WhereGodIs: Grief, a Game and a Guitar
Meghan Cary and Thomas Sorber have each found solace and strength through and beyond grief within their talent, their vocations, and the importance of connection
Many in this world will tell you Meghan Cary and Thomas Sorber are as different as human beings come.
But if you get to know their stories, you discover so much more that links them - particularly their perseverance through grief because of their powerful talents, and the responsibility they have to connect with and love others through their incredible gifts.
Let’s start with the obvious stuff on the surface.
Sorber is 19. Cary is old enough to be his mom.
Cary lives the life of a suburbanite outside Philadelphia. Sorber comes from Trenton, New Jersey, a town whose stereotype is as unsuburban as it comes.
Sorber is 6’9” and the 15th pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, chosen by the NBA Champion Oklahoma City Thunder. Cary is, um, not 6’9”, and there will probably never be a scouting report on her skills in the low post.
Cary studied at Duke University before pivoting to professionally performing on the hardwood floors of theaters. Sorber studied at Georgetown before pivoting to professionally performing on the hardwood floors of basketball courts. (OK, maybe a little linkage there.)
Sorber, after being selected by the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2025 NBA Draft, could make enough income in his NBA rookie contract to buy the house Cary, her husband Peter Farrell and their kids live in - and all the other houses on the block.
And, well, the picture at the top of this Substack shows the melanin difference that our society will say is most obvious, and which produces way too much division instead of unity and connection.
In a period of six days, I had a chance to spend time with both of them - once for work with our son Anthony inside a hot Archbishop Ryan High School gym in Northeast Philadelphia, once for play with my wife Carrie in a hot and friendship-filled outdoor amphitheater at a Philadelphia Folk Festival event in Swarthmore, southwest of Philadelphia.
On those stages, they shared aspects of the same human journey of loss and visceral grief that each of us endure in some fashion. Yet in Meghan and Thomas’ cases, they both discovered three powerful unifying elements to their journey:
- A powerful talent to connect with give to the world.
- The presence of something greater within and around them to put wind into the sails on their journeys.
- A responsibility to connect with shared humanity far beyond what we as a world think is different.
Story: Faith, Family, Archbishop Ryan Form Foundation for Thomas Sorber’s Rise to NBA Draft
Thomas, whose mother Tenneh left Liberia during that country’s civil war, lost his father Peter Sorber at 8 years old, according to Archbishop Ryan boys head basketball coach Joe Zeglinski. At his age, Sorber probably didn’t know how to run a three-man weave.
Meghan lost her fiancé Matthew Black at age 26. At that age, she barely knew anything about playing the guitar that Matthew left her. “I could play the three cowboy chords,” she told the Chestnut Hill Local.
As she grieved, she learned how to apply her hands to the strings on the wood of her guitar, and sing louder to the rafters. As he grieved, he learned how to apply his hands to a round ball pounding on the wood of a basketball court, eliciting fans’ screams as high as the rafters.
Thomas woke up at 5 a.m. to take early and long trains from Trenton to Archbishop Ryan, where he found a community that helped heal his wounds, form him as a whole person, and refine his basketball game.
Meghan took trains, planes and automobiles across the country to reach upper echelons of the acoustic music world, taking stages with artists from Joan Osborne to Lucinda Williams.
Their talents opened doors. But grief doesn’t stop when you move forward in life.
The art of basketball doesn’t formulate words of human emotion as easily as songwriting does, but it seems highly realistic that at one point, Thomas felt the same overwhelming grief that drove Meghan to scream-sing her poignant pain as her way of processing.
Meghan shared during her Swarthmore performance that Matthew told her he would come back as the wind. Sometimes, it wasn’t so easy to feel him there. “Zero miles an hour, that’s pretty damn slow,” her lyrics say.
Thomas has certainly encountered moments alone on a basketball court, not feeling like practicing free throws, times he would feel the sting of losing his dad and would ask “Where are you, Dad, now?”
Meghan knows it, and shared it with understandable volcanic emotion on Sunday with the song “Wind.” There was certainly room for tears. (Listen below.)
Thomas knows those tears. He most certainly has cried them.
In and immediately after the moments in New York - Meghan’s hometown - when NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced the world champion Thunder drafting Sorber, his tear ducts flowed wide open.
