SPEAKER_04 0:00

Welcome everybody and to this next uh Encore episode with a real dear friend of ours and real amazing person doing work down in San Francisco in the in the uh you know with the homeless and with the trans and LGBTQ folks. Um really working with them around death and dying and and mourning and grief. And uh Megan Rohrer, uh, we just really enjoyed him. He was again one of our early uh episodes that you maybe haven't seen, and I hope you will. Um just such a great work, and I really this is kind of the the kind of thing we really want to know more about. So we're glad to glad to have met him and interviewed him way back in 19 and 2023.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Yeah, wow, it's been a minute, right?

SPEAKER_04 0:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Yeah, you're gonna really enjoy this. There's a lot of fun uh details about this human being and uh award-winning filmmaker, musician, historian.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in transgender nonfiction. That's pretty cool. Uh honorable mention as an unsung hero of compassion by wisdom and action.

SPEAKER_04 1:04

Yeah. Like, you know, he's all over the place doing lots and lots of work. So we we were blessed to have him, and you are blessed to hear him.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

So that's right. That's why he says it's an encore. So stick around, listen, and enjoy this human being.

SPEAKER_04 1:19

Today we are so glad to be speaking to Megan Rohrer, PhD and D M I N, a social justice influencer known for their advocacy with the homeless and the LGBTQ communities. Dr. Megan received a PhD in transformative studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies for their dissertation, Trans Theology Without Apology. Megan received a doctorate of ministry from the Pacific School of Religion studying the radical organizing of the 60s and 70s at Glyde Memorial Church, where he currently serves as a senior church communications specialist.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Megan is an award-winning filmmaker, musician, and historian. He was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction and received an honorable mention as an unsung hero of compassion by wisdom in action. He was with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and one of 95 individuals celebrated in Wittenberg, Germany, during the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. His podcast, And All Shall Be Well, is currently the number two mental health podcast on Automatic. Thank you so much, Megan, for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_04 2:44

Really glad you're here. And uh, we always like to begin with the question of when did you first become aware of death?

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Death, I think, was a thing sort of always known to me when I was six. My parents got divorced, and my father was an alcoholic, and um, at one point he tried to um take us out of the world um by ramming his car into our car several times. And so I my experience of death was sort of from a like knowing that dangerous things happen to people all of the time um and that it's possible, but also was sort of wrapped in in kind of mystical encounters of knowing that sort of the sacred was with me and rooting for me. And I think the the gift that that gave me as a young person to kind of experience danger in that way is that I got to live every other day after that in my life, kind of knowing that it was a better day than that. Right. And so I have have had several encounters with death kind of after that, particularly when I was working as a chaplain for the San Francisco Police Department, providing care and support for the medical examiners. And so have had much deeper dives into like gruesome things that that happen in the world, and especially in terms of like mass casualty traumas and and just giant tragedies that you can't make sense of. But I think it was very helpful for me personally to be centered in this idea that that living and surviving can help you be resilient enough to kind of encounter those moments later in your life.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 4:31

Yeah, thank you. Maybe we'll hear some stories as we go along. Yeah, that sounds like quite a host of stories to tell. So so glad you're here and thank you for that.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Yeah. So, Megan, that initial interface with death and the sequence of your life has brought you to this moment where death continues to probably like remind you that this is the best day ever since that moment, right? So um tell me more about how death has impacted your current story.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

