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1 December 2023

9 min read

From the barber’s chair: the friendships that open us up

Adrian and Neal recall and recount tales of friendships and what made them work so well.

Adrian Urquidez and Neal Presa

Adrian Urquidez is a Californian barber and theologian Neal Presa is a regular client.

Three men walk down a path, the middle one talking and gesturing while the others listen.

Centre for Ageing Better on Unsplash.

Adrian

As life moves on, I began to realize how important my friendships are. Half the people that I grew up with are now married with kids and the other half are still living their life independently. We all have our own paths in life, and I believe whichever path you take, those whom you consider friends will support you and your decisions no matter what.

As I went through my issues in 2019, I had nothing but support from my family and

friends. It wasn't easy for me to be open with my struggles because I felt that everyone would look at me differently. I received nothing but support from everyone then and when I returned to work. They were all there, waiting to book their next cuts with me. From the beginning of my return I knew, then, how important my clients were to me. I wasn't just their barber; I was their friend whom they continued to support even during one of the craziest times in my life.

Trying to stay afloat during a global pandemic was not easy; honestly it was one of the hardest things I’ve had to deal with. I knew I had to be as strong as I could be so I could help my loved ones stay positive and their heads held high.

During these times, I worked as much as possible. At every appointment with a client, they showed support and always checked in with how I was. I used all these opportunities to help myself by speaking what was on my mind. Sometimes they would even open up to me and share what was going on in their lives, positive or negative. These times were much needed therapy sessions at every appointment. Being vulnerable helped me so much and it also helped my friends share what was on their minds; they opened up to me.

When I finally felt right to open up about this incident it was with people who shared the same struggles. They understood and never once judged me.

Growing up we were taught never to show any fear or emotion. I grew up in a rough area where if you showed weakness, you could be the next target to get bullied. I didn't realize until about four years ago how that way of living was wrong. That way of living haunted me for years.

Going back to my childhood, there was an incident that shaped my teens and early

adulthood. I was touched inappropriately by a member of my family and thankfully someone came home so it didn't go further than it did. I never spoke about this incident because I didn't realize the severity of the situation as a young boy and how it would affect me in my later life. You would never think a family member would do anything to put you or harm you in any way. Even as an adult I never said anything because I did not want to get judged or have people put a label on me that wasn't true. When I finally felt right to open up about this incident it was with people who shared the same struggles. They understood and never once judged me.

These were people who I just met but I felt like I had known them for years. I opened up to them more than I had opened up to my childhood friends and family.

This is where I discovered the meaning of friendship. I was never judged and looked at differently. I was the same person to them, and I was accepted no matter what. What a great feeling. I began to hold my friendships close as I had the confidence to share so much with everyone. One of the first clients whom I felt comfortable with opening up with was my friend Neal. I remember going over to cut Neal’s and his sons’ hair and I always left feeling purified. I can honestly say that Neal is one-of-a-kind and I'm so lucky to have him by my side. Neal has seen me at my lowest and never once has he ever judged me.

He and his family have shown nothing but support and just truly care for our friendship. This is where I discovered the meaning of friendship. To me, the meaning of friendship is endless love no matter what the person or persons are going through. You never judge but try to point your friend or loved one in the right direction. Always support and be there when you can. We can take for granted those friendships and lose sight that they are the ones that would be there with a simple phone call or text.

Today I cherish all my friendships and I'm there for those who were there for me when I was at my lowest. I will do anything in my power because I know my friends and family would do the same for me.

Neal

Thirty years ago, there were a little over 600 websites, two years after the World Wide Web debuted on the global stage. Today, there are a little over two billion websites. Yet, with all of our connectivity, loneliness is endemic. The social isolation that ensued during COVID-19 only exacerbated what was latent in our body politic. Yet, whether pre-, peri-, or post-COVID, the level and depth of loneliness is staggering. While many people have social media accounts, and the ubiquity of smart devices keep us all connected 24/7, one’s number of “likes,” “friends,” “followers” belie what is experienced in silence: we live, and move, and have our being in lonesome existence. We seek to be known and loved, but our career pursuits and dreams of having families leave us feeling alone.

They desired someone or a few who could understand them, who desired to understand them, to love them. And to love them not for a quid pro quo, but just to love them for who they are.

For eight years I served an affluent congregation in one of America’s most affluent ZIP codes. Business acumen, political gravitas, excellence in duty, and elegance in program execution were the values and expectations of the community and congregational context. It was a wonderful ministry, where I learned much and where I had to engage my gifts and skills in deeper ways. God opened up spaces for me to minister within, love and be loved by people who were successful in their industry.

