Death, Dying, and Grief - Insights Into Male Emotional Responses to Loss with Seth Samuels

In this conversation, Seth Samuels shares his journey through understanding death, grief, and emotional expression. He reflects on his early experiences with loss, particularly within his family, and how these experiences shaped his identity and spiritual journey. The discussion explores the cultural significance of grief, the role of humor in processing emotions, and Seth's work in examining male emotions through his podcast, 'The Good World.' We discuss the importance of emotional expression, the fear of mortality, and the role of ministry in today's media landscape. We emphasize the need for connection and presence in a world filled with distractions, culminating in a reflection on the healing power of tears and the importance of being true to oneself.

Seth Samuels is a performer-turned-social scientist-turned-interfaith spiritual leader. His podcast, "The Good World," is available on YouTube and on every podcast platform he is aware of (please let him know if you are unable to find it). 

Seth has found that the greatest truths reside at the crossroads where our many diverse traditions intersect; interfaith practice helps deepen his Judaism, Buddhism, Sufism, secular humanism, and his connection to the boundless wonders around us.

His college thesis advisor once said, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and Seth took both of them." Seth takes great joy in continuing to live into that statement.

Seth's YouTube Channel

Poet Jarod K Anderson

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Wakil David Matthews (00:02.681)
Welcome everybody. We are so glad to be with you again. On today's episode, we're really blessed to spend time with our friend Seth Samuels. Seth is a fellow student from our seminary, the Interfaith Chaplaincy Institute. He has a podcast of his own and when I heard him speak to the importance of male emotions after a loss, I asked him to join us. Seth is a performer turned social scientist turned interfaith spiritual leader.

His podcast, The Good World, is available on YouTube and on every podcast platform he knows about. He said, please tell him if you can't find it. We will post that and things about the Chaplaincy Institute all in our podcast notes.

Annalouiza (00:50.409)
Indeed. Well, Seth has found that the greatest truths live at the crossroads where our many diverse traditions meet. Interfaith practice helps deepen his Judaism, his Buddhism, his Sufism, his secular humanism, and his connection to the bottomless wonders around us. His college thesis advisor once said, two roads diverged in a wood, and Seth took both of them.

Wakil David Matthews (01:18.585)
Hahaha.

Annalouiza (01:19.047)
Seth takes great joy in continuing to live into that statement and I am honored to know another two roads will take both, please. Thank you very much, Welcome Seth. Good to see you again.

Seth (01:27.399)
Yeah

Wakil David Matthews (01:27.501)
Hahaha.

Seth (01:32.06)
Yeah, good to see you too. Thank you both for having me. I'm really excited about this.

Annalouiza (01:35.905)
Yay!

Wakil David Matthews (01:36.099)
Cool, yeah, we're looking forward to it too. We always try to, we always begin with this first question just to kind of get a feeling for our guests and their past and their who they are. And that's when did you first become aware of death?

Seth (01:49.674)
Yeah, I was trying to remember, you know, I don't remember the exact answer to this. I will share a piece of family lore, 

Wakil David Matthews (01:59.563)
Okay.

Seth (02:18.638)
… which is that when I was a child, we had a bunny rabbit named Flopsy. Actually, it was the second bunny rabbit named Flopsy because the first one died, but I was less than a year old when that happened. And my brother was away at summer camp. And so I was I was like five or six. And I looked out the window and saw something white lying on the ground and I told my parents about it. And it was Flopsy and Flopsy had died. It was pretty gruesome. there was like a neighborhood pack of feral dogs that had been killing people's pets and they got into his cage and killed him. 

But so we… A few days after that, we went up to Massachusetts to visit my brother at sleepaway camp his first summer at sleepaway camp. And my parents said, now Seth remember, Arthur doesn't know that Flopsy is dead. So don't say anything. We're gonna tell him when we think the time is right. 

Wakil David Matthews (02:57.57)
Uh-oh.

Seth (03:11.752)
And I said, okay. And we walk up the camp road and my brother sees us and starts running. Because it's again, it's his first summer away from home. And I go, Arthur, Arthur, the rabbit died. And he burst into tears. And so that is, that is the first time that I am aware of being aware of death in my life. Yeah, yeah, pretty classic. Younger brother, you know? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I know, I know what'll hurt.

Wakil David Matthews (03:15.188)
Hahaha!

Wakil David Matthews (03:28.025)
That's a great story. That's a really good story.

Annalouiza (03:35.085)
Sibling, yep.

Wakil David Matthews (03:36.717)
Yeah, that'll get him.

Seth (03:41.322)
Uh-huh.

Annalouiza (03:43.085)
Well, and also you had news that you felt you like, you wanted to be a part of this sharing too. It's big.

Wakil David Matthews (03:46.872)
Yeah.

Seth (03:49.834)
Yeah, that's true. That's true. And you know, I don't think I was at the life stage where I was that vindictive. I think I was, I also think I was at a life stage where I didn't really understand like, don't tell him mean means don't tell him. Right? Like, I didn't understand the request at all. Yeah. Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (04:04.377)
Yeah, why? Why wouldn't they tell him?