So I'm a transgender individual, which means that kind of throughout my life, there have been moments, particularly because I grew up in South Dakota, where when people believed that my personal existence was not something within their faithful worldview, that my existence shouldn't exist at all. And so this really sort of ballooned in in the late early 2000s when Matthew Shepard was killed. Uh, there was sort of uh an influx of people feeling like it's okay to talk out loud about wanting uh GLBTQ people to be dead or to not exist. And I think that sort of awakening to like what hate looks like, what well they called it um hate the sin, love the sinner, but there wasn't much on the love side of all of that because there wasn't much listening to what was going on for other people. It was sort of a time frame uh for those who remember that like all the child raising handbooks uh kind of implied that you should be as hard and strict and impose suffering on your children in order to teach them hard lessons that that we now know are maybe disease-based rather than um based on the hardness or softness of parenting. So I think these sort of encounters in my life have meant that, you know, there are moments when courts or the legal system will grant rights and you feel safer. But sometimes when you feel safer is when when danger is closer. So the the first time I was ever really ever physically assaulted for being an LGBTQ person was in San Francisco, in a place that was safe, right? Wow. Because when people know where you are safe, they can kind of go and make things difficult. And so I think I've kind of throughout my life known that if I was going to sort of succeed in the world or get ahead or be perceived as kind, that I would have to be as amplified superhero kind of kind as possible on the outside of my body in hopes of like being spared the fate that people think people deserve. And so I lived through in my like my high school transition to college years is like the height of when the AIDS epidemic is happening in the world. And so there really was a faithful, like leadership-led conversation about how gay people they believed wrongly should die or should not be saved from death because they just didn't want to. This idea that people deserve a punishment of a certain type. And so I think for the for the people I know who sort of like lived through the AIDS crisis, there is a way in which we developed sort of a sense of humor about death because there was so much death that you could cry your whole rest of your life and still not have grieved all of the death that occurred. And so I think this journey is there's the ways in which my journey involved needing bulletproof vests or the time when I was consecrated as a bishop that I needed to get last rites from a Catholic priest, all but the last words, um, because of fear of what would happen during that worship service. So, like I feel like I've had this sort of regular chase of death or the threat of death that has been a part of my work life and sort of the PTSD of if you're successful, death will come kind of feeling. Um, and but on on the other side of that, on the beautiful side of that, or what kind of the queer community calls the glitter and the rubble, is is the the companions that I have on that journey, like um have been able to spend time with the sisters of perpetual indulgence. And they, in the midst of the AIDS crisis, and all of faithful people saying things that didn't seem moral about people deserving to have their lives taken, donned religious vows and habits, and yes, in and over the top, much more sexual than the celibate nuns they were dressing up as way, uh, but with the intention of having social justice in the world and to help like have an opportunity for people who are in deep grief to laugh. And sometimes that meant laughing about the ridiculous and amplifying it, and other times that meant just like having an outlet that is not the grief for a little bit. And so I think my life and career kind of going through that threadline of the LGBT experience is a part of my death tale. I I'm contacted so much more often than I would like by people on on social media who say I decided not to die today because you existed. And so I feel like there's my own sort of journey and dance with death. There is this way that death becomes a thing that people think I am uh worthy of for being myself. And then there's also the way that um I feel like living publicly is a is a gift for those who are considering whether or not they can continue to live another day in this world. And so I feel like it's not talked about a lot, but there are a lot of trans folk, a lot of queer folk who are trying to live a bit extra fabulous on the outside of their bodies so that someone will have just the vague opportunity that they could have happiness in their life in the future. And it's not fun to have to step into that situation, but it also feels like if if we don't step into that situation, then people will be left with sort of the hopelessness that they have. And I have done more funerals as as the faith leader for people who have taken their own lives than than probably most of my peers, kind of because of this. And oftentimes it's for complete strangers whose family get at the moment that their their child or their loved one is dead that they blew it.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

And they they pick a transgender faith leader because now they're gonna start doing the work that that family member needed. And so I feel like death is sort of uh something you have to kind of be comfortable with the idea that it could be near at any moment. I mean, because honestly, it's not like I'm in control of any of that, right? It is. Yes, we're on that same team. And because it's that same, it's that current space of danger that that particularly trans people are in right now.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 12:23

Yeah, yeah. Wow, thank you. Yeah, what a what a place to be. Thank you for being in that place and for the service you provide in that place. That that leads nicely to the kind of the next question, which is what is your current role and talk a little bit more about the work you're doing now.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Yeah, so I uh work at Glyde Memorial Church in San Francisco, and it is a space that since the 60s has been uh feeding people and um like half a million people a day and providing domestic violence, care uh, and uh victim support and uh offender support for those who have perpetrated uh domestic violence and all kinds of sort of life-saving uh ways for people to take paths out of poverty. Uh, that's a lot of addiction recovery work of all angles. And so I would say, I I could say with 100% certainty, today at Glide, someone is resurrecting someone from the dead. Uh the number of Narcan uh containers that we train people to use and hand out, it there are people who just simply work at the front desk to help people safely get through a meal line. And some of those have revived people from the dead seven, eight times, just one individual. And uh so I think there is a way in which addiction recovery support is maybe what we might think of as a as a faith healing revival at this point, just by simply being around in someone's worst moment to give them an opportunity to have something happen the very next day. And so I help I help with some of the communication side. So that's storytelling and allowing people to talk about what live life in poverty is like right now and ways that we can solve that and and hopefully end both the effects of poverty and addiction in this world. But it's also a lot of anti-racism, Mark. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

