EXTRA! EXTRA! News Junkie Burns Out On The News!!!!!!

“…remember that the news is always trying to make you scared. It’s bad for us, but very good for news organizations: the easiest way to get an audience is through frightening people.”--Allain de Botton, author "The News: A Users Manual"

I love, LOVE, the news.

Reading it. Seeing it. Hearing it. Writing about it.

What happened in the world in the last twenty-four hours and now with instantaneous reporting, what happened in the world in the last twenty-four seconds. Print, video, radio or online, I’m not picky. I’m journalistically omnivorous. I got hooked on the news fifty years ago at the family breakfast table where I’d read the comics, and then the sports in the morning newspaper. Doonesbury, and Bloom County and then the Boston Red Sox and last night’s box score. 

I’ve been a working journalist for most of the past forty years, have written upwards of 1,500 newspaper columns and essays like this one. Edited my college newspaper too. And now I consume more news than ever before in my life, as do most Americans in 2022. News is so close, just a swipe, a tap, a click away.

From first thing in the morning, news on my laptop with my coffee, then news on the radio in my kitchen and car, then checking my phone for the news every few hours, then day’s end when I take a quick peak at the news online before I go to bed. I am ruled by the news and my hunger to stay informed. To not miss anything. By the myth, that if only I have enough information about the world, maybe I can better control it somehow. Sound familiar?

But no more for me. No more news addiction. I’m done. I’m burnt out on the news.

I’ve reached a breaking point in my love affair with all things newsy. Maybe you have too.  I’ve been trying to figure out why my religious devotion to being up to date about current events has gone lukewarm, if not downright cold. I once so looked forward to the headlines and felt proud to work in the media. But not so much anymore.   

I connect this change in my attitude to the 2016 Presidential election, the most negative, most verbally violent, downright craziest and most vile contest I’ve ever seen. From then to now the news has slowly but surely lost its luster for me. It no longer informs nor amuses nor enlightens me as it once did. I know many folks who feel this way. Know that far too often, news just depresses us now. Scares us. Makes us anxious. Its negativity can even carry over into my day and color how I am feeling about life. As a person charged in my work to embody and to preach hope, the news too often right now is more about hopelessness. Even despair.

Is the news really all bad, so much bluer, and bleaker than ever before?

I don’t think so. Every generation is beset by great challenge, every era, be it 2022, 1982 or 1962 or 1942. Each of those times faced the worst of humanity and the best of humankind too. So, now we’ve got the war in Ukraine and COVID and inflation and an election filled with stupid, rhetoric and candidates. And we’ve also got amazing vaccines and near cures for cancer, and less people in poverty and hungry around the world than ever before in history.

The news is good, and the news is bad as it has always been.   

What’s changed is how the news is packaged, sold, slanted, presented, and fed to the masses. Conservatives watch Fox and liberals watch MSNBC and Trumpers watch Newsmax.  Everybody gets to see the news they want.  Every outlet sells “fear porn” as well. That’s the doomsday message that threads throughout so much media reporting. Your political opponent isn’t just disagreeable. They are in fact evil. They want to destroy the country. Indoctrinate your children. Destroy your world. Both sides have adopted this tone and the cameras and microphones are always right there to capture it all.   

And also get great ratings and make lots of money for the news corporations! AAAHHH!

I know I’m not the only one worn out and exhausted from the negative news flood. You are not imagining things if you too have noticed how negative, brutal, stark, and biased, the news is now fed to us as readers and watchers.

So, as of this week, I’m taking a break from the news.  Maybe I’ll do a weekly 24 or 48 hours fast from the news. That might work. Or perhaps I’ll take my news in very small doses, just the headlines. All I know is that my spirit cannot take any more of the toxicity of our news.

I pray I won’t care less about the world, or do less in my own way, to make this world a better place. My faith demands action for peace, justice, and love. That won’t change, God willing.  But for now? I’m on sabbatical from the headlines.  Maybe you should think about that too. 

Here’s the good news. We do not have to be consumed by the news. Instead, turn it off. Turn it down. Turn away. We can do it. God knows that we need a break.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Be Content? Ask a 103 Year Old Man.

“[F]or just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life….”                   --Lew Grossman, The Magicians

It was a very spartan and a very small place to live. About 500 square feet. A one room apartment with a Lazy-Boy chair and a TV, a small efficiency kitchen, a single bed, a bathroom and sliding glass doors that led out to a balcony. That was it.

Could I live that modestly, frugally, contentedly?

My grandfather did just for the last nineteen years of his 103 year long life, until he died in 2017. Died a contented man, I’d say. For him, treasure wasn’t about things. It was about the love of his family: four children, seventeen grandchildren, twenty-nine great-grandchildren and one great-great grandchild. His monk’s cell like place was his home sweet home. He was content to live that basically and simply.

Lately, I’ve been wondering if I could live like that. Content. Satisfied with my place in life. Live modestly with few desires, and in whatever circumstances I find myself. Accepting life as it is. Being grateful for this one amazing God-given today, not trying to get to a tomorrow that never quite arrives nor seeking to return to a past that cannot ever be changed.

Just for today I’d love to know more contentment in my life. And you? Are you a content soul?

It’s not that contentment always escapes me. I get glimpses of it. Like last week when I met my first grandniece, a smiling, giggly six-month-old baby girl named Nora. For half an hour, I held her in my lap, made her laugh with razzberries and whispers in her ear. I smiled at her. She smiled at me. I laughed. She chuckled back. For those thirty minutes I forgot about all the discontentment I brought with me that night. 

Anxiety about work and wondering if people will ever come back to church. Worries about the world and how mean spirited so many are these days. The bullies, from Vladimir Putin to our ex-President, to the guy who tailgated me the other night and shook his fist in anger when he sped by me the first chance he got.