Annalouiza (04:09.961)
It's well, I just want to pause here because I feel like parents say that to kids. And this is a monumental moment. Your pet has died. Right. And we've got to keep it under wraps. We've got to like do the right thing and whatever. And children are like, hey, it's dead. Let's talk about this. 

Seth (04:27.566)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (04:27.803)
Yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (04:36.671)
What's going on? Right. And I think that that's a very classic story with parents who don't want somebody that the other siblings to know about this loss. And yet younger ones would probably be like, well, it's important. Like we need to all talk about it now. Yeah.

Seth (04:44.822)
Yeah, yeah, let's talk about our feelings. Yeah, that's a really good point.

Wakil David Matthews (04:45.133)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's kind of where we started here. Yeah, I mean, think that's often the case. We've heard that over and over again that people are, you they just want to fix it or they just want to keep them protected. You know, just let's not think about that. Let's just it's all better. They went to a better place, you know, or whatever. Somebody just our last guest was talking about spiritual bypass, right? That kind of sense of don't worry about it. It's all good now, but it's not.

Annalouiza (04:58.891)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right.

Seth (05:04.949)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (05:10.029)
Mm-hmm.

Seth (05:10.252)
Yeah. Everything is fine. Yeah.

Annalouiza (05:12.939)
Mm hmm. Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (05:14.303)
And young people, children especially, like, wait a minute, it's not okay. They want to know, what is this mystery?

Seth (05:20.812)
Yeah, well, this is.

Annalouiza (05:22.445)
Something's changed, right? Something has changed. Yeah.

Seth (05:25.578)
Something big. Yeah. Well, and this is also this is how we ended up with with the Flopsy I grew up with Flopsy two, because Flopsy one died when I was very, very little. I was an infant. And within the span of a year, we had lost two family members who my brother was pretty close with. I mean, he was he was also very young. I was less than one. So he was around four. And the rabbit died while he was out at school and he came home and my mom said, Arthur, I need to talk to you about Flopsy. And he said, just don't tell me he's dead. 

Annalouiza (06:06.345)
gosh.

Wakil David Matthews (06:15.473)
Oh my.

Seth (06:25.282)
And flash forward many months of, he's at a farm in Florida. 

Wakil David Matthews (06:34.625)
geez. Wow. Wow.

Seth (06:38.936)
He's gonna come back in the spring trying to get a replacement bunny that looks kind of both white, but Flopsy one had blue eyes, Flopsy two had red eyes.So, you know, they tried to pass him off as the same bunny my brother immediately realized and they said, no, well, Flopsy's having a good time in Florida. This is his son Flopsy two. This is good. This is like therapy.

Annalouiza (06:42.347)
Possessed Bunny number two.

Well, I'm now curious. Like this was the initial actually exposure to death. How has death impacted your life story?

Seth (06:54.338)
Hmm. Well, I think the big answers to that are pretty grim, which I'm happy to get into, but I just want to preface it by saying it's pretty grim. On my mom's side of the family, I mean, both sides, you know, immigrants from the shtetl in Eastern Europe, but on my mom's side, my grandparents were Holocaust survivors. 

And so a huge, huge amount of just sort of both the physical experience of being in my family and sort of carrying that drama. And then also just the family lore and the stories that we have relate to the deaths of so, so many of my family members. My grandma, well, my grandpa growing up was her third husband. He was my mom's stepdad, because my mom's biological dad died when my mom was six from a heart condition that he got in a concentration camp. He developed it. I don't know exactly how. My grandmother's first husband also died in a camp, didn't even make it out. So my biological grandparents, my grandma and my biological grandpa met in a refugee camp in Sweden. And then my grandpa, who I grew up with, my grandpa David, also was married, had a kid, his wife and his kid were both killed. You know, everyone in every direction, both of my grandparents had a lot of siblings. My grandmother had one sibling who made it out and it took them years. There was a long time after the war ended where people didn't really want to look into what happened to their family members because they were afraid to find out.

Wakil David Matthews (08:44.824)
Yeah.

Seth (08:47.566)
And so, several, like a good decade after the war, my grandmother finally, I don't know how, but found out that her brother, one of her brothers was still alive. I honestly don't remember how many siblings she had. I just know that it was sort of her brother, my uncle Henry, and then however many they had who didn't make it. 

So yeah, the sort of specter of death looms pretty large for me on top of which I hadn't really thought about this, but I mentioned my mom's dad died when my mom was pretty young my dad's dad died when my dad was like 22 or 23 So both of my parents fathers died before my parents even met. 
Wakil David Matthews (09:39.811)
Yeah.

Seth (09:48.27)
And so there was there yeah, there was this sort of long history of loss in my family really in every direction that I don't think I was conscious of for most of certainly my childhood into my teenage years and really have been sort of grappling with more as part of my spiritual journey. The Holocaust part was very, very present. That I was aware of because it's hard to miss that.

Wakil David Matthews (10:03.169)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a big part of the family DNA really. Yeah.

