The angst and anguish of Alec Baldwin

In August, actor Alec Baldwin came to the lawn of our church in Orient. He held the inaugural conversation in our series called "Spirituality in the light of …" His topic was "Spirituality in the light of COVID."

Baldwin hit a kind of lecture-circuit home run that evening. The roughly 100 people who came for the celebrity appeal left with a new friend. Baldwin could easily have behaved badly in this Norman Rockwell scene. He did just the opposite. He knew nothing of sarcasm or condescension. Instead, he seemed like a regular guy who had come to do a friend (me) a favor and talk about how he sees God and faith in the COVID-19 mess.

I was the new pastor at the Orient Congregational Church and had known Baldwin in Greenwich Village, where I was also a pastor at Judson Memorial Church, where we met.

On Oct. 21, two months after his talk in Orient, Baldwin accidentally fatally shot a cinematographer on the set of the movie "Rust."

Baldwin, that day, again moved out of the role of complex celebrity and into the role of human. Yes, the police think he has an anger management problem. Yes, the paparazzi attack his wife for her name. Yes, he impersonated the former president on Saturday Night Live. And yes, he played a famous buffoon from high up in Rockefeller Center. He has an edge. And when that terrible accident happened, he could only say, I’m so sorry.

If we ever do get to the bottom of what happened, that will be great. There are many theories that have led to much speculation. The truth is better than conjectures. Even if he is not charged, he will have to deal with the death of the cinematographer for the rest of his life. How does anyone do that, much less do it while being observed as a celebrity?

I don’t write to defend my friend — who doesn’t need to be protected. Nor do I write to accuse him. I write to understand what you do after something like that happens to you. How do you talk to your children about it? I write to understand spirituality in the light of accidental death. I write to understand how much pity celebrities dare have and how much they are to be given. Whose story is this? The one killed or the killer?

An old friend ran over his 2-year-old child. The child died. He has never forgotten, nor have I. He is not a celebrity.

Baldwin belongs to that group of people who get to live through and off their celebrity. It is a blessing and a burden. Maybe I will invite him over again to speak about this struggle.

Lots of celebrities join ordinary people in having crosses to bear. Maybe Baldwin will get out of the kitchen because he can’t stand the heat. Maybe he will teach us a lesson in how to bear burdens.

I pray that he will use his angst to turn his trouble into art. The shame-and-blame culture doesn’t think very well spiritually or artistically. We think if we can just find out who shot the bullet, or who is to blame, then we will have solved the problem, whatever it is. That kind of thinking makes for bad art as well as bad politics.

And we don’t need any more of either.

This guest essay reflects the views of Rev. Donna Schaper, the pastor at the Orient Congregational Church.