Life Is a Test In 2022: Will We Pass?

“All through my life, I have been tested. My will has been tested, my courage has been tested, my strength has been tested. Now my patience and endurance are being tested.”― Muhammad Ali, 2004

A test.

That’s what it feels like to me the past two years has been about. Like life is a test. Like all the huge cataclysms and social upheavals, we’ve experienced collectively in the past 104 weeks or so; it is as if life itself is testing us, to see how we all will do and respond. 

I mean in your lifetime—have you ever experienced such dramatic and so many world altering events as those that have happened since the second week of March 2020?  Yes, it’s only been that long ago since it all started. First COVID, as in lockdowns, as in remote school and work, as in so many deaths, as in overflowing hospitals and nursing homes becoming prison like and surgeries getting cancelled and workers putting their health on the line for us and those ever-besieged health care workers who are still at it, today, tending the sick and the dying. They certainly must think it is a test.

In these weeks we’ll mark 730 or so days ago that our world changed in the blink of an eye. One day the country is wondering if Joe Biden can beat Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries. The next day the newspaper headline spoke for itself: “FEAR, CANCELLATIONS SPREAD”.  And then the headline on Friday March the 13^th: SHUT DOWN.

Thus begins our test.

If it was just COVID that would have been awful enough. Maybe we could have handled just one global crisis. Then the pile on began. The murder of George Floyd and how his tragic death brought our nation to a place of racial reckoning, to face our collective sin. Then an ugly national election in the fall of 2020. Then an attempted violent overthrow of the United States government and a legitimate election in January of 2021. Then a President impeached for the second time. Then an overheated economy and $4 a gallon gas and sky-high housing costs. Then, an awful, bloody, violent war in Ukraine, in Europe, waged by a blood thirsty despot who shows no signs of offering any mercy. A tyrant sitting on top of 6,000 nuclear weapons.

Now can you see why this all might seem like a test?

Like life or the universe or fate or chaos is just piling on the disasters to see how we as a world and as individuals will step up. Does humanity have the right stuff to survive, maybe even thrive? Or will these calamitous cumulative events force us to put up our hands and declare, “I give up.” Cry “Uncle!”

It'd be understandable if we did so. WE ARE STRESSED! A recent poll by the American Psychological Association of some 2,000 Americans, as of March 2022, shows we’re pretty much freaking out about everything. Eighty seven percent of us stressed about fast rising costs. Eighty four percent about the “terrifying to watch” invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Sixty-nine percent fear for a possible World War III.

I’d be more stressed, if I was not so stressed, if all of this drama was just rolling off of my back and I was going with the flow, you know, doot in da doo doo, feeling groovy! Nope. Instead, I’m carrying a lot of worry right now as I know so many of my fellow Americans are, as are the folks in the church I serve, as are the people in my family I love, as are the friends I spend each with on Zoom who lament with me, somehow making this shared life test easier to face into.

Some might say God is the one testing the world; to use Albert Einstein’s famous metaphor, God is “playing dice with the universe” to teach us a lesson. I just can’t see God as being that cruel or calculating. Instead, what if God is the one who gives us all our common humanity, a common heart absolutely breaking wide open at the sight of so many innocent folks suffering in Ukraine. A human community outraged at this war, united in its opposition to the Putin and his evil actions.  Maybe this universal spirit gives us the strength to not be bowed by this test called life in 2022, but instead spiritually buoyed, called to action, stepping up in the face of so much challenge. Maybe to live in these times is a gift and even a privilege somehow.

We get to witness history. We get to make history in how we choose to live in these days of testing. Dare we live in hope, trusting times will get better? Dare we live with compassion, responding to so much pain with so much care and mercy? Dare we take this test and yes, maybe even ace this test?

Life is a test. Grant us the wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days. For the taking of this test.

 

    

 

Civility Explained. Don't Be a Jerk. Please.