Yeah. I've I've been to your church and I've seen the power of that storytelling and the bearing witness to I well, Keel, I don't even know if you were there with me that time when um and I'm gonna share this because it changed my life. It was um somebody came in who was having a really hard moment and was screaming during the worship time. And I think you have like security around.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

The safety team, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

The safety team. The safety team, I could see them moving towards this person who was very distraught. And the music director stopped them and said, just give me a second, stop the whole thing. No, nobody was singing. And he started singing back what that person was screaming. And like I'm getting chills again because watching how that person could bear witness to that pain and mirror and say, I I hear you, I see you, like changed my life. Like I honestly feel like seminary was just like, you know, here, but that moment helped me like understand what it actually means to bear witness to the pain. So I thank you for your work there because it is amazing. Like I've seen it.

SPEAKER_04 15:53

Yeah. I think I visited pretty much every time I get to San Francisco, I try to go to Glyde.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:59

Because it does it's very, very inspiring work.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:02

Really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Yeah, it's gritty. It's people who have turmoil on the outside of their body, and it's people who have turmoil on the inside of their body. It's people who have been kicked out of other spaces and have nowhere else to go. And there is a way in which the kind of amazing gospel music is able to stir things in people that sometimes, you know, if the words of a church service make you itchy, sometimes the music can revive you and other times it's it's imagery or it's the people in the seats. And it really tries to walk that balance of being a safe space for all people, which of course bumps up into the edges of where mental health bumps out and where other things happen. But I I did uh 12 years of working as the executive director of a homeless nonprofit just up the street on Polk Street. And I thought what was really interesting is that currently our mental health communities believe that hearing the voice of God means that you have a mental health issue. Right. But there are no faith leaders talking to the people who are having encounters with God. Now, is it a waste of time? Many people would say yes, it is. But what if the voice of the divine is being channeled through a humble person? It's not, it wouldn't be the first faith story on the planet where that's right. Right. And so I think there is this beauty that goes along with listening to the voices that are coming out, because many, many scriptures tell us that it's through the hungry and the naked and those who need to be clothed that we're going to have these kinds of encounters. And even if it's not, if all we've wasted is a few minutes making someone feel like they're fully a human being, and rather than, you know, abandoning entire classes of people, entire races of people, or whichever type of person our society deems is okay to throw away any given decade. And so I think there is something about fully claiming the life and the life of other people in that listening and that singing and in that being willing to be community together.

SPEAKER_04 18:15

Sounds like a person I sounds like a a person that spoke 2,000 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

I think I read about something like that.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Yeah, I heard about this. So I'm just curious, um, of the folks who come through those doors who spend time with you, is there anybody ever talking about death and grief with them? Like bereavement support? Because even though they don't have I mean, I don't actually know what folks have and have not, but everybody needs grief support. If if if some of the folks who are working there revive people like seven, eight times, like people are dying around them, and what is their hearts and minds and souls like doing? Like, how's how's that played out?