All those people, places, and things…I can’t do much to change them. I can try and adjust my spiritual attitude daily, and listen for God, who wants me to remember what I have, not what I don’t have. God who wakes me up to my blessings, not my deficits. I imagine God saying, “Don’t spend so much time brooding or stewing over stuff that is totally out of your control and way above your paygrade.”

Contentment. Can I get there?

It can be hard to find a sense of deep satisfaction in our consumption dominated world. Where is inner peace when the culture is constantly pushing us to always strive to grab the next brass ring? Got to keep moving on up. Got to buy a bigger house. Got to have a newer car and the latest phone. Got to get my kid into an elite school and that promotion at work.

Nothing wrong with these aspirations as long as they do not breed discontentment in our souls, or chronic unhappiness, because we imagine that we always have to do better and if we are not on an upward trajectory, there must be something wrong with us. That’s the American way, right? Upward! That’s spiritually exhausting. Maybe we are supposed to find the ladder rung we are meant to land upon and then just be happy, right there. Let others race the rats.

Can I stay put for a while, bloom where I am planted?

Be thankful too, every day, for all the good gifts around me. Gratitude always increases contentment. Thank you, God! For everything! For my home sweet home. For a body that still works (mostly!) and family like Nora to love and to be loved by. Thank you for friends to ride my bike with and new movies to watch with a bucket full of buttery popcorn and interesting trips yet to be taken in this world, so many places left to explore.

There is so much good in this life! If only we can see it.

Life is not perfect. It is sometimes broken. It can let us down. But there are lessons to be learned and hearts to be strengthened on all days. Good. Bad. Everything in between. I don’t want to waste the precious treasure of time given to me by my Maker. I do not want to feel discontentment because everything is not exactly as I think it should be. It’s up to God to run the show. Not me. I just want to do what I can, where I am, with what I have.

May we all be content. Find contentment. Be satisfied. Be at peace with where we are in this miracle called life.

Thanks for the life lesson, Grandpa. Miss you.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

       

The Coming Economic Crunch. Take Care of One Another. OK?

“It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.”--President Harry S. Truman

Here’s the thing. 

We are going to get through it. Of that I am absolutely sure. We’ve done it before, and we will do it again. It’s just going to be tough for a while before the sun comes out on the other side.

I’m talking about the bumpy (maybe very bumpy) economic times that more than likely are lying ahead for the United States and probably the rest of the world too. For you and for me, in large and small ways. We’ve already gotten personal jolts and confirmations indicating that current economic conditions are out of whack, especially since the beginning of the year, when the stock market began to crater and then to fall by more than 20 percent from its high point. Then the beginning of the war in Ukraine in March pushed the economic bells and whistles and alarms, especially when it comes to energy. Since then, gas, oil, and electricity have spiked in cost and gone sky high.

How much is it for a loaf of bread? A pound of hamburger? To fill my oil tank? For a GALLON OF GAS!! In late June when topping off my gas tank topped off at more than $60, I knew we were all in new economic territory. Most of us have not experienced a significant rise in prices (aka inflation) in more than a generation. Last time the cost of goods and services rose this fast and this high was 1981, when inflation peaked at 9.8 percent. That’s forty-one years ago! Right now, inflation is running at 8.3 percent annually.

Now well into my seventh decade I ’ve been through and yes, survived, several economic roller coaster rides.  The time when I was in elementary school and my dad was out of work for 18 months.  We stayed warm, dry, and fed and always cared for by my parents who did all they could for us kids, but I still remember eating surplus peanut butter and cheese, courtesy of Uncle Sam and the Department of Agriculture.  One summer in college the only job I could find was a second shift job at a hospital, washing and waxing floors, wrestling a behemoth of an unwieldy contraption and all for barely above minimum wage. No other jobs were to be found. But there was always just enough money for beer and pizza.

There was the dot.com boom and then bust in 2000. The great financial meltdown of 2008 was the most severe, widespread, and prolonged downturn I’ve ever witnessed. I will never, ever forget it. Seemingly overnight, trillions in accumulated wealth (at least on paper) came crashing down.  From 2007 to 2009 when “The Great Recession” finally ended, the stock market lost $8 trillion in value. That’s with a “t”! Americans lost nearly $10 trillion in wealth as home values fell and retirement accounts plummeted. Venerable longtime financial institutions like Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns went out of business.

It was a scary time.

And then we emerged from it. That “Great Recession” gave way to one of the greatest economic recoveries in history. Now the pendulum is ready to swing the other way again.  Hold on to your seats. And your perspective too. 

That’s what the gift of my faith gives to me in the midst of anxiety producing times in life like an economic downturn.  Perspective. So, I try and remember each day to be thankful that I’ve got a place to live and food to eat and a job that brings me deep spiritual satisfaction and provides for my needs and then some.  I have people who love me and whom I get to love right back. I have a circle of friends that is the best a guy could ever hope for in all the world.  

Perspective: to also remember that I have a relationship with a God who is always there. For me. For the world. For the hurting. Through good times. Bad times. All times. My prayer for all people, especially when the economy is tumbling, and wallet worries increase is that they too would know some power greater than themselves that can see them through. 

We’ll get through this.

So long as we watch out for each other too. There is a good chance more people will lose their jobs in the months ahead and find it harder and harder to make ends meet. They’ll struggle to pay their bills and feed their kids and heat their homes. That’s when our work kicks in as their neighbors and friends and fellow citizens. Faith and plain old human decency compel us, I pray, to show compassion, mercy, and generosity at all times, but especially in hard times.

We’ll emerge one day from the economic winds of challenge. It will just take some time to get there.  In the meantime?

God bless us all.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.