 

"Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos.” --President George W. Bush

It’s the kind of current event you might have easily missed in the intensity of the news cycle. With war raging in Ukraine and a state of the union speech and baseball on strike and the usual cultural chatter, I’d have overlooked it too if I hadn’t seen the video for myself.

Wednesday, March 2.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was participating in a low key, typical news conference, his extolling the virtues of a state funded cybersecurity education initiative.  DeSantis walked up to a podium while the cameras rolled. Behind him stood seven high school students, all masked up.  The gathering was at the University of Florida at Tampa in Hillsborough County, an area the CDC considers high risk for COVID, and still recommends indoor masking.

DeSantis noticed the youth were wearing face coverings, turned, and faced them, his back now to the camera, and then began to lecture/harangue/berate those young people. All depends I suppose on how you hear what he said.  And this is what he said. “You do not have to wear those masks. I mean, please take them off. Honestly, it’s not doing anything. We’ve got to stop with this COVID theater. So, if you wanna wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous.” And then he turned back around, let out an audible sigh and with a scowl on his face finally began the briefing.

Meanwhile behind him the students looked awkward and embarrassed. They smiled uncomfortably and squirmed. Some removed their masks. Others stood pat.  It was an absolute cringeworthy moment.  An impatient and petulant adult telling kids that they are dupes or clueless or even “theatrical” in taking their precautions. As one of the boys, high school freshman and 14-year-old Kevin Brown Jr. said of DeSantis’ behavior, “I was a little bit surprised at his tone.” Brown wore the mask because he was surrounded by many unmasked people and is still worried about getting COVID. Brown’s Dad, Kevin Brown Sr. was blunter in his assessment of the Governor going off on his son and the others. In his view DeSantis should, “stop bullying kids.”

A side note: if the Governor had been a Democrat and not a Republican I still would have written about his rude and childish behavior. This is not about ideology or politics or debating public health policy. It is instead an example of the rampant and unchecked incivility that is becoming the norm in our world, especially among our so called “leaders.”  Like when the President of the United States is caught on a “hot” mike saying of a reporter, who asked a fair question at a gathering, “What a stupid son of a _____!” Or when his press secretary sarcastically mocked another reporter for suggesting the administration should send COVID test kits to every American.

Yes, this lack of civility is bipartisan. 

A boor is a boor, regardless of what side of the aisle they claim as home. What kind of leader, what kind of “adult” shames a kid for taking care of themselves or insults a reporter for just doing their job? Oh, let’s not forget about the two Congresswomen who stood up at the state of the union speech and heckled the President at the exact moment in his speech he was talking about the death of his son Beau from brain cancer.

I know some might judge my criticism of DeSantis and other impolitic politicians as overly nit-picky or just over the top.  What’s the matter with a little temper tantrum, right? Lighten up! Those kids aren’t snowflakes—they can take it. And he is the Governor after all. Who knows? Maybe he had a long day. Maybe he was “hangry,” or his pants were too tight. Got up on the wrong side of the bed. 

I won’t give him that benefit of the doubt. Won’t give any public servant or elected official slack on this question of civility in government and governing. Remember what your mother taught you? If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. If only that were the rule in the halls of government.

Civility is not just about being polite though politeness absolutely matters. Civility is the social glue that holds together a society. Civility allows opponents to disagree while not being disagreeable. Civility is about taking the high road and not going in for a low punch. Civility is about kindness and respect: the golden rule. Treating others as you’d like to be treated.

Not much to ask.

And in these days when everyone is on edge or has some reason to be cranky, we need the leaders among us to set a good example of patience and yes, love for others. Doesn’t seem like too much to ask.              

Listen to your mother. She was right. Civility is the civil thing to do.

 

 

 

     

 

Oh my God: What Else to Say Or Pray In the Face of War

“Oh my God, this is actually happening.”                

--Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times, reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine, February 24^th, 5:09 am

“Oh my God.”—that’s as appropriate a response as any to Russia’s invasion of the sovereign nation of Ukraine a week ago today. “Oh my God!”—as in God help us all, for war has once again visited its ugly and violent visage upon Europe and this time a strongman bully is waging it. He, who claims the invasion is necessary for “self-defense” and to protect its citizens in Ukraine. Sound familiar? It’s a justification used by too many violent bullies in present times and past times too.

“Oh my God.”—as in God help the 44 million Ukrainians who are now at risk: for death, for injury, for displacement, for fear, for hunger, for all the horrors that accompany twenty first century warfare.  Imagine going to bed one night in a land at peace and then waking up the next morning to war, in your home, in your neighborhood, in the land you love.  I cannot imagine that and yet, right now, folks in Ukraine are living that nightmare, and all because of the autocratic aspirations of a despot. 

“Oh my God.”

The scenes and sounds coming out of Ukraine are both all too familiar and all too depressing. Every war is, in a way, the exact same war. Air raid sirens wail as empty streets give witness to the thousands sheltering in basements and bomb shelters, as bombs drop from the night sky and illuminate the horizon in an eerie yellow and green glow. Cars and trucks stand backed up on highways as thousands of families and neighbors and the very old and the very young flee—to anywhere but this war zone that just yesterday was a beautiful European city. Buildings lie in ruin, with windows blown out and piles of debris everywhere and black smoke rising in the distance.

These are the images that are coming to us now daily, that always come when the bombs begin to fall.  It is Ukraine. It is Syria. It is the Gaza Strip.  And it was also war…in the Ardennes Forest. And on the ships at berth in Pearl Harbor.  And on the cold and desolate plains of Korea.  And in the rice paddies of Vietnam.

“Oh my God!”  The lesson is that humanity never seems to learn that war is always ugly. That war is a sin. That even when war is fought for the “right” reasons, still it is finally immoral, for war drags down both the aggressor and the aggrieved into a maelstrom of death. No turning around or reversing course. Once the genie of warfare is let out of the bottle there is no way to put it back. Something tells me that Russia is going to be learning that truth in the weeks and months and perhaps even years ahead, as it seeks to conquer and subdue a people and a culture. It will also be paying for that truth in pain and suffering, and not just for the Ukrainians but for its own people too.  What a waste of life. 

“Oh my God!”

So, I’d ask first, that no matter what your belief system, no matter what your faith or no faith at all, still say a prayer, especially for the most vulnerable in this war.  Pray for innocent children that they might somehow escape injury, death and becoming refugees. Pray for the brave souls seeking to be free and to oppose tyranny.  Pray for the leaders of this world that together they might somehow be able to end this war as quickly as possible and to do so in a just and fair way.  Pray for the world, especially Europe, that this part of God’s Creation would not be swept up again in a worldwide conflagration. Pray for Ukraine: that this sovereign nation might somehow be able to still be free.

“Oh my God.”

Sometimes that’s all we can say, all we can feel, and all we can pray. God knows and God hopes that humankind shall one day, “beat their swords into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore.” The prophet Isaiah proclaimed that holy vision some 2,700 years ago. We still haven’t gotten it right.

Oh my God. What more can be said?

 

 

 

 

  

    

   

 

 

The Death of Civil Discourse. The Rise of Bullies.

In a way, bullying is an ordinary evil. It's hugely prevalent, all too often ignored - and being ignored, it is therefore condoned.  

--Trudie Styler, actor and philanthropist

“Happy birthday Hitler!” 

That’s what a crowd chanted outside of Boston, Massachusetts’ Mayor Michelle Wu’s house on a recent winter morning. Standing outside the newly elected mayor’s home in the tightly packed neighborhood of Roslindale, the handful of protestors have showed up at Wu’s residence since early January, to oppose her COVID vaccine mandate for all Boston city employees.

