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!      

The Red Sox Best Prospect May Just Surprise a Few Fans

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People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.   –Rogers Hornsby, St. Louis Cardinals et al, 1915-1937

When is the best time to talk about baseball? To kibbitz about the sandlots, chat about the national pastime, jaw about the oldest of professional sports? Well, right now, of course! And please, even if you are not a fan: hear me out.

For you see, there is nothing like dreaming of baseball when the air is still frigid, and the ground is still frozen and covered with snow. When a warm April afternoon that feels like resurrection with the sweet sounds of wooden bats cracking and umps yelling “PLAY BALL!” seems so, so far away…that’s when to anticipate the return of this fair game, only 75 days or so from now. Close, yes, and yet so distant. Major League baseball returns on March 31^st and for the first time since 1968, all thirty teams will play on that first day of the season.

But before then? Can we at least about talk baseball and the coming season of flowers budding and trees popping and days lengthening and playing catch in the backyard?

Talk spring. SPRING!

Yes, I know chances are good that you are not a baseball geek like yours’ truly. At 61 years old, I know I am probably too old for this obsession that began for me as a little boy, listening to the local nine on my transistor radio. Going to my very first game with my grandfather and brother and three cousins, on a perfect July afternoon that I will never ever forget. I know I spend an inordinate amount of time in winter watching old baseball games on TV, or calling my fellow baseball aficionado Eric, who hails from Minnesota, a place even farther away from spring.

But back to the play on the field.

You see this January, to get me through the coming weeks, I’m following my absolute favorite player these days, a lean and lanky prospect from the suburbs of Minneapolis, a kid whose got all three tools for the best of play. Can catch, can pitch, can play first base. Has a good eye at the plate and is also a great locker room person, someone you want as a teammate, forever enthusiastic, always positive, standing on the top step of the dugout, cheering on teammates. Now I know I am biased in my selection of this young rookie, who actually is many years away from the big leagues at thirteen years old (but turning fourteen very, very soon) and who I am not even sure wants to play in the big show.

Still, I think she absolutely belongs on the sandlot, whatever the level of play.  She’s not always been supported by the powers that be in her pursuit of playing baseball, has been overlooked a few times because “she’s a girl” yet every time she’s gotten push back, she pushes back, hard.

She just wants to play.    

Her name is Bridget, my amazing and wonderful Goddaughter who has loved baseball since the day almost nine springs ago when I watched her pick up a bat, swing at a ball, and run down the basepaths, all with a smile a mile wide. From then she has absolutely adopted this game as her game. She’s played every single spring and summer, first in the T-ball league and then Little League and then middle school age travel league and come next year, maybe even for her high school team.  She’s the one I can always count on in my life to take in a game, or to beckon me right after supper, to go out back and throw the ball around.

I was thinking about Bridget and her love for the game because of a neat story that broke last week about pro baseball.  The New York Yankees became the very first professional baseball team to hire a woman to manage one of their affiliated teams. Come this spring Rachel Balkovec will skipper the Class A Tampa Tarpons. That’s in addition to one Bianca Smith, who is the very first African American woman to be hired as a professional baseball coach. She will work with rookie prospects for the Boston Red Sox this March in Fort Myers, Florida.

Which goes to show that even in the oldest of pursuits, even in the the most traditional and patriarchal of sports, things can change and for the better, for inclusivity, for a welcome and invitation to all who want to play, just play. To compete and all on a level playing field. I read those tales of women breaking through that glass ceiling and thought of Bridget and thought of baseball and thought of spring and thought of how much right now I could use some good news like this.

We could all use some good news, stories that while not world changing, nor universe altering, bring a smile to the face and a warmth to the heart, warmth we all really need in the depths of a third COVID winter.

So, yes: let’s talk baseball, talk spring!  These will both be here before we know it. Thank God.

After 2021, Enough With the 'UNPRECEDENTED' Already!

“Everything is unprecedented until it happens for the first time.”–Airplane Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger

Unprecedented! What else is there to say?

When I was new to professional writing, I had an annoying literary habit of using words so often that they’d lose their true meaning, get watered down by repetition. Thus, when I brought a draft article to my editor, she looked it over and read that I’d used the word “crucial” six times in the first three paragraphs.  “John if you say something is ‘crucial’ over and over it loses its punch. Everything can’t be crucial. The spare use of ‘crucial’ gives it power as a descriptor.”

Mimi was an excellent teacher of rhetoric and so I wish I could ask her today about my use of the word ‘unprecedented’ and our use of the word ‘unprecedented’ as a culture. In the breathless and full volume media reports that scream out to us from our phones, computers, TVs, and radios, stories inevitably talking about the…unprecedented. You could say it’s unprecedented how often we have been describing things as of late as unprecedented. 