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Well, so the church um has been able to work on a project this last year. There's some evidence that only 30 to 40 percent of people get palliative or end-of-life care that are in need of it. And um, so they've been working on trying to bring that kind of end-of-life support to those in the streets and those in the racial diversity that might not seek that from a uh doctor's space. And so uh we trained 45 people this last year in end-of-life support and are partnering with UCSF's Mary Center and uh with the AC Care Alliance to be able to make it possible for people to have the trusting relationship they already have with the people who are feeding them and clothing them, uh, but then to start talking about some of those critical health issues that might lead to death or um the ways that death has impacted people. And we found that a lot of the people who are interested in that sort of street-level hospice care conversations are people who have had really deep death experiences in their own personal lives. A lot of people lost loved ones during the time of COVID, but not to COVID. And so they didn't have those same traditional grief rituals that they were used to, right? Most of the stuff people were used to was stuff you had to do in community or you had to share food, all stuff that was not allowed during that particular time. And so people are trying to figure out, I think, new ways to find ritual or relief or release, or just to name the grief that they're carrying that didn't have the same opportunities to do that during an epidemic that that sort of sucked sucked the life out of the room in in many ways. And so we're starting to have some of those conversations. And um the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence do a thing that is one of my favorite grief rituals. They make something called glitter ash. And glitter ash is made out of anything someone is carrying with them that is the most amazing memory thing you've ever had or the worst. So if they have a public vigil and people bring flowers and signs and pictures and they leave them there, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence will collect them after the appropriate amount of time. They gather them in a box. If they have a loved one who died and there's some of their cremated remains, they always claim that they have also put illegal drugs in there. I don't know if it's true, but it's a good story, right? And then they get these really fancy glitters that are like ocean safe, like way more Bay Area bougie glitters than any child is using at school. And they have this like week long time of prayer with a fire, and they burn the things that are safe to burn or Are able to be burned, and then they mix them together while everyone in the community tells the stories of the items in there. And so they tell, and they always use the a little bit of the mix from last year. So they start with the tales from the very first time they did it. And they retell all these stories of woe and grief and joy. And they're they've got full face of makeup on, but their tears streaming, and they're telling the stories of all these people that would otherwise be forgotten or disappeared, or who didn't have family who yet were educated enough to love them, right? And so they're just carrying people. And here in San Francisco, that same community of sisters is doing more funerals, I think, in the bars for the generation that heard those things from faith leaders and didn't ever want to have their funeral in a church then. So they're they're doing the rituals of helping people through these grief processes that normally would happen in a church space. And so I've got some deep friendships with some of these folk because they are so good at figuring out how to tell these stories that otherwise we're lost. And I think that's maybe just what we need. We need we need common spaces where people can come and do the storytelling. Maybe they can mix a little bit of their grief with their neighbors' grief, and and some of that can be normalized in a way that doesn't just make you not want to get out of bed, but also has a little bit of glitter in it too, and some fabulousness.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

That's so so beautiful. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

The collective shizun. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:46

Yay. Oh, that's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

That is beautiful. Uh so my question to you, after all the work that you are in embedded into this community, what is it that you feel is the biggest challenge?

SPEAKER_01 23:59

I mean, I think for many people, the challenge is to remember that all problems have solutions for the most part. I mean, and unfortunately, sometimes death is a solution to an illness. It ends, though, right? Um, it's not always the solution we're interested in. Things, but things do tend to like carry out their call course and resolve. And so what that means is sometimes people forget there's a solution to homelessness, which is houses. And sometimes people forget that there is a solution to addiction, which is addiction recovery support. Does that mean people are gonna be sober every single day? Not always, right? Uh, but there is an addiction to many of the things that we see causing like unimaginable amounts of death right now. There are solutions to poverty. And I, as I'm a person who traditionally doesn't get sucked down the well of kind of anxiety and loss and grief. It's just a part of the resilience that I have sort of built for myself. And so I'm I'm someone who's always kind of got a strand of hope to share with other people. And yet I think the hardest part for me is the toll of wondering, like, well, but why isn't anyone else trying to solve this? Um I come from a faith tradition where points don't matter. You don't get in trouble if you do bad things, but you also don't get points if you do good things. And what that means is like my perspective on the world is not when I see someone walking past someone in obvious need, is to just be like, oh, you're gonna get it in the end, like this whatever happens next sort of level of justice, but to just kind of have this true sadness and perplexity of why it's possible for so many people to allow people to live in such deep poverty without caring or trying or doing the hard work. Um at one point I uh helped a community transform in a uh a lot where a church had burned down in a fire into a community garden space that gave away over four tons of produce just free to any of the neighbors, because I was so pissed off that it felt like so many people were willing to go into fancy faith community spaces, but not willing to like do the work that those faith communities thought was the stuff that needed to happen in the world. And so I just really wanted to show that like the difference between us feeding all these people is like getting a shovel and digging in, literally digging, right? And yeah, and so I I have inside of me sort of this sadness that people would rather argue about what color the carpet should be in a faith community than feed folk or love folk or try to be compassionate to the neighbor or get their own heart right to kind of be present in the world. And obviously that's not everybody, but it's enough people that it physically hurts, I would say. And so I think there there is sort of this idea, like because every job, you kind of wait and see who are the people who are gonna stick it out and who are the people who are just sort of like the idea of that job. And I think at at Glide, you can sort of tell who's gonna work there a little while based on how much how much walking to work deflates them. Like if you're not able to do your work that day, because just the literal people you had to step over to get to work made it too hard for you, you're you're probably not gonna make it for a long time. And and I don't mean that in a terrible way, like we should all have that same compassion. Um, but there is a way in which there are the people who kind of stick it out and keep trying in the midst of things that that feel hopeless, and those who would rather go watch something weird on Netflix or sort of pretend the world doesn't exist if there's a cute cat video somewhere nearby. And I've never been that kind of person.