Wu has lived there for years, along with her husband, two young children and mother. Since Wu announced the vaccine requirement in late December 2021, the number of vaccinated stands at more than 95 percent among municipal workers. Some unions have opposed the policy and tried to stop it in court. They are also in direct negotiations with Wu to work out a solution.

But the rabble is still at it, right now, and have been for many weeks, most days starting bright and early at 7 am. That is the legal time they can begin their campaign of chanting, yelling, holding signs, blowing whistles and, until very recently, using bullhorns and cowbells to verbally harass the first term mayor.

Along with attacking Wu and her family (including her mom, who struggles with mental illness), the pack of protestors are hassling all the other people in the neighborhood. Stay at homes Dads caring for kids and working Moms trying to get children off to school.  A 96-year-old veteran who lives near Wu is reported to be frightened by the noise. Imagine having to walk the gauntlet on the way to the bus stop?

Oh, and that “Happy Birthday Hitler”? Wu’s young son asked his mom who this “Hitler” person was, that the people outside were singing happy birthday to.  Try explaining how there are some people who don’t like what Mommy does at work. That’s why they make all that noise.   

The whole episode makes me wonder: when does legitimate protest cross over into the realm of actual harm? When does someone exercising their first amendment right to free speech morph from a freedom fighter into a bully, from one who protests into a scary harasser? Into someone who goes beyond the norm of having one’s voice heard in a democracy, to being right up an “enemy’s” face, literally. That’s the new norm in our country, in our civic dialogue, in how we disagree with each other.  

Bullying behavior is now legitimate political discourse.

I have the right not only to be against what you stand for, but I also have the right to do all I can to intimidate you. To scare you. To threaten you and your loved ones, your neighbors too. I will mock you, publicly humiliate you and harass you to get what I want.  

This was bound to happen. We had a Commander in Chief who regularly insulted and put down opponents on Twitter and in person, who mocked the disabled, women, and people from certain parts of Africa. If that is what passes for leadership, then, of course, we all have permission to bully. If he can do it, so can I!

Happens on the other side of the political aisle too. Just ask Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. In the summer of 2018, while eating out at a Louisville, Kentucky restaurant, the couple were harassed and verbally attacked by two patrons; that bullying was marked by yelling, flipping the finger, hurting that small business, and tossing food outside the restaurant.  
 
Public bullying has gone from infamy to virtue.   

The media contributes. Put on any cable news show. Watch as these devolve into shouting matches between the oh so self-righteous on the left and on the right. No pundit, no politician, no protestor is EVER wrong in 2022.  Arrogant surety marks the political and elite classes. Have you heard? They are 100 percent correct and you are 100 percent wrong.

Now we have bullies with a microphone. Bullies tweeting. Bullies invading private spaces. Bullies taking over the capitol of Canada, Ottawa. Bullies storming our own Capitol. How else to describe January 6th, 2021? It was a violent a mob of bullies, who attacked the heart of American democracy.

Yet still, I believe in the need for our world and our political and social dialogue to reject bullying. To embrace kindness as the mark of our public relationships. Private relationships too. In the faith I grew up in and still practice, I was taught to lead with kindness always, no matter who I was dealing with. Learned that when I bully another, I’m bullying the very image of God that is a part of every single human being. I was taught that in the biblical story of the bully versus the boy, David against Goliath, we’re supposed to cheer for the little guy, not the mean old giant ogre.  

Yes, you can call me corny, soft hearted, naïve, even pollyannish for still believing in simple human decency, one neighbor to another. I trust in the power of kindness.  I also believe in free speech, the right to protest and to peaceably assemble, too. But bullying has no place in the political realm, the public arena or on a neighborhood street.
 
“Happy birthday Hitler!” Really?!

C’mon bullies. Please just go home already. 

(Photo credit: Boston Globe)

Even If You Ban Books, You Can't Ban The Truth.