Annalouiza (10:07.085)
Mm-hmm.

Seth (10:08.493)
Yeah, yeah, I was talking with my cousin, I don't know, a little while ago. And I think this sort of, this maybe steers the conversation a little bit towards the topic of grief, but we were talking about, so he, it's interesting, he, all of us, I think, ended up, the four grandchildren of those grandparents ended up doing something where we are committed to justice, and that sort of shows up in different ways.

But so he studies the way that cultures memorialize atrocities. So his, I think his dissertation was on the "desaparecidos" in Argentina and he spends a lot of time in graveyards. And he went to a conference, I guess it was about a year ago in, I think in Germany, possibly Poland. But it was close enough to one of the camps that our grandmother was in. And he asked me if I wanted to go with him and you know, we were sort of talking about it, I ended up not going. 

But I had this realization that what I actually wanted from a visit to sort of the old country to where my grandparents grew up is I want, I'm interested in the non-holocaust parts of their life because the like my family history is basically a black and white photo of a concentration camp that says the word Holocaust in bold. And then you cut to 1950 and they're in New Jersey. Right, there's, I have very little information about our connection to the family history from before and just what their lives were like aside from, you know, the atrocity was a pretty major and dominant thing obviously but they had a home life and they had friends and they had books that they loved and all of these things and they had homes that they lived in. And so I'm interested in trying to explore more of that side, not because I don't want to engage with the Holocaust side, but just because it feels like it has been, that has been a piece that I've been carrying for the almost 43 years I've been here.

Wakil David Matthews (12:26.945)
Yeah, yeah, I could see that. Sounds like kind of a hole in the story, right? Missing part of the story, yeah.

Annalouiza (12:33.003)
Yeah. And you know, there's also this, especially with atrocities, people will want us to focus on it so we don't forget, right? So we can just constantly be like, this is what happened. We need to be safe. And then, you know, and I've been thinking about this too. And I think sometimes our guests have talked about how there's both grief and joy. Right? Like living in paradox is actually a thing. Like those folks who, who experienced one of the most heinous crimes of this last hundred years, also fell in love…

Seth (13:10.798)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (13:29.879)
… and, you know, experienced spring winds and, you know, found joy in getting into possibly a ship and coming to the United States. Like there was adventures that also happened. So I really do appreciate that you are holding that space for kind of like the beauty in, you know, the tragic.

Wakil David Matthews (13:34.615)
Yeah, yeah. What else happened, right? Yeah, yeah.

Seth (13:34.316)
Yeah. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's a good way to put it. And they had great senses of humor. 

Wakil David Matthews (14:20.601)
Can you tell us a little bit more about your work, your recording, I mean, your podcast, especially around exploring male emotions? But just otherwise, any of the work you're doing right now, I'd like to know more about that. Yeah.

Seth (14:44.376)
Sure. So right now I'm taking a little break since my ordination is in three weeks. It's very soon, it's less than a month away. 

Wakil David Matthews (14:53.497)
Congratulations, yeah.

Annalouiza (14:55.468)
Yes.

Seth (15:14.414)
Thank you. It is really emotionally consuming and draining. I've been sleeping terribly, which I was not expecting. And just having a lot of feelings.Y

Yeah, the show, so my show is called The Good World, which sort of, it started as, the really, really original version of the idea was that I wanted to make sort of PSAs, public service announcements, right about just like ways to be more compassionate and more understanding towards each other. And I have one that I hired an animator and I worked with her on it and so she made it and I produced it with a friend of mine and I can send you a link to put in the description, on my channel somewhere. And then it's sort of evolved from there into, well, you know, I have this background in theater and improv and so I can stand in front of a room of people or a camera or whatever and I can talk for a very, very long time. 

Wakil David Matthews (16:07.033)
Ha ha

Seth (16:08.564)
And, and it's comfortable and some number of people will find it entertaining. It's not gonna be for everyone, but it'll be for some people. And so I sort of started to think about how to apply this skillset and around this time I was also realizing just how much in my own life I had been avoiding emotional discomfort. I got into meditation around this time and I realized that actually I, I always sort of avoided it. was like, I can't be alone with my own thoughts for that long. Ha ha ha, isn't that funny? You know, it's sort of a, it's a joke, but it's not a joke. 

Wakil David Matthews (16:45.473)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (16:46.27)
Hahaha

Seth (17:04.876)
And I realized the power in just sitting with my emotions and just being aware of them. And not just the power, but the benefits, honestly, and particularly the benefit to my marriage, the benefit to my well-being of being able to sort of say, okay, these are my feelings, I'm letting them run through me, I'm not gonna try to, and you know, I get caught up sometimes like anyone. But for a lot of my life, I sort of tried to really push it all aside, and inevitably that spills out. 