SPEAKER_04 28:12

So yeah, yeah. So uh what kind of things help you be feel supported in your work?

SPEAKER_01 28:21

I thankfully have been doing this long enough. I know I'm a lot younger than I look, that's part of the way that people kind of see trans people. But um I have been doing this work long enough, thankfully, that um when you sort of like walk with people for a really long time, maybe like 15 years later, someone will like come back and be like, Thank you so much. It mattered so much. And I feel like I've been doing this for so long now that that layers back. And so when I have a hard week or something, or I'm like, why am I even trying? This is impossible. I can't make movement here. That then someone circles back and they're like, you know, you entirely changed my life just by listening to my story. And and in in retrospect, when I think back, I'm like, I didn't really do that much, but it mattered so much. And so just trying to hold on to some of those moments to like remember that that some of the things that I did sucked and try not to think about those as often, but some of the things that I did like really matter. And it's part of why I gave you such a fancy bio is I'm trying to like not undersell myself, like like to be reminded that you did a thing and it mattered for me personally helps me when it feels like the like if we feed three meals today, people are still gonna be hungry tomorrow. And some days that can feel like it's like you're not making progress or it's overwhelming. The other thing that I do is I I have tangible projects, like in my house. God bless my family for this, but like I needed a thing with a tangible end and completion. So I like repaved my backyard. It's not everybody's go-to. Like right now, we're putting up wainscoting. Why? Because when it's done, you will be able to see that you did a thing and that it is better, uh, you know, as we get better at it, right? But you just gotta have something with tangible completions if most of your life is things that are ever evolving.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

Never gonna get done, right? Yeah, yeah, that's actually really interesting. I like that.

SPEAKER_04 30:29

That's a great, great choice of uh support for yourself. That's great discernment on your part. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Yeah. I do a lot of pothole fixing in the tenderloin in the blocks, kind of around where I work. And I found this when I was in Uruguay not too long ago, that when there are like cracks in the sidewalk, they just fill them with beautiful tile mosaics, even though the rest is like cobblestones. And so um I've I have a friend and we go out. And if you put on an orange vest, you can get away with a lot of things. Um, so we put on an orange vest, and it's a giant, giant crack in the cobblestone, and we'll just fill it with different tile mosaics. We have like pre-made little tiles we've cut to look like flowers, and so we just put these flyer flower tiles all over the tenderlink because there's so much concrete. No one gets everyone of every class should deserve to get to see beauty, right? And so we just and they don't last forever because you know, all of the things in city life that that break apart the mosaics, but it's nice to have this little secret joy of something you've made better and and you just beautiful go through the go through the street, right?