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”  --Jorge Luis Borges

“Curious George Goes to the Hospital”: that’s the very first book I remember reading, or having read to me, or maybe both.  At the age of 5 or so, I was days away from entering the Boston Children’s Hospital for a tonsillectomy, and I was very scared. Then one day that book arrived in the mail. In a package addressed to me!

 

Written and illustrated by Margret and H.A. Rey, the 1966 book tells the story of how one day George swallows a puzzle piece and so must go into the hospital to have it removed. Through his adventures I, and thousands of children, still today, find comfort in this simple story, and its introduction to young readers about what it’s like to be in the hospital.

 

And so, I’ve been reading books ever since.

 

I’m an omnivorous reader, will read anything I can get my hands on. As a kid I used to even read through the World Book Encyclopedia.  In boyhood I remember reading “Encyclopedia Brown,” a series of books about a boy detective who solves neighborhood crimes and mysteries.  The thing I loved is that the answers were at the back of the book and so I got to guess! I recall one night reading a slim paperback on a break from my very first job, as a 15-year-old clerk at a now long-gone local department store. Sitting at that soda foundation counter, I sipped Coke and got lost in the many amazing worlds described in Ray Bradbury’s collection of short stories “The Illustrated Man.” I’ve been hooked on science fiction ever since.

 

It’s mystical and a miracle that some books, the memory of those books: these stay with us, because in profound and simple ways, they changed how we looked at the world and ourselves. That’s what great books do. They open our minds and invite us to experience peoples, ideas, histories, and beliefs we might never have encountered without a book to take us on an exotic journey. A book to invite us on exciting trip of the mind and the imagination.

 

I wish I could listen as you talked about the books that have shaped and changed your life. 

 

Was it Nancy Drew mysteries that got you to fall in love with reading or perhaps Judy Blume’s “Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret” …that story made you feel not so alone in the world.  Alex Haley’s “The Autobiography of Malcom X”—did that wake you up to the pain of so many of our fellow children of God? Were you as blown away as I was by Elie Wiesel’s “Night,” a slim volume that tells the tale of the Holocaust through the eyes of an eight-year-old boy. His description of seeing the flames leap out of the top of chimneys as he approached by train car the concentrations camp: it still haunts me.

 

Books: yet for all they make this life better, and expand minds and hearts, still some books don’t always inspire curiosity. Instead, some books inspire fear, even censorship. That’s what happened last month in McMinn County Tennessee, where the school board voted unanimously to remove the book “Maus” from its eighth-grade curriculum about the Holocaust.  According to minutes from the board’s meeting it took this action because of their concerns about questionable language and depictions of nudity in that Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic 1991 novel, written by Art Spiegelman.  I don’t deny that board’s right to make such a choice. I do mourn the fact that kids in that place won’t be able to be moved by the poignancy and power of “Maus,” at least in the classroom.

 

It's not just “Maus” that’s provoking such actions to remove “controversial” books from schools, libraries, and classrooms. According to the American Library Association, 2021 set a record for the number of book challenges brought by parents, school boards and other groups. Books removed from American libraries include “A Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood, “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee and “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas.

 

Funny thing is that immediately following the story of “Maus” being banned, it shot to the top of Amazon’s best seller list. Just goes to show you can’t ever fully censor or squelch or deny the truth that books contain. Can’t erase the history that books tell us about, even when those stories might make us feel uncomfortable or even guilty. Can’t for long keep down any book, not with so many places to find and to buy and to read books.

 

Bans are often temporary, of the moment, but books? The ideas they contain within are eternal.   Thank God for books, for every single book, from the Bible to the bawdy, from the profound to the trivial, from the controversial to the child-like. Like “Curious George.” 

 

Happy reading!   

What Lies Beyond Resilience? We're Finding Out.

 

"Someone I once loved gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.” – Mary Oliver

I’m done with being resilient. Being plucky and dogged. Putting on a happy face. Keeping calm and carrying on. Trusting that after some bumps and detours our world will somehow return to normal (whatever the heck that is!).

