The Timetable on Masculine Compassion
Finding the divine in unexpected places.
“Belle
I know that you can understand
This little country boy
Belle
He brought me safe thus far
Through many drunken country bars
Belle
Oh, let me say,
He's my bright morning star”
-Belle, Al Green
Last week on the Talking Pictures podcast, host Ben Mankiewicz asked director Paul Feig about the movie that makes him cry. Along with It’s a Wonderful Life, Feig offered a surprising answer with Poltergeist—namely, a moment when the late Dominique Dunne, playing Dana Freeling, comes to see her family’s home in chaos and screams, “What’s happening?” As odd as this selection feels to even Feig, he makes the assessment “human emotion at an 11 gets me.”
As one does while listening to these kinds of interviews, I wondered what my answer would be. While not a movie, my “surprising tears” response is Al Green’s ballad Belle (the live in Tokyo version is bananas good).
Mr. Green’s catalog has accompanied me in all stages of relationships and as a mood board when I need to get into a strutting mood. Green’s Belle is out of place, though. While the song comments on romance, the central message is Green’s priority of choosing faith over a relationship outside of it. This devotional ode is the only one from the Southern crooner that gets me choked up.
These thoughts about what continues to move me coincided with my January birthday—when I’m already feeling tender from the nostalgia of time passing. Annually, my birthday falls close to Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and every four years, it sits on top of or right next to the presidential inauguration—events that add up to a lifetime of using my birthday as an audit on the essence of integrity.
Religion was all around me growing up. I grew up in a family where men were either soldiers or men of the cloth. My grandfather moved the family to rural pre-manos a la obra, Puerto Rico, to preach as an Episcopal leader to the jibaros in the mountains (later, my father and brothers all left the archipelago to join the US Army). These elders and their offspring went on to live as religious leaders. At the same time, my father recreated his spiritual upbringing by inviting seemingly every clergy member of the Washington D.C. diocese into our home. Those years of early Sundays of "scuffed penny loafs that I stuffed a nickel into" produced so many images of masculine idolatry that still resonate with me today:
Staring at the strong, veiny hands of men curved on top of aged pews.
Looking at light reflect off those gold things sticking out of men's shirts. I later learned that they are called cufflinks and keep shirt cuffs together.
Hearing men in my family sing, seeing them openly emote.
Spotting a father’s hand pat the heads of their children while holding a hymnal.
The smell of my father’s cologne when we embraced during the call to peace, even though the call to peace filled me with a small bit of social anxiety.
At some point in my teens, I discarded religion. Apocraphally, I said it was because my dad died, and I didn't believe there could be a God, which was more the stuff of teen drama.
The truth is, I found religion super corny.
If I was gonna be a man, I couldn't be around anything corny. As the baby boy and with the men in my family gone, I could chart a cooler path where I would plant the seeds to eventually leave the house, traveling the world as a popular DJ. That was my future. (In Ron Howard's narrated voice, "It wasn't").
Hip-hop and house music are not Christian. (In the narrated voice of Daniel Stern, "What I didn't realize was how much house music contains strong gospel routes").
All of this was an okay plan until my mom married Mr. Rogers.
Loren was a retiree who grew up with a minister as a father. My plans of religious freedom were abrupted, with my final years in high school in a home with spiritual literature, more appearances at Sunday services, and religious leaders who would come by for dinner, interrupting my recordings of Simpsons reruns (a delicate act of concentration—pressing pause during commercial breaks and getting into enough of a flow state that I could predict when to unpause right when the commercials would end).
While my stepfather was in my life for 30 years, our paths never fully crossed with spiritual devotion. This week, with my birthday, an inauguration, and another Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I’ve been thinking about my stepfather, religion, devotion, and why a song like Belle makes me tear up for a lapsed Christian.
We rarely celebrate the role of masculine safety and tenderness—and I get why. Toughness demands attention; it’s loud, visible, and hard to ignore. Tenderness, by contrast, is quiet by nature, often existing in the background, unnoticed.
We don’t seek shelter until the storm hits; we only truly recognize its value when it’s gone.
Earlier this week, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, the leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, pleaded for governing with mercy in front of the newly inaugurated president, vice president, and their families. It’s a quiet but confident three minutes. I’ve watched it several times and wondered what Loren would’ve thought.
While deeply religious, Loren wasn’t a fan of the guy who cameoed in Home Alone 2 and eventually became president. My stepfather felt like a rare breed in our current discourse—someone who honored science and the mystery of faith. He didn’t have time for willful ignorance or the inability to look beyond yourself.
There are many examples of a life spent in devotion and a deep need to expand his antiquated views and increasingly live with compassion. Near the end of Loren’s life, a moment crystalized how this man lived his life and perhaps the reasons why, no matter what I say or do, the search for the divine still lingers in my heart. In 2021, well into his 90s, our family joined for one of our final holidays. My wife, Caitlin, has a shirt that you may own or have seen—the words “Protect Trans Kids” broken up with a knife and rose. She wore it during one of our days during that visit.
Loren, ever the observationalist, inspected Cailtin's shirt and read out the words "Protect. Trans. Kids." This 90-something-year-old guy said, "I don't like the knife, but I really like the message."
If you've gone through nearly a century of life as a man in this country and your only criticism of LGBTQ advocacy is the use of a weapon in the branding—well, that might be proof enough for me that the divine is around us.
This week, with my bouillabaisse of birthday thoughts on integrity and amidst the political catapult that has launched us into the unknown, I sit with the devotional lessons I want to take away from my lifetime among "holy men"—the idea that devotion does not exist without dignity and that building deeper reservoirs of compassion doesn't have an age limit.
Adios, ciao ciao, byeeeeeeeee,
Mark ✌🏼
NEW YORKERS, I’ve got some live events coming up:
I’ll be joining wonderful storytellers and comedians at Top Notch Stories at UCB Theater on Thursday, January 30 @ 7pm—🎟️ TIX HERE 🎟️.
Hubba Hubba is back! Join our team on Tuesday, February 25th at Nitehawk Cinema-Prospect Park as we gawk over Denzel Washington and and Sarita Choudhury in Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala!
🎟️ Get your tix HERE 🎟️
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