SPEAKER_04 31:43

Yeah, I love that. My little secret one is throwing uh seed balls into like you know, big, huge areas of grass.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 31:51

Trying to turn them into uh something beautiful. So yeah, I love that. That's that's such a great omission, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:59

Yeah. Well, and I I don't know what I do. I'm sure I do something, but I love this man who I see him, he's jogging down and around the park. And one day I caught him and he just started pruning a tree.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

And I was like, excuse me, sir, but why are you doing that? He's like, Yeah, it needs to be pruned. So I just like run with my pruners and I go around pruning trees. I was like, that is so beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

Yeah. I've done that too. That's an easy thing to do with an orange vest. I would, I was working on a garden in the front. I worked at a church where they couldn't afford to water the lawn and it was gross and the neighbors hated it. And it was like a small church that was hard to keep alive. And I was like, well, I can keep the yard alive, right? And so I went around and we have all of these sort of parklet gardens in the middle of roads here that are um succulents, so they're easily transplanted, but they all they grow into the street and they're not really maintained, and none of the neighbors want to do it. So I would go with a big couple of buckets and pruners and cut all of the plants, and then the neighbors would be like, Oh, thank you for doing this. Like, which house do you live in? I'm like, oh yeah, right over there. And and so I would carry away the buckets of plant, and then the entire front yard of the church became this giant succulent, which was perfect for when the church ended up selling its property and it became a Buddhist space for meditation, right? Because they were much more successful with all of the weeds that would grow around all of the jungle of succulents. But you and those plants still now are in my backyard because we just kept pruning them as we planted them different places. And so I just love this idea of rogue helping, not really telling anyone. Like you can live your whole life being pissed off about things, or you can take half the time and fix it.

SPEAKER_04 33:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:48

I love that.

SPEAKER_04 33:49

Or or my wife who carries around one of those grabbers and picks up all the garbage everywhere she goes, right?

SPEAKER_00 33:53

Yeah. Well, and and this actually I might have another story for you on the flip side of that. I was up in Central City yesterday in here in Colorado, and I found um that old graveyard, and there's like people who have been buried like since 1847, but they've got like flowers and toys and quarters on there. So people are going there and like spending time with these dead. I'm like, how sweet are you? Like, you're showing up, or you know, somebody whose family probably does not live here anymore. It was kind of cute.

SPEAKER_01 34:22

Yeah, there's whole there's whole popular like TikTok channels of people just cleaning old gravestone gravestones and like all the tools you need to do it. And they just and then they like look up the story of the person and so cute.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

Love it. Yeah. So, Megan, what makes you afraid about the end of your life? What do you ever think about that?

SPEAKER_01 34:47

I think I don't have much personal fear about the end of my life, about how it'll be or or any of that stuff. I my fears are more like kid related, like will my kids be watching? What will right? I I think I have grown to be very comfortable with the fact that death happens all of the time. I uh working with first responders for three years, I think will do that for you.

SPEAKER_02 35:13

Right.

SPEAKER_01 35:14

But most of my most of my fears I think are like kid related, like will they be taken care of? And I I think they're they're at least kind of closer to their teen years that it's clear that they can like feed themselves things, things like they will be able to like live into the future. So that's a little bit less of a worry, but I think I think most of my fears are centered around like if they were watching or honestly, for a long time while I was particularly while I was working with the homeless, because they get very protective of people who are kind to them. My fear was that someone would harm me, and then the retaliation from like someone I cared about would be so much worse, and that they would then like get in trouble in some sort of way. I've I've always been a pacifist, so like this idea of protecting someone or like someone trying to do retaliation always seemed a little bit worse than what what would actually kind of happen in that space.

SPEAKER_00 36:19

Yeah. Interesting.

SPEAKER_04 36:21

Yeah. Well, you have so many great stories. I think we could probably have a much longer podcast. But uh is there anything that you wish we had asked you? Any more I know you you have uh again, you have a lot of stories and you could share whatever you'd like. And uh we you know, we sometimes ask about how you resource yourself. That's also a very good question that we'd love to learn more about. Since we've kind of gotten close to the end of our time, I'd just like to throw that out there and let you kind of take us through what you'd what else you'd like to tell us.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