It’s been almost two years since COVID smashed into our world and changed it so completely.  In that time, as I’ve written here and preached from the pulpit and dealt with my own feelings of dislocation and struggle, I’ve always tried my best to fall back on the practice of resilience to keep going. The hope that resilience will see me through.

Resilience. Webster’s Dictionary says that resilience is, “the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress…and an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” 

Yes, that stress strained body definition is certainly a good example of the need for resilience. We’ve all been physically strained by COVID in the past twenty-three months.  Eyes blurry and itchy and tired from so many Zoom meetings. Numb backsides from so much sitting before the computer or on the couch in the midst of some Netflix or Apple TV binge watch. There’s my ever-lengthening facial worry lines getting even longer and longer. Who hasn’t been anxious about our aging parents getting sick or our toddler getting sick or ourselves getting sick or our job going away or our loved ones having to always be at arm’s length--literally?

Then there’s the expanded waistlines too, the “COVID twenty” so many of us have put on but that now sticks around, refusing to leave. Sure, the fact I’ve taken up baking homemade bread to ward off loneliness is great. The fact I eat so much of that bread, and ice cream and Chips Ahoy cookies and Cheetos? Not so great. I’m not so sure my body can bounce back, recover somehow. I may just have to buy a bigger belt, or at least a really, REALLY, stretchy one.

That second definition of resilience —that’s even harder to realize. Recovering or adjusting easily to misfortune or change. Easily?! What are those Webster logophiles smoking? Who are they kidding? Yes, resilience has helped me bounce back from my own vocational dark thoughts (will anybody ever come back to church ever again?!) We keep opening the doors every single Sunday morning and trying our best but that’s a lot of sabbaths to just buck it up. To soldier on. 

You could say that about so many other professions weighed down by COVID’s tenacity. Teachers still teaching—how do they do it? First responders still responding: ambulances overflowing, violent crime on the rise.  Imagine being a restaurateur. Talk about needing to be resilient. All those empty tables. Or a theater owner or anyone else in the business of performing live. 

For all of us: the wells of resilience are getting pretty dried up.   

Thus, instead of trying our best to be resilient, to bounce back instead, we can practice spiritual transformation: being changed as we move forward. Being changed to adapt to this brave new world now being born.  Embracing change and accepting the fact we can’t go home again; we can’t go back. The only way through is straight ahead.

Resilience is about a return to normalcy, to the status quo, to homeostasis. But what if our communal trauma is so big, so world changing, so powerful, that there is no reverse, no turning around and getting back to square one? What if the only way forward is forward? What if changing who we are and how we live is the only way we can get through to the other side of the virus and all its societal implications and fall out?

The author and holocaust survivor Victor Frankl wrote, in his memoir of survival, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”  

Growth. Freedom.

Dare we have the courage to change and to be changed? I know I can’t practice my work or my faith in the same ways anymore.  There’s no going back for institutional religion the way it was, of this, I am sure. We can’t do the same old same old same old and expect the same results. Nope. I must change. Believers must change.

And if you think of your own world, your own ways of being or working or loving, you too might realize you are being called to change as well.  Sure, it is so tempting to believe that one day soon it will all be over, and it will all be just like the good old days. But I think those days are going, going, gone.  And sometimes they weren’t so good.

All we can do, all we must do, is be open to growth and to transformation. It’s actually kind of exciting if you think about. Yes, a bit scary but tomorrow beckons. Tomorrow is the place where my Creator and the Creator of the universe awaits.

Resilience? Not so much. Onward? Absolutely. See you on the journey.

      

 

      

 

Overdosing on Bad News? You Are Not Alone.

“You are young yet, my friend,” replied my host, “but the time will arrive when you will learn to judge for yourself of what is going on in the world, without trusting to the gossip of others. Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”           --Edgar Allen Poe, 1845

I just can’t get enough of the news. Been a news junkie from when I was old enough to read, an omnivorous consumer of all things current events.