When that ministry concluded, two separate congregants asked to meet for a meal. Each of them shared that they appreciated my season of pastoral ministry and they hoped that we would continue staying in touch, perhaps become close friends. They realized that they had spent decades forging business relationships, raising a family (for one of them, navigating a divorce of a second failed marriage), and having careers. Now in their mid-/late fifties they looked around and saw the absence of relationships of any meaningful depth. Sure, there were the business lunches, dinners with friends and cocktails with other couples. But in their mid-life, they sought authentic friendships. They desired someone or a few who could understand them, who desired to understand them, to love them. And to love them not for a quid pro quo, but just to love them for who they are. They said that they experienced a semblance of that in my eight-year ministry with the congregation.

What was I to do with their request? I had already left the employment of the church by then. They and I had to part ways as I was no longer their pastor. If anything, we were friends, and would remain so, but I could not commit to the level of depth they desired. I told each of them, gently and pastorally, that two decades ago, when I was newly married and starting my pastoral vocation, I intentionally forged a wide network of friendships. Not just for my work but for emotional and spiritual support. But among this network, there was that small few whom I can count on one hand who are the A-Team of friendships. Those friendships were cultivated over many years – a couple of them over two decades – as we have been intentional about being in each other’s lives. We would stay in touch and would find opportunities to see each other, carving out precious times wherever we were in the world and whatever demands were on our plate. That intentional commitment meant being willing to be vulnerable. It meant taking the risk early on to open up my heart with guys I deeply trusted and who entrusted their hearts to me.

The Message version of the Old Testament wisdom sayings of Proverbs says: “Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family.”

I didn’t want to deflate the spirits of my two former congregants. But neither did I want to over-promise, to commit myself to investing the time and energy in cultivating the depth of friendship they sought. I told them let’s stay in touch and we left it that. It’s been over a year since those sacred conversations and there’s radio silence.

In reflecting upon those conversations, and in similar conversations with many pastor colleagues and fellow dads who are not pastors, loneliness is, indeed, endemic. It’s tragic and it’s sad. As we can’t be deep friends with everyone, there is a yearning and longing for the depth of friendships that my former congregants sought. People seek that authentic depth of desiring to be known, of being listened to, of being received and welcomed into one’s heart without having to prove anything.

As Jesus was nearing the end of his time with his friends (his disciples), he emphasized how important it is to love one another. He even washes their feet to demonstrate that even the Son of God will humble himself because he loves his friends. He teaches them what he means when he calls them friends, when he regards us as his friends, and not as servants. This is what Jesus our friend said,

“I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father”

The late Earl Palmer, an American Presbyterian pastor, taught from this passage. Palmer observed that Jesus regards us as his friend by virtue of the fact that Jesus allows us to be in the company of him and the heavenly Father as they have a conversation about the secrets of God’s heart. In other words, only to his friends will Jesus whisper the Father’s heart because to do so is to entrust the treasure of the One who loves him into our own heart. That by doing so, we are let into the heart of God.

It’s that quality of friendship that is most needed more than ever. It’s the God-shaped heart that takes the risk to love and be loved. It’s the kind where you can whisper to your friend the sacred longings, hopes, dreams, and fears of your heart. It’s, likewise, receiving from your friend the same: being entrusted with the treasure of their heart. And it’s also experiencing joy and delight in being with each other, even through online technology, whether it be for a 15-minute coffee or for a whole day at the tennis courts or sharing corny jokes that no one else appreciates but they do.

Friendships are gifts of God and gifts from God. The ability to open up our hearts and lives to others is a gift of and from God as well. In doing so, we reflect a bit on what Jesus shows us what love is about, what it takes to love, and what it means to be loved.

The wise words of philosopher and poet, Henri-Frédéric Amiel, encapsulate well what is needed more than ever:

“Life is short. We have but little time to gladden the hearts of those who walk this way with us. So we swift to love, make haste to be kind.”

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Film & TV

18 May 2024

5 min read

Théoden and breaking the spell

Bernard Hill’s most famous role sheds light on where humanity needs to be.

Theodore Brun

Theodore is author of the historical fiction series The Wanderer Chronicles.

A movie scene of a king and prince walking confidently.

Bernard Hill, middle, in The Lord of the Rings.

New Line Cinema.

Recently we saw the sad passing of Bernard Hill, one of the great British actors of his generation, whose career enjoyed many high points. Hill came to prominence, in Britain at least, in the 1980s with his role as an unemployed tarmac-layer in the BBC series Boys From the Blackstuff. Through the 1990s, he went on to star in a number of big budget Hollywood feature films, such as The Ghost and The Darkness, Titanic, and The Scorpion King. But his best-known role, the one which won him global recognition, was as King Théoden in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

In both Tolkien’s book and Jackson’s adaptation, the character of King Théoden plays a pivotal role in making a stand against the forces of evil advancing under the banners of first the wizard Saruman the White in The Two Towers, and then the Dark Lord Sauron himself in The Return of the King, the trilogy’s climax.