Wakil David Matthews (17:24.825)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Seth (17:31.52)
And I have very acute memories. It's interesting, I had three roommates my senior year of college, and my one of my dominant memories of that year is I had an incredibly short temper. And I just like things would set me off really quickly. And none of them seem to remember that which is, I guess good. It's it beats the alternative probably. But it's, it's sort of an interesting example of like, the things that that stay with you about yourself that don't necessarily stay with other people. But also just because they don't remember these moments doesn't mean that I wasn't being a jerk. And that in sort of flying off the handle and really leaning into my, I mean, what it was was anger. And I was really afraid of being angry, which meant that when I felt angry, it just took over, the anger just took over.

Wakil David Matthews (18:07.949)
Hmm

Seth (18:31.118)
Something I think I've talked about this on my show at some point, but I did improv comedy in college and part of that is it trains you to be able to respond very quickly to things and not have too much of a filter and that works really well if you're making jokes on a stage. 

Wakil David Matthews (18:47.929)
Hmm

Annalouiza (18:58.37)
wow,

Seth (19:02.21)
It's not great if you're in a relationship and you are saying the meanest thing that you can think of to try to win a fight. I mean, it's true, right? And so that's, that's sort of what I ended up doing because I wasn't being aware of my feelings because I wasn't being present with them. I just ended up being controlled by them in a way that was really radioactive. 

Wakil David Matthews (19:19.225)
Hmm, yeah.

Seth (19:31.552)
And, and as I have come to work on that myself, as I've come to see that sort of in culture in general, I have started to recognize the many, many ways that that applies. Anger is a really big one. Although there's the joke that you have probably heard about how men have succeeded professionally by driving home the idea that you're not supposed to be emotional, and also defining anger as not an emotion. 

Wakil David Matthews (19:51.043)
Ha ha ha ha.

Yeah. Yeah.

Seth (19:59.702)
Because men are often angry in public, but that's the only emotion. And by labeling ourselves as rational and unemotional but still being angry. Genuinely, we treat anger as not being an emotion and it ends up just taking over in exactly the way I was talking about. 

Wakil David Matthews (20:12.686)
Yeah.

Seth (20:28.928)
But that anger is also a product of stifling grief, stifling sadness, stifling even minor things, awkwardness. 


Wakil David Matthews (20:29.169)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (20.30.99)
Disappointments…

What'd you say? Disappointment, absolutely. Yeah. Anything that is even a little uncomfortable. And you know, it's, I mean, I'm very good at replacing my feelings with jokes. And it's, you know, it's, it's, has helped me survive, but it is also not, I don't want it to be my only option.

Wakil David Matthews (20:48.441)
Yeah, yeah. Look, really good insights. Thank you, Seth. And I appreciate too that, you know, bringing it back to how much of our culture is and how many, in fact, actually, you said that people that succeed, the sociopaths that succeed in business are there because they stifle everything and they only show their toxic anger and in a way to control everybody around them. so, yeah, I totally experienced that as well in the corporate world when I was in there. So thank you. The great insights, very important. And thanks for the work you're doing with your podcast. I'm glad to know that more people will get to hear it now.

Seth (21:20.558)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (21:31.319)
Yeah.

Seth (21:31.662) 20:10
Yeah, yeah me too Yeah, go ahead

Annalouiza (21:34.819)
I have a quick question, though. And this is just that it came up because I was thinking sometimes in areas of grief, we just interviewed somebody who was really angry with his friend for passing away, straight up. 

Seth (21:51.416)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (21:55.597)
Right.

Seth (22:03.808)
Okay.

Annalouiza (22:04.003)
But there's a lot of joking that goes on with him. He's really silly about, well, can I tell him? He texts his friend who passed away a year ago. And he invites him to parties and he's like, he's pissed that he doesn't show up to the party, you know? 

Seth (22:07.947)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (22:33.376)
And so I want to just hold space for feelings to have a lot of different levels. And I really appreciate that you've used humor, even though sometimes it's to win a fight or it's biting and painful. But sometimes in moments of grief, I feel like people shy away from trying to be a little funny and, you know, having a little levity. But I also believe that you know, it helps. can help kind of like energetically open up so that, you lean into this moment and then maybe relax into the grief a little bit more. Like, I wonder if it's like a two-stepped, a two-pronged, you know, emotion. We have a little bit of a touch of silliness and then like here come the tears, right? Like.

Seth (22:53.718)
Yeah. Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (22:53.955)
Yeah, both roads, right?

Annalouiza (22:59.447)
Yeah.

Seth (23:00.18)
Yeah, well, I think there is humor where humor can take a number of different forms, right? And it can work on different levels. But I think the thing you're talking about, humor is sort of at its most powerful, and I think most beneficial when it's speaking to a truth that we can all relate to. 

Wakil David Matthews (23:17.379)
Hmm. Yeah.

Seth (23:25.698)
And so in the context of grief, it is something that that brings us closer together and enables us to share our grief, maybe in a way that doesn't feel quite so vulnerable. And I think there is power in sort of getting to a point of being able to be vulnerable, but that takes work and that takes steps. And so humor is a great tool for being sort of those initial baby steps of like, okay, can we be vulnerable together? Here's a little joke. Okay, yeah, we connected over that. And then now it becomes easier to continue connecting and to build on that.

