Talk Stigma

Hello everyone. Doctor Aditra, hello. I'm glad you're here. Say something in the chat as we get an audience together. It's almost 01:00 and I will kick off at 01:00. And just for a reminder for everyone, this is talk stigma. My name is Pastor Seth Perry. I am a pastor. I'm in recovery from addiction and I have bipolar disorder. I've been in active recovery from bipolar disorder for over 14 years. And I'm here to talk about the stigma of mental health conditions as they exist in our lives and as they exist in faith communities.

That's an area that I have a lot of expertise on. And today I'm really glad to be speaking on this topic. And just a reminder to everyone, I live stream every Sunday at 01:00 central time. So that's 01:00 central time. So if you are just watching this on repeat, make sure to make a comment. Anyway, I'll go back and watch it and see if you've commented. And I've had a really good week so far. It's been nice. I went to a funeral this week that was a challenging part of my week, but I also had some really rewarding time at work this week.

So a mix of good and bad, but I think that's what makes life worth living. So my topic today are keys to cultural and religious sensitivity. And I'll repeat that title again, and I'll give a little disclaimer about why I'm talking about this today. Keys to cultural and religious sensitivity. I think that one of the things that I talk about that's in the forefront of my mind as a pastor, as someone who leads a spiritual community that works with people and their spirituality, that's a spiritual care provider, is that I have to be sensitive of other people's cultures and other people's religious and spiritual perspectives.

I can't assume that everyone thinks like me and sees the world like me. And so I'll tell you the reason, you know why this is my topic for today, because it has something to do with Hap that happened to me this week that really inspired me and I thought it was, it was quite amazing. And I want to share that story with you at the end of this stream. But I have five tips on how to be culturally and religiously sensitive. So spiritual sensitivity, cultural spend sensitivity, sensitivity and religious sensitivity.

So here are my five tips. First of all, in your approach to spirituality, I encourage everyone to ask permission as much as possible. One of the things in my past is that sometimes I felt forced into spiritual practices that I felt forced into believing certain things. And as much as possible in the. The way that I do things, the way that I operate, is, you know, I ask permission as much as possible. Secondly, one of the things that I like to do is I like to tell the universal story. That's an important thing as well.

There's so many stories in our world that are important to be told, and I know that in religious communities, we like to tell our own stories. We like to tell our own stories about our own culture, our own traditions, but there's universal stories out there as well. And what do I mean by that? Well, I mean, if you go all the way back through to antiquity, which is something that I studied, when I studied spirituality and when I got my master's degree, there's some archetypal stories out there that really are appealing to so many people, broad cultural, spiritual backgrounds.

So when in doubt, if we think we're going to be alienating people, look for the universal stories to tell. And my other tip, number three, my third tip, is affirm your position as a person who's inviting people. Affirm your invitation. Make sure that you always circle back to how you're not dictating anything, but you're inviting people to participate at their own comfort level, too. So invitation being at the core of your spiritual practice, I think that that's important. So how do I do that as a pastor?

Well, I often get called to a hospital, and sometimes there's a whole bunch of people I've never met. I don't know anything about their background, and I like to sit with people, be with people first. If there's an emergency that's happened, you know, with someone at the hospital, and they've asked for, you know, someone to provide spiritual care. And when the time comes, then, you know, I say, what do we want to do here? You've called me here. So is praying something that we want to do? What's your spiritual background?

What would you like to do with me that you would like? Because here's some options. This is what we can do. And so affirm your invitation. That's my third piece of advice. Another part that I do frequently is I. This is my fourth tip, too. I admit that I may be coming from a place of bias. I call this plausible bias. Right. Admit that from my own perspective. So sometimes I. When I'm, you know, speaking in front of a large group of people, I go back to my own perspective, my own story in life. And just so that people know that you're not making assumptions.

Right. And I say, I think sometimes when I assume, that's when I get in the most trouble, that's when I alienate people the most. That's when I'm not providing hope to people. So admitting plausible bias. And the most important thing is, don't editorialize spirituality. That's my final tip. Number five, don't editorialize spirituality. So don't try to shoehorn in things that, you know, you may be forcing other people to believe that aren't just really willing to believe that. I think that's where many divisions in our world can come from.

Right. And so it's important to have dialogue and discussion. Right. And I think, you know, like I just said, you know, I could be coming from a place of plausible bias, and I don't think that I should be very heavy handed in, in my own personal opinion, when I'm bringing something of the spiritual nature for people to contemplate. And, boy, are these ever difficult things. I've just given you five very difficult things to do. And so why do I think this is actually possible in our world? Well, here's what happened this week.

I went to a memorial service. Like I said, I went to a funeral, and it was a heavy, heavy. Pardon me, it was a heavy atmosphere there. Definitely, like every funeral, but heavier than other funerals that I've been to. It was an incredibly sad circumstances that this person had passed under. And so it was up to the pastor to provide hope to this whole group of people. And he had a tough job. I think there was a wide variety of beliefs, perspectives, circumstances. Some people may have deep spiritual lives in varieties of spiritual circumstances.

They may be of different religions, they're different backgrounds, and there was a diverse cultural representation in the crowd of people and the 250 plus people. And I knew that as I got there, I'm like, wow, everyone's coming from different perspectives. So I was very interested in seeing how this pastor was going to handle these things. And what I kept hearing from him is, he would say, in my tradition, this is the way that we do things and we pray. And, you know, as I have grown up, I have understood a lot of my life and the ups and downs of life through reading the Bible.

And in the Bible, it says this. Right. You know, but also, at the same time, he said, one way that many of us can rally around each other in a moment in grief is by reading poetry together. And that's why we've chosen this poem. And I spoke about that. He said, it's important that we at this time, you know, think about the stories that have been told here today and what I felt at the end of his reflection, which was kind of right in the middle of this whole very heavy, challenging memorial service, was it, this guy did as much work as possible, inviting people, asking permission, telling universal stories, affirming an invitation to participate if you are comfortable admitting that he had a plausible bias.

And also, he didn't editorialize any of it. He didn't say, you know, from my opinion and from my perspective, this is what's happening. Instead, he encouraged other people to participate and to come to conclusions in their own mind about grief and the situation that had happened. And it was effective. I think it was a very emotional service. It wasn't too long. And it was a way of being incredibly inclusive in a very, very challenging time. So again, those are my five keys to cultural, religious and spiritual sensitivity.

And I think it's really important work that we think about and we consider when we, when we want to be inviting people into healing, which is, you know, why I do what I do. So I want to, you know, give some suggestions about where I will be this week in the Cadre sphere. m. central time, his live stream. So I'm going to check out Evan Lieberman's livestream. m. on Wednesday. I'm looking forward to Evan, the counselor, talking about that. m. on Tuesday, August 20, central time. I saw the announcement about that and I'm looking forward to that and I'll be tuning into that.

Other than that, that's it for me. I really appreciate you all tuning in and thank you so much. See you in the.