This article is by Caroline Siegrist:

On most days, I don’t have much in common with the Succession’s Roy family. Billionaires by birth, the Roy siblings speak in sleek, businessy euphemisms. They don’t say, ”trying to buy  a company.” They say, “trying to find a landing spot for this deal.”

They don’t say, “Assess her feelings toward this possible deal.” They say, “Take her temperature.” 

They say, “Beef up or get eaten,” instead of, “Acquire more assets or you’ll be bought out by another company.”

Almost every scene takes place on a private jet or in a crisp, skyscraper office with nothing but windows. I’ve never seen them step inside a Target or make themselves a sandwich, the mundane tasks that comprise most of my time these days as a mom and default household manager. 

The Roy family is loosely based on the Murdoch family, and the adult children take turns flirting and fighting with their dad to become the primary heir to their father’s media empire. 

They spend so much time jet setting and strategizing, it’s easy to forget the Roy children are human.

But the finale of season three finds older sibling Kendall sitting in the dirt outside an Italian villa weeping. The Roy children are attending their mothers’ wedding, and they’re just on the other side of a lush garden with views of the Italian countryside. In order to find their brother Kendall, Shiv and Roman have ventured outside the walls of the estate, to the dusty wasteland where the cater-waiters take out the trash. 

And, like in the Bible, the dirt is where all the big human stuff happens. Not at rival tech mogul Mattson’s lakeside estate. Not in the historic chapel with the star-studded guest list. It happens while Kendall is sitting in the red dust, in the hot sun, staining his nice slacks. 

Of course Roman and Shiv are only seeking out their brother because they need his help in thwarting their dad’s plans to sell off the company and de-throne them. 

But when they try to talk to him about it, Kendall simply says, “I’m not here,” and sits down in the dust. Shiv and Roman try to rouse him, but Kendall shocks them: “I killed a kid,” he says. 

There isn’t some quippy turn of phrase for this. He didn’t “incur some collateral,” or “give up some leverage.” It’s just a confession, pure and simple. And that’s why Shiv and Roman are so taken aback. 

The attempts to comfort him are endearingly awkward. Shiv tries to bend down, but is constrained by her tight dress. Roman squats awkwardly and makes inappropriate jokes. 

As Kendall unspools his story, the Roys don’t judge him. Kendall explains that he was driving drunk with a young waiter in the passenger seat, and when they wrecked and the car crashed into a river, the “kid” drowned.

“It sounds like the road and the water killed him,” said Roman. 

“Nah, man,” protests Kendall. “I’m a piece of shit.”

In my twenties I spent a year working as a hospital chaplain, and not a great one. Their awkward attempts at care took me right back to those bleak rooms in the emergency department. Does this person need a hand on their shoulder? Do they want privacy? Will they be embarrassed when I ask to pray for them or relieved?

But watching the Roys perform these same tentative, shaky gestures restored some of my faith in “the ministry of presence,” something my mentors talked of often but something they could never fully define. 

“Oh great,” Roman says when Shiv steps aside to take a phone call in the middle of Kendall’s monologue, “Leave me alone with the feelings.” 

This line made me laugh, but it also reminded me of how hard it is to stay with someone in their grief and despair. A supervisor used to tell me that 80% of being a good chaplain was showing up, a figure that seems far too generous until you realize just how hard it is to enter another person’s grief and not leave when you’re left alone with the feelings.

“So you crashed, and you did what? You ran?” Roman asks.

“No, I tried to get him. I dived a few times.”  

“This sounds like the story of a hero to me. I would have been straight out of there. I would have been out of that water like a tabby cat out of a bath.”

“Don’t man, I’m a killer,” says Kendall.

“Bullshit. At worst, you’re an irresponsibler.” 

Aside from the profanity, this scene reminded me of the basic pastoral counseling I learned. To reflect back to someone what they’re saying, to gently question them on their negative beliefs about themselves. 

A ministry of presence, or pastoral care, or whatever you want to call it, might just be awkward. But the fact that Roman curses and cringes through his entire talk with Kendall doesn’t make it less effective. The bumbling, crass nature of the care makes it more powerful. Kendall sobs. Something is released. 

Everything in these characters’ lives is so transactional. There are almost no human interactions – including marriage, in the case of their older brother Connor – that they can’t purchase with money. But this confession-and-response is something they have to do for each other. 

To me, this was perhaps the most hopeful scene in the entire sordid series. That these siblings, who are capable of unspeakable cruelty, can also push through their discomfort to care for their brother. 

So many important scenes with Jesus occur in the dust. Jesus idly drawing while asking people to cast the first stone. Jesus spitting into the dirt and making mud so he can heal someone’s blind eyes. Why not just speak a word? 

The incarnation is messy, emotional, dusty. 

Recently, my priest and his oldest child both died unexpectedly in a car wreck. At their funeral, my husband and I were seated in the overflow area in the basement, in August. The AC unit was clearly not equipped to cool a crowd that big in that old space, and so we sweated and fanned ourselves with the funeral collects and shifted in our metal chairs. It was a long funeral, two hours, and by the end of it I hated my creatureliness. The fact that I couldn’t even mourn for this man I loved and respected without being distracted approximately 100 times a minute by my bodily discomfort. 

But my body also allowed me to cry and sing and receive tight hugs from my neighbors and lean against my spouse. Our bodies are achy, dusty, and awkward. They don’t stand up to crashes into rivers or 18-wheelers, as I learned that day. 

I’ve watched the siblings’ interactions devolve from sparing playfully, jockeying for supremacy, and eventually jabbing at each other’s weakest, most vulnerable places. Until this moment, they’ve seen each other as rivals and not much else. But it’s hard to ignore someone’s humanity when they’re crying on the ground.

I suppose the point is to get down in the dirt with people the way Jesus did. It’s awkward. We’re bad at it. It’s hot and dusty. And in my case, it involves “doing the voice” for my son’s play-dough elephant when I’d rather watch TikTok. It means showing up for my grieving neighbors with food when I’d rather nap. It means listening to people’s messy stories when we’d rather go back to the wedding and sip champagne.

When they’re walking back to wait for their ride after Kendall’s breakdown, Shiv says, “Where do you want to wait?”

Kendall says, “Can I be with you guys?”

Jesus’s call to get down in the dirt with people challenges us, but it also offers tremendous hope. It means that the biggest gift we can give someone is our sweaty, awkward, wishing-we-were-anywhere-else selves. Our hapless shoulder pats and ungainly squatting can’t diminish the fact that our presence — and the Holy Spirit in us — can heal.

Our bodies are our best vessels for giving and receiving love from our neighbors. And until tech and media companies like the Roys’ find a way around it, they’re how the light gets in.

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