Annalouiza (23:31.597)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (23:48.717)
Thank

Annalouiza (23:55.447)
Yeah, I like that idea. I'm going to explore that.

Wakil David Matthews (23:57.367)
Yeah, yeah, that's really good. Thanks.

Annalouiza (24:09.277)
So what are your challenges these days when you are podcasting and sharing? I know, getting ready to be ordained.

Wakil David Matthews (24:17.529)
Getting ready to be ordained.

Seth (24:20.302)
Yeah. Yeah. Right now, I don't know, right now my challenges are, well, my biggest challenge honestly is staying present, is just being there. And that's a consistent one. That's not a new one. It has been harder lately. It's just been more of a challenge because I'm sort of overflowing with feeling and creative energy and I have all these things that I I have given myself some arts and crafts projects that I want to do in time for ordination and now I'm like ordination is really soon and I need to finish these arts and crafts projects. 

Wakil David Matthews (25:00.819)
Hahaha.

Seth (25:18.446)
So now I'm stressed out about it and I'm also looking for a job like a real actual paying job as opposed to a stand in my shed and make videos Which which is perfectly valid, but does not pay the bills At least at this point maybe some but I, yeah, just sort of catching myself and not thinking of my days as a to-do list has always been a challenge for me and it has been rearing its head a lot lately. I have, like many of my generation, I have pretty aggressive ADHD and so, you know, I can depending on what the task is, can either hyper-focus on really the wrong thing that I don't need to be doing right now, 

Wakil David Matthews (25:54.484)
Ha ha

Seth (26:18.533)
… and avoid the things that I, even things that I want to do and know I would enjoy doing, I still end up often putting aside. So yeah, I think just navigating the feelings that I am having and then, you know, on top of that, like we are still, Wakil, you mentioned the the episode I did about grief that was my my wife's grandfather died in late February, and he, you know, he was 94. She was very, very close with him. I grew close with him also across the we're coming up on 10 years of being together. And, and so I I felt his loss very acutely in a way that I hadn't really since my own grandparents died 15 plus years ago at this point. 

And so that grief is still there for me somewhat and for Suzy a lot. so that, you know, all of that is going on society and the economy are falling apart. You know, I have a number of friends who, who either are themselves trans or have kids who are trans or non-binary and are, are being targeted by the government and are genuinely looking at well, maybe we have to move to a different country. And it's not, it's not the alarmist thing that that statement has felt like for most of my life. 

Wakil David Matthews (27:34.541)
Right, yeah.

Seth (27:42.626)
It's like genuinely they they might need to, you know, is their kid gonna get taken away if they stay here? It's a real concern. So I'm navigating my, it's sort of a classic we humans will come up with things to feel anxious about where I'm navigating like, I need to walk my dogs and do crochet for a certain amount of time. And while dear friends of mine are dealing with these really, really significant anxieties. But that's still all of that affects all of us. And so I, yeah, I think my my big challenge these days is just navigating everything and being true to, I was gonna say being true to myself, but really being true to my humanity Feels more right, right? Like it's being true to the part of myself that I I think all of us have

Wakil David Matthews (28:43.095)
Yeah, yeah, very good. Yeah, thank you. So when you think about the end of life, does anything frighten you about what's coming up?

Seth (28:56.535)
I don't feel fear is not… Well, I don't know. a distance and at a remove, I can intellectualize it and say that I don't really feel fear. This has not come up here yet, but Wakil, you obviously know this very well. I had surgery last summer to remove a tumor from my abdomen, and that was a year-long journey. And it was very strange because it started off with, I was at the ER for a totally unrelated thing, and they did a CAT scan. 

And at 1.30 in the morning, this doctor who had just come on shift, and so it was her, our first interaction, said, well, there's a mass in your abdomen, and I'm referring to you to the cancer center. 

Wakil David Matthews (29:44.441)
Wow.

Seth (30:00.024)
And I drove home, you know, Susie was asleep, the dogs were asleep, and I was like, okay, I guess maybe I have stomach cancer and maybe I'm dying. And it very quickly turned into, no, it's actually this very specific kind of tumor called a gastrointestinal stromal tumor. It's very treatable. The treatment worked incredibly well. The surgery was incredibly successful. And so it went very quickly from being a very, very scary thing to a very like, it's totally fine. And it's not a thing I think about on a day to day basis. 

But I did have that period where there were a few days where I was like, all right, I don't know. I don't know what's going on. And it was an interesting, it brought a really interesting clarity. It's funny because one of my first thoughts was, well, I never need to go on Instagram again. 

Wakil David Matthews (30:49.357)
Ha ha ha ha.

Seth (30:54.828)
And, and of course, you know, if I were to look at my phone today, and my usage time, it's not zero, I'll tell you that much. But the, I don't want to I don't feel like what I thought was fear. I think what I felt actually to sort of come back to the initial theme, I think I felt a grief and an anticipatory loss and concern for my partner and how she would have to navigate things without me and how devastated my dogs would be, right? things, and my family and my friends and sort of all the like there was that concern, I don't, yeah, don't think fear, I don't feel like I have a fear of dying. I don't want to die. 