While his Archbishop Ryan friends, faculty and supporters cheered him on inside a pub in Bensalem, he passionately told the basketball world that his career will honor a mother who worked beyond the norm to give Thomas an opportunity - the chance that Archbishop Ryan High School fostered through love into reality. (Watch below.)
But 60 hours before he was picked, Thomas also shared that his journey - as much as it is for God, himself and his mom - is also for the dad who is there in his own wind.
“It’s also my father, too. Just doing this for him, doing it while I have his last name on my back, and just keep making him proud. He’s smiling,” he told me in CatholicPhilly.
In that same place, 60 hours before his NBA Draft selection, Thomas decided to enact one of Meghan’s life principles.
“We as human beings are hardwired to connect,” Meghan often shares at the very beginning of her talk before the song “Responsibility,” the song that led me to find her music when we visited Philadelphia for the first time in 2018 - three years before we moved here. (Listen below.)
That song recognizes the human need - and human call - for every one of us to encounter the deeper dignity within each other, the kind that is easy to forget as you go about your life.
On Monday afternoon, Thomas was scheduled to be in Midtown Manhattan, beginning a 48-hour media blitz in preparation for his draft night.
The last thing he ever did before beginning one of the ultimate changes in his life?
Connect. Meet a responsibility to others. Inspire. Meet people where they are, in the same place he stood less than a decade ago as a kid dreaming of NBA stardom.
He did that for about 90 minutes before catching a ride to the Big Apple, giving a talk to kids dreaming the same things he did at their age, signing autographs for them, and getting on the level with young people half his height - but with humanity as tall as he is.
“Just to show kids and give them the motivation that if you just keep pushing and giving your all every day, then you'll be in the same spot,” Thomas told reporters.
“(Coach) told me, I'll give you the world, but you've got to put the hard work in. And that's what I basically did,” Thomas added in his talk to 100 young athletes at the Archbishop Ryan summer basketball camp last Monday.
“Since day one, I got here. I've been putting in the hard work, and you see where I got to today.”
What would Meghan and Thomas say if they ever connected? What if they found themselves in the same room?
He might clutch a Wilson-brand NBA basketball in his hand while she holds her Taylor guitar.
Possibly a song or two coming from the mom. Possibly a story or two from the teenage phenom who elicits wisdom far beyond his years.
But they would easily release empathy. Because they know. They both know.
It would be absolutely reasonable to see them both need a bit of Kleenex. You could expect Meghan to enter Mom and deeply-giving friend mode, the kind that produces hugs as powerful as she gave Carrie and me Sunday afternoon.
You could expect Thomas to open up the tear ducts and want to give compassion forward to Meghan just as good as he accepted from her.
Story: Cheers, Pride Erupt as Ryan Grad Thomas Sorber Drafted by Oklahoma City
That get-together would most certainly include a Meghan-hug-meets-a-hug from a guy with a 7’6” wingspan that might block thousands of shots in the NBA, but will never block the kind of space for healing and hope that defines both these equally wondrous humans.
Meghan and Thomas each love - at least partially because of, through and beyond their grief - by giving incredible gifts that impact more people than they will ever know.
Than they will ever know.
Because what they give to the world is carried by the same wind that Matthew Black and Peter Sorber will always respectively bring to their lives.
God’s all over Meghan and Thomas.
More Sorgi Stories from the last week:
National: Saint Vincent de Paul Pharmacies Help Patients Afford Urgently Needed Medications
Philadelphia: Little Sisters of the Poor Cut Ribbon on Reimagined Home for Elderly Poor in Southwest Philly
Fond du Lac, Wis.: Marian University President Reflects After First Year (enjoy lots of Ted Lasso references)
Philadelphia: Chris McNesby’s Coaching Legacy at Roman Catholic Runs Deeper Than Basketball
Have a great Monday!
In brotherly love, Jay
Sorgi Stories is where a family of storytellers - Anthony (the kid), Carrie (the mom) and Jay (the dad) tell stories. Sacred, often subtly. Sometimes song. Sometimes sports. Encountering. Engaging. Embracing all. Empathetic. Encouraging. From a compassion-centered Catholic love. (Enough alliteration for you?)
Great storytelling, Jay. Grief is weird and wonderful, and is part of my bones.
Jay, this is a beautiful story about the power of generosity in the depth of grief, and the encouragement found from living out of painful memories that have healed in some fashion imparting deeper strength.