Théoden’s character arc is as heroic as any in Tolkien’s epic. But perhaps the most memorable moment within it comes when he is first introduced. Gandalf comes to Théoden’s hall of Edoras to rally support against Saruman’s rampaging armies of orcs. But instead of a redoubtable king and ally in the fight against their common enemy, he finds a weak man buckled under the weight of old age and infirmity, cowed by fear and indecision, and enthralled to the counsel of Grima Wormtongue - whom Gandalf reveals to be an agent of Saruman.

In Jackson’s version, Gandalf ‘delivers’ Théoden from his enthrallment, in effect breaking the spell of inertia and inaction which Saruman, through his minion Wormtongue, has cast over him. Théoden awakes from his bondage, is physically rejuvenated, and is now able to rise and take his proper place in the battleline against Sauron’s evil power. In Tolkien’s version, Théoden has more agency. He chooses, at last, to throw off the counsel of Wormtongue and cling to the slim thread of hope which Gandalf represents, however desperate it may seem.

It is a powerful image, and one from which we can and must learn today.

Our ears are open to so many voices through both mainstream and social media that it becomes a matter of extreme importance to be able to discern who is Gandalf and who is Grima Wormtongue?

Few would deny that recent times have revealed new and determined manifestations of evil in our culture and our world. And yet, both inside and outside the church, these latter years have also been characterised by a feeling of helplessness and inaction in the face of such evil. It’s common to hear both men and women complain that they feel unable to speak up in opposition to what they perceive as wrong. They have been silenced. Either those who dare to speak up find themselves cancelled. Or else those who don't self-censor, keeping their mouths shut and their heads well below the parapet. Like Théoden, they lock themselves away in their hall. In this latter case, the battle is ceded without ever having drawn a sword.

As the famous Edmund Burke quote goes: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ Much of the church, some might dare to say most of it, resides in this place of cowed inaction. Enthralled and confused by the Wormtongue whisperings of the media as mouthpieces for agendas diametrically opposed to the good, we have willingly subjected ourselves to this spell. And the consequence? Like the Westfold of Rohan, the land is burning.

It is not controversial to say anyone who cares about our culture and its future needs to awaken from their slumber. Needs to cast off - or else have cast out - the gag of silence. But what is more troubling perhaps is that, even having done that, we cannot agree on what is evil and what is good.

In the Bible, the devil is portrayed as often masquerading as an angel of light. And it warns against the descent of some cultures into a state of such moral confusion that God’s ordinances are inverted: good is called evil, and evil is called good.

So how are we to navigate our way through this mire of uncertainty? Warnings against misinformation and disinformation abound. And yet, those in positions of power who proclaim them may equally be charged with propagating untruths and dissembling realities, all for the sake of shoring up their own power structures.

All this is to say - our ears are open to so many voices through both mainstream and social media that it becomes a matter of extreme importance to be able to discern who is Gandalf and who is Grima Wormtongue?

Tolkien’s choice of the name Grima Wormtongue is significant. ‘Grima’ derives from the Old Norse word, grímr which means ‘mask’. ‘Worm’ similarly derives from another Old Norse word: ormr which means ‘snake’ or ‘serpent’.

As such, it throws us right back into the Garden of Eden and the honeyed words of the serpent which led humanity into such disaster, offering some purported good up front, while concealing the calamity (and shame) which comes hard on its heels. If we are to stand up and contest the modern manifestations of evil, we must be able to recognise the side of the field of battle on which to take our stand.

Who is Gandalf? In Tolkien’s world, though he hated the idea of his work being interpreted as allegory, Gandalf does represent the Christ figure. And Sauron in turn suggests the Anti-Christ - a nebulous figure arising from scripture, poorly understood at the best of times. But somehow the fountainhead from which, humanity is told, all evil must flow.

But if humanity thinks of Christ on the side of good, and Christ as the most human of us all, perhaps this provides a yardstick by which we can discern the lines of battle.

Is it human or anti-human to stand up for life at its most vulnerable? Is it human or anti-human to stand up for the family unit? Is it human or anti-human to honour and celebrate each and every Imago Dei as they were created to be? Is it human or anti-human to safeguard a parent’s right to speak good into their children’s life? Is it human or anti-human to preserve the innocence of our young? Is it human or anti-human to challenge systems of power which enable all kinds of exploitation and other self-evident evils?

First we must awaken. Then we must choose our side. And finally, like Théoden, we must ride to the fight.

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