Wakil David Matthews (31:37.386)
All right.

Seth (31:53.432)
I would like to avoid dying for as long as I can, you know, subject to a willingness to do things that enrich my life. But I don't really fear the other side, because I, you know, I don't know, it's the same, it's probably the same experience I had before I was born, right? It's, yeah. Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (31:59.673)
Yeah, who knows, right? Right, yeah, yeah. That's good, yeah. Thank you for that. Good thoughts.

Annalouiza (32:10.571)
Yes. And so just as now you're going to be ordained, and this is always coming up because as seminarians, we got the same thing, but how are you keeping yourself resourced?

And what resources you.

Seth (32:24.762)
What resources me is being outside. Well, really projects. So sometimes that includes I also enjoy woodworking, which I do in in the garage. So like the garage door is open, but I'm not fully outside. Being in the garden is really wonderful. And actually, you're asking me this question reminds me that I really need to spend more time doing these things across the next couple of weeks. 

Wakil David Matthews (32:53.657)
Right? Yeah.

Annalouiza (32:54.807)
Mm-hmm.

Seth (33:20.162)
Yeah, and just practicing. mean, even this morning, I took my dogs for our daily morning walk. And often I will listen to podcasts or music. And I sort of started off listening to music and I was like, you know, let's I'm just gonna enjoy being with my dogs. I really like their great and one of them are our older dog Charlie also recently had a major health scare, he's fine now, but he had pancreatitis and he's an old dog and it looked pretty bad for an evening or so. And it's so, so easy to fall into these habits of, you know, I'm Googling things on my phone, I'm listening to a podcast, both of those things at the same time. 

Wakil David Matthews (33:43.33)
Yeah.

Seth (33:49.336)
I'm, you know, I'm checking out of being here. And so anything I can do to bring myself back is, is something that benefits me. But it has been, it has been a challenge to do that lately, because even when I catch myself, I'm often my response is sort of, yeah, I just feel really tired. And I kind of want to, I kind of want to dissociate for a little. And so trying to figure out what, you know, I, I think it's okay to do that sometimes, but it's important to find a balance, and that has been a challenge lately.

Wakil David Matthews (34:24.345)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that. The culture we live in is so distracting all the time, right? It's just like distractions are what keep us distracted, but also kind of help us cope with a lot of this stuff. So yeah, I think you're right. It's owning that and being aware of it, but then also remembering to balance it with presence, with being present. Yeah, that's our work, I guess.

Seth (34:32.045)
Yep.

Annalouiza (34:32.183)
Mm-hmm.

Seth (34:39.491)
Yeah. I think it is. Yeah, I had I'm in a choir here in Sacramento called the Sacramento Pop Choir. We sing pop songs. And we rehearse on Tuesday nights. And so I was at rehearsal last night. And I recently switched, or I just switched from using a binder with paper sheet music to using a tablet with digital sheet music, which is it's great in a number of ways. 

But I sort of went in there and I was like, I'm not going to check to see if I can get on the Wi-Fi in this rehearsal center. And then at one point, you know, they were going over the soprano part and I was like, well, let's see if I can get on the Wi-Fi in this rehearsal center. And I am relieved to say that it required a password that I don't have. And so I couldn't get on the Wi-Fi. And I was very glad about that. But it is, you know, it's like at an Arcadia eggo, right?

Wakil David Matthews (35:32.589)
Why not?

Seth (35:50.042)
Even here in this beautiful practice of singing joyfully with a bunch of people, this community event, that sort of shadow side that's like, feed me the little attention beast is just sitting on my shoulder.

Wakil David Matthews (36:02.969)
Yeah, yeah. That's funny. Yeah, I've been thinking about that idea in our choir of going to a tablet, but you just gave me a reason to think about it twice. Yeah, right, there you go.

Seth (36:16.886)
Yeah, you know, I think as long as you're somewhere that doesn't have Wi-Fi, it's probably fine. And as long as your tablet also doesn't do, you know, like a cell phone, whatever, 4G. 

Wakil David Matthews (36:25.633)
Yeah, yeah, just turn all that stuff off, right?

Seth (36:33.068)
Yeah. Yeah, but if you turn it off, you can turn it on. That is the problem.

Wakil David Matthews (36:55.633)
That's well, that's the problem, right? Right? Yeah, I know we've talked about automatic turning off your phone night, you know, and when you and I have been talking, but that's something that I do and helps. But but yeah, you're right. It can always I can always go wait, I want to do one more thing and turn it back on again, right?


Annalouiza (36:50.573)
Right?

Seth (36:52.578)
Well, and that is where it gets so slippery for me is I'm like, actually, there's this one thing I need to do. I'll just do this one thing. And then I I'm doing the one thing and then I forget that it was the one thing I was going to do. And 10 minutes later, I've been on my phone for 10 minutes doing nothing. Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (37:00.323)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (37:04.755)
Hahaha.
Yeah, yeah, hopefully it's, yeah, and 10 minutes would be not bad actually. When it's an hour, it's like, shit.

