The Toxic Culture That Dominates Our Civic Life: HELP!!!!

 

Tox​ic (adjective) 1. containing or being poisonous material  2. extremely harsh, malicious, or harmful                 --Merriam-Websters Dictionary

It’s a website called NextDoor and was begun in 2008 to connect people in their neighborhoods, towns, and cities.  Kind of like Facebook for Main Street. Time once was you could visit NextDoor and see items and news that make a community, a community.  Posts about the Scouts, Little League games and the bake sale at church.  You could ask for contractor recommendations and promote your non-profit.  Some folks posted pictures of cute critters that make nocturnal visits to their backyards.

NextDoor was about as local and relatively innocuous as it could get and yet….

The challenge on NextDoor was and is how to temper discussions that get out of hand, neighborhood squabbles that dissolve into very public spats. Volunteer moderators once did this well.  Now? 

Last week I went on NextDoor to look around, see what’s going on in my little town, when I viewed a link for a YouTube video designed to anger people. To troll folks. To raise the communal temperature. To tweak the sensibilities, in this case, of “the libs” as some folks like to say with derision.  It was a video about crime in Boston, and the unspoken but apparent need for the President to send in National Guard troops, like in Chicago and D.C.  

And then the toxic tennis match began.

Folks posted about the danger of ANTIFA, and others posted that fascism wasn’t on the streets of Boston, it was in the White House.  Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.  My neighbors, sitting with their laptops or phones, viciously tearing one another down, toxic language and behavior on display.

And not just on NextDoor.

It’s toxic at School Committee as folks line up for the public discussion so they can get someone fired because of a Facebook post. This while cops stand by just in case. Toxic at some churches as folks literally take their side of the pews, left or right, and if the pastor is too lefty or righty, well, let’s just fire them!  Toxic at work. “Please don’t bring up politics!” Toxic at home. I know two couples whose marriages ended because one loved the President, and the other could not stand him.

Makes me wonder…do we even know what civility looks and feels like anymore?  Can we agree to disagree without being disagreeable?  Can we engage with the other and just listen and not immediately point a digital middle finger at anyone who posts something we don’t like? Can we have an open enough mind that it might actually be changed?

Or are we now addicted to swimming in the toxic sea that is drowning our culture? Toxicity has now become “normal.”

This has largely come about because of the example set by political leaders in the highest of offices and yes, the highest office of all.  When you call all immigrants rapists, talk about grabbing women by the ______; when you refer to African countries as ____holes and brag about how much you hate your opponents while speaking at a funeral, the vitriol and violent rhetoric flows out and flows down, infects everyone. 

Toxic language and actions give folks permission to treat others terribly.  To insult.  To deride. To threaten. To yell at. To rage. To live in a constant state of agitated righteousness.  Don’t they ever get tired of living such grievance-based lives?

Do all of these folks who post and protest and attack and consume news 24/7,on the right and the left: do they have anything else going on in life? You know…bowling league or potluck supper at the temple or maybe just a pastime that brings them joy?  Baking cookies. Walking the dog. For the sake of the millions who are now so disgruntled…will they ever find peace?  

I hope so.

My faith tells me that toxicity and wanting to see others suffer, especially an opponent: it’s just plain wrong. It’s an insult to the God of love, who is so full of grace that we all get to be forgiven when we are at our worst.  I know I need God’s mercy every day.  I don’t have all the answers.  My “side” is not 100 percent right, not even close, nor is the faith I practice.  And I don’t want to see the one I disagree with get hurt or humiliated or exiled or deported.   

Toxicity practiced always leads to toxicity experienced within, and that is a really, really sad way to live.  The life God gives us can be hard but also so beautiful.  But to know this we have to raise our eyes up from the mud and dare to look at the stars in the heavens.

I’m done with toxicity, next door and everywhere else. How about you?

(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)

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.

               

In the Midst of the Chaos and Cruelty: Take a Break. Breathe. Be.

"Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” – Anne Lamott

I always get melancholy the day after the baseball season officially ends for my favorite team, the Boston Red Sox. That happened last night (October 3^rd) at 10:38 pm when first baseman Nathaniel Lowe popped out in the top of the ninth inning at Yankee Stadium to end the game, and the BoSox 2025 campaign. 

I loved this team and season as so many other fans did, and for reasons you’d expect. 

Baseball has been a part of my life since I was seven so for 57 years I’ve enjoyed the sport, how it entertains and brings me some joy. This season was awesome because the team was actually competitive and a blast to watch, really for the first time since at least 2021, maybe even 2018. The times I went to Fenway Park this year the place was alive again and just rocking. This spring, summer, and fall’s games, as always, gave me a way to measure the seasons, to witness the passage of time and to know comfort in the dependability of a game that always returns next year, no matter what.

But what really drew me in as a fan this season was the how the game allowed me to escape, for a few minutes in the morning sports stories, listening to the radio at night, and talking about the Sox with other fans. Baseball allowed me to consume news that was actually good, interesting, and something to look forward to, and follow.  Baseball let me cheer for the good guys and against the bad guys in games on a field of play that ultimately had nothing at stake, save for bragging rights and championship rings.

Boy, did I need baseball. Do I need something, anything to lean back into for rest, for comfort, for recharging, for life. Maybe you do too.

Because the part of my life I live as a citizen and an American? That’s mostly filled with bad news, really bad news, since last January in particular. Each day now seems to be filled with too many horror stories of the powerless being treated with such cruelty. Bad tidings about the high-jacking of our democracy in a movement marked by mediocrity and mayhem. The country I love is feeling less and less like my home these days.

Baseball helped me take a break. 

We all need such pauses and retreats from the intensity of day-to-day life. God does not make us to fire on all burners 24/7. To just keep going and going. Our devices may scream at us, “PAY ATTENTION TO ME!” and the news cycle may demand of us “YOU MUST CONSUME THE LATEST NEWS NOW!” Too many of our leaders now act as if politics is the center of everything, as if it is a new kind of religion, with a new god and gods, who demand absolute fealty and devotion.

Not me. I absolutely won’t worship at that altar or before that idol. 

I am just trying my best to be a part of the good now, to build up rather than to tear down and to make the world a little better every day by how I live. I often fall short, but I have to keep on keeping on, as do many of us. At its best that’s what religious faith tries to do as well: inspire believers to embody the good, and then to do God’s good, for the common good. That hard work happens every day in houses of worship and soup kitchens and prisons and nursing homes and schools and small towns and big cities. 

To do the good and to push back against the bad.

But everyone needs a break from our work, the intensity of daily life, and the chaos that some create for their own amusement or profit, or both. That’s why I needed baseball. Why I need to go the movies and to ride my bike. Why I need to write. Bake bread and make a home cooked meal for my 90-year-old mother. Why I need to spend more time with the folks I love and who love me right back, without condition.

You do too. We all need to regularly refill our spiritual wells and to be renewed for the living of this day. 

What is your baseball, the pastime, the hobby, the escape, the retreat, the ritual, the game, the craft, the sport that feeds and renews your soul? Who are the people in this life that make your heart sing and give you the strength to carry on, and make life worth living? 

My hope for all of us is in these tumultuous times is that we each find our joy, and whatever makes us feel more alive. May we embrace more often our loved ones and just take good care. Life is a marathon after all, not just a sprint. This race has a ways to go.

I’ll pray for you, and I hope you’ll pray for me and others and our country and the world too.

And take a break, ok?

(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)

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.