Well, maybe I'll just tell you kind of a a general thought about like what it's like kind of being a chaplain for the police department, particularly providing care with the medical examiners and and doing that during COVID. Um at one point I brought Good Friday ashes to the people who were doing the COVID command center, like during the midst of the heart of the time where they didn't know if going to work meant they were going to like literally die that day. And I actually brought them some sister perpetual indulgence glitter ash and uh put it on their heads to remind them both to be unafraid and to let go of some of the guilt they have for surviving in the midst of the hard that they carry. And having having been with first responders while they're telling someone that they have lost a loved one or multiple loved ones in a in a big disaster, I think the the thing that I would love to say is that most of our first responders don't have grief training. Right. So here in San Francisco, if someone dies, we have a medical examiner. So the medical examiner would need to come and do an investigation, but a first responder needs to stay with that body until the medical examiner comes. So if that takes eight hours, if that takes a day and a half, a first responder is sitting with a family in grief, sitting with other victims, and they haven't had any initial training in what to do with that. And they are someone who probably has encountered death in their own lives, right, is worried almost every day that they put their uniform on, that their death might be imminent. And so I just want to give a shout out for those who are comfortable talking about death, assuming they're the ones who listen all the way to the end of this podcast, right? Right. Is if there is a first responder or a group or anytime you notice a first responder, even if you're going to a baseball game and they're letting you through the security line and they're just standing there in case a bad thing happens, just say, How are you doing? Right? They're not gonna tell you the truth the first 400 times you ask that question.

SPEAKER_02 39:14

Right.

SPEAKER_01 39:14

Uh, because they are carrying stuff so hard and they're not, they're just by training, not allowed to show emotion on the outside of their face because someone's worst day is might be someone else's best day, and you don't want to look like you're picking the side. But first responders are carrying so much of the most difficult moral questions of our world. Miles military folk are also in this batch, emergency responders are in this batch, and the grief support that they're kind of getting is there's another call, let's go. Right? And they do get to do debriefs after extra difficult stuff. Usually it's about stuff that happens to kids or if someone gets injured. And so just if you have it in your heart in any way to talk about death with people who are encountering it more than once a day, I really want to encourage people to just add checking in with folk as a part of what they're doing in the world. Not because it's an extra unpaid job you need in the world, but because it's a lot for any one group to carry. And there's this actual scientific research that when people of faith or other people are regularly connecting to our first responders, that they make decisions that are kinder, more compassionate, and involve less depth in their own personal choices. And so if you've got it in you, check in with some first responders these days. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

Yeah, I do too.

SPEAKER_01 40:49

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 40:49

That's a great reminder.

SPEAKER_04 40:51

Yeah, what an important reminder. I know um a prayer that I've said for a long time I've taught my children and others is when I hear the sirens to pray for those that are going to help and for those who are bringing to help. Just kind of keep that awareness. So you can do that even, you know, just as you hear the sounds. But I love the intention setting to try to really purposefully show up and be there for those folks. That's a great great reminder. Thank you. Wonderful, Megan. I really appreciate that. Well, what else? Anything else?

SPEAKER_00 41:28

Well, we were should share Megan's quote.

SPEAKER_04 41:32

Right. You have a quote for us.

SPEAKER_01 41:33

Do you want to read that to us? Sure. It's just it's just one of my sort of personal models, which is to love boldly and forgive more boldly still. And I think it particularly applies to folk who are thinking and talking about death or people who are getting near to death is that idea that all the rest you could worry about your whole life. Just focus on the loving and and the things that are possible to forgive or to let go of or unloose yourself from and things will be good. So love boldly, y'all.

SPEAKER_00 42:06

Love boldly.

SPEAKER_01 42:07

Right.

SPEAKER_04 42:08

Love boldly, forgive more boldly still. Beautiful, beautiful. Thank you. I love that. Well, I appreciate you very much, Megan, and um, I'm looking forward to more conversations and thank you so much for sharing with us on this particular conversation. It's so so important, and you brought a lot of excellent love and and boldness. And you you live your life that way, and I appreciate that. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you to Charles Heastan, the composer of the original music you are listening to now.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

And of course, thanks to you, our audience, and all of our amazing guests. Please come back next week for another great episode. Share this with your friends, family, and community. We hope you will subscribe and follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, and Substack. Each guest's additional information will be found in the podcast notes. And of course, if you have a good end of life story to share, please reach out. We're always eager to hear from you.