Seth (37:12.874)
Yeah, that's also true. Yeah.

Annalouiza (37:15.075)
Yeah. Or what happens to me is I actually have a bedtime that shuts my phone off at 9 every night. But I have a son who lives at his father's house, and he spends a lot of time alone. so now I've made it. My phone shots up at 9, and it's 9.15. I turn it back on because I need to make sure my kid's safe through the night. And so, oh, well, I'll just check my Instagram to see what.

Seth (37:29.878)
Okay.

Annalouiza (37:44.545)
Voldemort's doing to the economy. And it's 11 o'clock at night. And I'm like, what just happened?

Seth (37:51.382)
Yep. Yeah, I know this very well. Yeah.

Annalouiza (37:54.115)
That's why I'm sharing this, know, yes. And, you know, it is really like the three of us were on the seminary's, you know, monthly community call. But I really appreciated Kari bringing up the message about the ministry and the media that is of late. Right. And it's really stuck with me in the last few weeks. And and we are doing ministry.

Seth (38:08.398)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (38:22.985)
And there is a place for us to be sending this out into the world in little news clips. We are all grieving collectively about what's going on on the outside of the world. I'm glad that you're on YouTube. Thank God. You can be there to help support those who find you. I think it's important.

Seth (38:36.802)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (38:44.825)
Yeah.

Seth (38:45.738)
Yeah, it is. I will say that for me as a, you know, my, my ministry is on social media effectively, right? YouTube is a form of social media. It's not as much one for, for any of our generations, but it is for a generation. And it is hard for me to, sort of, I mean, YouTube is a little easier because the episodes are longer, but anytime I think about making short form content, it's like, this is a really good idea, but it's, it's also feeding that machine. 

Annalouiza (39:18.356)
is Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (39:18.585)
Mm-hmm.

Seth (39:40.96)
And, and coming back to the question about fearing death, there's, this is going to be very heavy handed and melodramatic, but there's, there's an extent to which the constant dissociation is, is a form of death, right? That numbness is is a lack of connection in a way that is not exactly the same as it's certainly not as permanent as death. 

Wakil David Matthews (39:46.681)
Yeah.

Seth (40:11.106)
But but it is it is a similar like severing of yourself from everything. And it is interesting to me that we have this strong cultural collective fear of death. And also this very, very strong, like evolutionary imperative to escape our feelings in a way that sort of mimics it to become
to like shut our brains off as much as we can.

Wakil David Matthews (40:13.401)
Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah. Wow.

Annalouiza (40:16.961)
Yeah, that's a really interesting, like, you know, mental thing. 
Seth (40:21.026)
That just came to me in the moment.

Annalouiza (40:23.769)
But yeah, no, but you know, and what I'm going to say to that, too, is it is like we are practicing death through disassociating ourselves on a day to day basis. We are we are severing ourselves from community. We're severing ourselves from our mother planet Earth. You we sever ourselves in so many ways, thinking that that's that'll keep us around longer. Right. We can we and yet.

Seth (40:30.114)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (40:30.169)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (40:44.897)
… that ultimately will be our demise. will meet death as a husk of ourselves of who we could have been possibly.

Seth (40:54.072)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (40:54.105)
Yeah, well, good stuff, good stuff. No, no, yeah, right, yeah.

Annalouiza (40:57.899)
Heavy, sorry.

Seth (40:59.79)
It's okay, we started with the Holocaust, so I really set the tone there.

Annalouiza (41:01.699)
Yeah, you know, I can totally I can sit with this. We're not afraid.

Seth (41:09.389)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (41:09.549)
Yeah, exactly. Well, what do you wish we had asked you? Is there anything we haven't talked about that you'd like to share?

Seth (41:20.686)
Well, we talked a bit about the, the, the, experience of, of grieving my wife's grandfather and the, and the emotions that came up with that. but this, this is not necessarily a thing that you would have thought to ask me, but something that, that I want to share is that I found. So for me, I, I almost never cry. 

And this has been, it's been a challenge for me across the last several years. It's like, man, I just like, want that emotional release that I never get,

Wakil David Matthews (42:01.113)
Mm-hmm.

Seth (42:19.688)
… because I have spent my entire life shutting it down. And so I cried a lot as both, particularly as Steve was dying and then also after he died. And it you know, it was it was cathartic. And this was the thing that I talked, talked about in the episode that that you had watched, or kill. You know, it's not the point of his death isn't to say, goody, I cried, but it's it, it is a, it is nice to be able to feel that connection. And I was talking to one of my wife's cousins about it. And he was sharing that he had had a hard time crying. 

And I noticed that for me, the thing that brought it on was talking or writing. If I was just sitting there and thinking or even listening to someone else, it wouldn't come. 

Wakil David Matthews (42:55.353)
Mm.

