to walk
43:53
the faith, the pay faith walk that he has for you, because you're
43:59
going to be okay. You are going to make it through because he didn't
44:02
give you anything that he cannot bring you through. So that's what I heard
44:07
from that, And I love that song. Is it recorded anywhere so that
44:13
I can get it so that I can replay it. We're working on that.
44:19
We're working on it, but I bet you some of your tech savvy
44:22
fans have already chopped it and remixed it. I probably will, but no,
44:30
I mean, I think I'll tell you that when I wrote that song,
44:37
I knew I needed an I wish song. For all of you musical
44:42
theater nerds out there. You know, every musical has the I wish song
44:45
like ari l and Little Mermaid Part of your World, Yes, so forth.
44:50
So my Rabbi he needed my chapping character, he needed his big song.
44:54
And I was like, well, Rabbi's gotta have some kind of God
44:57
song, yes, and and his struggle has to do I mean, his
45:02
struggle honestly is not particular to Rabbi. It's really anyone who prays and wants
45:07
their prayers answered, And this is to me one of the most complicated parts
45:12
of being a person who is faithful and believes and then doesn't have their prayers
45:17
answered. It gets mighty complicated for a person who believes themselves authentically, to
45:25
be faithful, to be good hearted, to be kind indeed and word,
45:32
and then something awful happens. And there's a famous book that a rabbi kind
45:38
of had a crossover hit like outside the Jewish world for the everything world.
45:43
It's called When Bad Things Happen to Good People. It's ald like a pavilion
45:47
copies, yes, nodding. It's a pretty famous book, y and sadly
45:52
it was inspired by the tragic childhood death of one of his children. He
45:58
had like a terrible cancer and the kid died when he was like eight,
46:01
and of course it wrecked this rabbi, who was a man one would imagine
46:06
of great faith. Yes, and part of his exploration in the conclusion of
46:12
this book, which I studied once as a seminary student and then again as
46:15
a chaplain, it's it's it's basically, well, one way to put it
46:24
is praying and expecting an answer as if it's a vending machine or a menu
46:32
in the restaurant is a is a notion that to me is childish and fancy.
46:40
Yes, because life does not include a magical menu or a magical vending
46:46
machine. If that was the case, and we would all get perfect health,
46:50
you know, below average, above average intellect, and you know,
46:54
sex, life and income and on and on, right, because because we
46:58
will get everything that we want desire, But that's not how life. Right.
47:01
Yeah, some of us get a lot of the things we want.
47:05
A lot of people get some of the things we want. No one gets
47:08
everything they want. And that's whether whether you go to church, synagogue,
47:14
mosque, temple, whatever or not. I'm sorry for all of your believers
47:19
in the prosperity gospel. I don't fully buy that. You know, if
47:23
it's meaningful for you, God bless, but I first believe that no one
47:28
is rich or poor, or healthy, or sick or attractive or homely because
47:35
of prayer or lack thereof. I don't believe that. So once you get
47:39
past that, I mean, that's like a very old Testament model, like
47:44
yes, you pray. There's a famous I'm not good enough to have this
47:46
citation, but it's part of our big schmap. Prayers. It's the silent
47:51
paragraph, and it's it's theologically problematic because it's like, if you pray right,
47:54
you'll have rain when you need it and and win, yeah, you'll
47:59
be That does to operate that way though, And yeah, but we know,
48:05
we all know because think back to like your young self when you like
48:08
had your first crush and you're like, God, if you make so and
48:12
so love me back, I will to church, I will be cool.
48:17
And you know what, God did not answer that prayer. I mean maybe,
48:21
if you're lucky, you know so and so looked back the way you
48:23
wanted. But in most cases that pediatric prayer, as I and as I
48:30
I term, it was not answered. And that might have been the first
48:34
time your young faith was shaken when you had that heartbreaking more like less comically,
48:39
let's say I talked about generational debts. If you were ten, eleven,
48:43
twelve, fourteen, and your beloved grandma or grandpa was dying, yeah,
48:46
maybe at that point you got on your knees and prayed God make them
48:50
better. I guess what, they still died, and that might have shaken
48:53
your faith. For me as a as a young Jewish man, I was
48:58
involved with hunger and homelessness and your and I was like really moved by the
49:02
plight of these men living on the streets, and I prayed emphatically, like
49:06
more than a year, God helped homeless people, help the homeless people.
49:09
I did not see any dip in homelessness. Now it sounds absurd to me
49:15
as I describe it as a forty three year old grown up, But when
49:19
I was seventeen, I really believed that if I prayed hard enough that that
49:25
would help somehow, And when it did, it it actually cause a major
49:30
theological issue for me, and I kind of like went borderline a feists.
49:35
I definitely went hedonistic, but that was probably just college. But you know,
49:39
it's like the fact of a believing person having a break in their faith
49:46
because of unanswered prayers, I think is probably the most common thene I've heard
49:53
in my travels. Yes, and I have some different theories about why that
50:00
is. Like, maybe because so many of our favorite hero stories from the
50:05
Bible are about the profits, whether they're the Old Testament prophets or if you're
50:09
Christian, the New Testament profits. The people that had the magical two way
50:15
conversations. It's good. Yeah, we don't get that anymore, and that's
50:20
what we're complicated. Yeah, it is. Well, listen, I have
50:24
really enjoyed our conversation and we can definitely continue. So I definitely would love
50:30
to have you back on the show again. Too much, Tam. We
50:35
ran out of time, you know, because I talked just as much.
50:38
So it's not it's not even you at all, because I do just as
50:45
much talking. So but as ill you're permitted, it's good. But it's
50:51
good to have the energy that you brought to the show, and it makes
50:54
for a good show, good conversation, because if you don't have good conversation,
51:00
you don't have a good show. That's just my opinion, because it
51:04
could have been dragging out. Yeah yeah, it could have been like okay,
51:09
the first five minutes, Okay, yeah, I'm really over this on
51:13
board, I don't want to talk to them anymore, you know. So
51:22
always having a good conversation makes for a good show. And being authentic and
51:28
being who you are and being who I am, I think makes for a
51:30
good show. I never have rehearsal questions or anything like that because I feel
51:36
like that that's a cheap thing for me. I feel like I have to
51:39
be able to talk openly and honestly. So that's just how it is for
51:45
me now. Of course, I would love to have you back, and
51:50
so I will see what your schedule looks like and what mine looks like.
51:55
And I want to thank everybody for tuning in tonight. And as always,
52:00
you know I do not end my show without saying this, stay out of
52:04
God's business because the only thing he needs from us is to be obedient to
52:07
what he's called us to do. So until next time, I'll see you
52:10
guys later, and thank you again for being with us tonight. Thanks for
52:15
having me. Thank