As a newspaper boy in my tweens and teens I’d sit most mornings in my driveway as the sun came up, after having delivered sixty copies of the daily broadsheet that reported in my part of the world. Then I’d read about it all, cover to cover, starting with the comics and ending with the obituaries. In college, I’d pick up a copy of the New York Times every day and sit in the coffee shop at the state university I called home, gulping a supersized cup of coffee, making my way through it, trusting in that newspaper’s motto: “All the news that’s fit to print.” At that same school I became a working journalist, writing a weekly newspaper column on politics and culture, something I still do to this day, more than forty years later.

Oh…I also listen to public radio at home and in the car and on my ear buds as I walk, for three or four hours a day, tuning in to the news and talks show and interviews. Then there’s the internet, this news addict’s dream come true! With a click or tap, I can enter an endless black hole of news, commentary, photos, blogs, essays, whatever floats my boat in pursuit of what is going on in the world right now.

But lately? I’ve kind of had it with the news.  

Maybe I get too much news or what seems to pass for the news. I’m exhausted by the news, angry at the news, confused by the news and overwhelmed by the news.  I hear the same thing from friends and family, from readers too. News malaise that comes from the intense times we live in. When we go to our favorite news site or turn on the six o’clock news or hear the “ding!” of another news notification on our phones, so much of the news is well...just bad news.  Hard news. We’ve got another COVID variant to deal with or more politics as blood sport, or someplace burning up or some hero’s fall from grace.

Or we turn to the news and it’s not really news, just the facts. Just answering who, what, where, when and how. Instead, so much news is commentary. Not news but a politician putting spin on an event, so they look good, and their opponent looks bad. Or there’s “gotcha!” news, journalists waiting to pounce on their victims, to catch them somehow and make them look bad.

Or news is tailored to what we want to believe about the world. Conservatives watch Fox News. Liberals watch MSNBC. Republicans lap up Sean Hannity and Democrats worship at the altar of Rachel Maddow. Donkeys read the Times and Elephants The Wall Street Journal. Then we get to see, read, and hear the news we want to see, read, and hear. We get the version of the news that reinforces our biases. It’s not really news. It’s more like indoctrination.

We are living in an amazing time for journalism, for news gathering and news consumption. We have access to more news, more quickly, more easily, more freely and more readily than at any time in history. Yet we trust the news less than ever before. According to a June 2021 poll of some 90,000 people, taken by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, when asked, “Do you trust most news most of the time?” the United States ranks dead last out of 46 countries. Only 26 percent of us say that we trust the people and institutions who report the news. That’s much lower than other democracies like Finland (65 percent), or the Netherlands (59 percent); even lower than countries that don’t have the freest of news media, like Hong Kong and Poland.

But enough with the bad news about news. Is there good news about the news?

We can be always more discerning in what news we consume and trust—or not.  It does amaze me how many folks get their news from Facebook or Twitter. Maybe those are not the best of outlets—just saying. Even though I am critical of the media I am also grateful to the media for holding government and other powerful institutions accountable. For a journalist standing up at a press conference and challenging the powers that be to tell the truth. I’m thankful for a First Amendment that protects journalists, allows them to take on the corrupt and the violent and the despots. I don’t live in China or Russia: there news is myth, and journalists regularly go to jail for telling the truth.   

The greatest news about all the news is that I can turn off the phone, the laptop, the radio, the TV and just take a break. Take a long walk with a friend. Take a deep breath on a cold winter’s day and feel alive. Be thankful to the God who made me and this beautiful and broken place we call home. The good news is that Creation is still here, and we are still here and if we are still breathing there is always, ALWAYS hope for a better tomorrow and a better world.    

Happy news consuming my friends. And when it comes to the news…may we all be wise. Be smart. Be questioning. Be informed. Be aware.

That’s the news!