Seth (43:19.232)
But if I was talking about him, if I was writing about my feelings, that for me is a way of bringing it to the surface. And my advice to the man out there who wanna cry is not that you should try writing and talking about your feelings. I mean, it's never a bad idea to do that, but I don't think it's like the secret trick to make you cry. But I think everyone has some version of that that really brings things out for them. And so the thing, just slightly twisting your question from, is there anything that I wish you would ask too? Is there anything I would want to share? 

Wakil David Matthews (43:25.475)
You're right.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, it's perfect.

Seth (43:49.368)
I think it would be that, that I would encourage everyone to sort of find the thing that that helps them connect.

Wakil David Matthews (43:52.417)
Mm-hmm to the tears. Yeah, I just read an article in the presence magazine from the Seattle spiritual directors international and actually sent a note immediately to the person who wrote it asking her to be on the podcast But it was it was about tears as prayer which I thought was a really unique way to look at it and then Richard Roar's newest book is called the tears of things Seems like a tears are in my world a lot right now. 

Seth (44:00.012)
Hmm. Great. Okay.
Well, yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (44:22.233)
So, you know, it makes sense. It makes sense to me that they are a form of prayer and their form of connecting. And as you said, lot of people have a hard time. My wife does. think Annalouiza has told me she does. 

Annalouiza (44:29.635)
I 100 % have a hard time crying.

Seth (44:43.566)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (44:49.251)
Yeah. Yeah. But when we manage or let ourselves get there, it is cleansing. And one of the things she says in that article is it's like a baptism. And I felt like in one practice that I did with my spiritual director,that every single cell in my body had been baptized. That's the feeling I came out of it with. So yeah, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So important. Great. This has been wonderful. Thank you so much. And the reason we love that last question is because it always gives people an opportunity to talk about stuff like that. You gave me not one, but three poems.

Seth (45:13.494)
I did. Well, I said you could pick one.

Wakil David Matthews (45:16.217)
I know, I know, but I read two, can't pick one, they're all great. And they're all short. I mean, we could probably read all of them if we wanted to.

Seth (45:19.414)
Yeah, they are great.

Seth (45:25.068)
Yeah, I will say of those, they are, I think, in my order of how much I love, I mean, I love them all, which is why I sent them all. But I think if I were forced to put them in order, I think that is the order they would be in. So you can do with that what you will.

Wakil David Matthews (45:34.509)
Yeah. Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (45:39.289)
Okay, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, we also, we always offer that you can read them if you'd like, or we can read them. So let us know.

Seth (45:49.582)
Uh, yeah, Alright, I'll do all three. Everyone gets to listen to the dulcet tones of my... Yeah, great.

Wakil David Matthews (46:06.233)
Yeah, and then they can pick the ones that your audience can pick the one they like best.

Annalouiza (46:09.869)
Yes, we should put a little like, you know, choose one, send it to Seth.

Wakil David Matthews (46:14.035)
Right?

Seth (46:14.318)
Vote. Up vote, down vote. Yeah, so these these are three poems. They are all by Jared K. Anderson. I believe they are all from the book Field Guide to the Haunted Forest, which is one of three in a trilogy of books of poems.

Wakil David Matthews (46:35.499)
Yeah, we'll link to Jared in our notes so people can find him. Thank you for that.

Seth (46:40.492)
Yeah, great. Okay, so the first one is actually if I'm doing all three, I'm gonna go in reverse order. So the first one is called “Soft”. 

Our fingers are built more for feeling than fighting nerve endings prioritized over talents or clause. Our relatively modest strength, our long vulnerable road to adulthood. Our species success is the story of betting on understanding over brutality. It's the wise patient bet.

Wakil David Matthews (47:13.529)
Yeah, beautiful.

Seth (47:17.166)
The second one is called the Big Bang. 
The universe is an ongoing explosion. That's where you live, in an explosion. Of course, we absolutely don't know what living is. We don't know what happens in the gulf between molecules and cells. Sometimes atoms arranged in a certain way just get very, very haunted. That's us. When an explosion explodes hard enough, dust wakes up and thinks about itself and then writes about it.

And the last one is called Technically Speaking. 

You can look at any human life as the sum of a complex collection of chemical reactions, in much the same way as you can look at any beautiful painting as a simple collection of pigments, which is to say you can miss the point of anything.

Wakil David Matthews (48:17.602)
Yeah.

Seth (48:20.088)
Yeah, really love that one. Yeah. Yeah, the whole book is at that level. The whole series, frankly.

Wakil David Matthews (48:20.441)
Let's go together very well, all of us. Thank you, yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (48:28.237)
Yeah. Lovely. Thanks for sharing those. I really love that. We could miss the point of anything. Yeah. Yeah. 

Seth (48:33.218)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (48:34.977)
You can miss it. Yes. Wow. It's a human condition.

Wakil David Matthews (48:45:45)
So again, thank you, Seth. It's been really, as I expected, a really wonderful opportunity to get to know each other. 

Seth (48:47.948)
Yeah, this has been a lot of fun.

Annalouiza (48:50.241)
Yes, thank you, Seth.