Like a million cases of COVID on just one January day in our United States of America. That’s unprecedented.  How about an attempted violent insurrection that sought to overturn a legitimate national election, something never, ever seen before in our history. Yes, unprecedented, as is the weird and scary fact that a year later upwards of ten percent of our fellow citizens think that same insurrection was led, not by supporters of the former President, but instead by left wing fascists. I kid you not. Their beliefs? Unprecedented.

But wait. There’s more!

Can anything top Tom Brady gunning for an amazing eighth Super Bowl ring at the grand old age of 44?  No other quarterback has won even close to that number. Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana won four…ho hum. When I was 44, it got me out of breath just getting up off the couch during a Patriots game to grab another oversized plate of nachos. Hurt my arm lifting the sour cream container. But Brady and his seemingly invincible body? Unprecedented. As is the weather and climate change, like the fact that the summer of 2021 was the hottest ever in the history of temperature record keeping in this world. 

Yes, it all seems so unprecedented.

Unprecedented is one of those words it’s hard to find a substitute for. Unbelievable? Not quite the same. Unequaled, unparalleled, or unrivaled? Getting warm. How about bizarre? Closer. Fantastic? Maybe. Yet no other word seems to come close to matching the smack and the pop of calling something unprecedented.

But even if we are speechless, wordless, in the face of the intensity of the past few years, my hope and prayer is that in these unprecedented times, we won’t be beaten down or exhausted or become apathetic. That’s the danger of these days of living at such full volume. That it will plain wear us out.  That it will tempt us to throw up our hands in frustration and say, “I can’t do anything about it all anyway!” That worst of all, we might become apathetic or cynical about the state of our world right now and so roll over and just go back to bed.

Not me! Not you, I hope, either.

Unprecedented times instead call for unprecedented action. Is democracy threatened? Then get out and vote and become more active in the political process. Worried about how divided we are as a nation? Reach out to and then actually listen to another, whose views are different than your own. They may have something to teach you. Worn out by all the machinations and gyrations when it comes to COVID? Get vaxxed if you are not.  Wear a mask religiously. Take all the health precautions you can in the knowledge that when you do so, it is not just for you. It is also for your neighbor, for the stranger, and the faster and more faithfully we all do our part, the faster COVID will finally, one great and glorious day, be gone.

My faith challenges me to live with such courage and commitment, especially in unprecedented times.  To live with hope for better days, especially in tough times. To live with good humor and put all things in perspective. To live to fight another day. We can do it. We must do it.

So, I dare you. Be unprecedented in how you live this day. 

 

         

 

  

       

 

In 2022: To Do the Right Thing? A Child Shall Lead Them.

“Do the right thing, and then do the next right thing, and that will lead you to the next right thing after that.” --Michael J. Fox                                                               

When I grow up I want to be like 11 year old Davyon Johnson, a typical 6th grader from Muskogee, Oklahoma. According to a recent New York Times article he likes wrestling, basketball, remote controlled cars and Fortnite. But Johnson is anything but typical because on December 6th of last year, he saved the lives of two people. That’s right, two souls saved and within mere hours of one another!
 
First, he saved the life of a classmate when he came upon him in the school hallway and noticed his friend was choking.  Davyon went into action, using the heimlich maneuver he’d learned on YouTube. After one, two, then three squeezes, a bottle cap flew out of the boy's mouth. That object had become lodged in his throat when he drank from a water bottle. But Johnson was just getting warmed up.

Davyon’s Mom picked him up after school and they both went home to relax for a bit and the two then left for evening church services. On the way to church, Davyon spied smoke coming out of the back of a home and insisted his Mom pull the car over. While she called 911, Davyon knocked on the front door to alert the homeowners and five folks fled for safety. But one older woman was using a walker and struggling, so Davyon helped her get out safely, away from the burning home.
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Yup. All in a day’s work! At least for Davyon.

His community, of course, was amazed by his selfless and caring acts and so they feted him. As reported in the Times, “The Muskogee Police Department and Muskogee County Sheriff’s Office presented Davyon with a certificate on Dec. 15, naming him an honorary member of their forces.” There was also a pizza party and his photo appeared in the newspaper and a story ran on the local TV station.  Funny thing is Davyon thought it was all a bit overblown, the accolades and the “attaboys” that came at him from every side.

As he told his Mom, “I don’t want everyone to pay attention to me. I kind of did what I was supposed to do.’” Yes you did Davyon. You did the right thing and not once but twice and both times saving the life of a neighbor, in one case a person that you’d never met. And this all happened in a year when Davyon also lost his beloved 52 year old Dad to COVID.  His father, Willie James Logan, had also once saved someone from a burning building.      

I’m not sure what impresses me more: Davyon’s heroism or his humility.

So, here’s a spiritual piece of advice to all of us, as we begin a new year, that if the past year or so is anything like a guide, might just be filled with even more strange and challenging times. Like COVID, like toxic politics, like wondering where we might find glimpses of human sanity and yes, human goodness in this strange world. 

After all, it was just a year ago that a violent mob stormed the Capitol and tried to overturn a legitimate election for the only time in our history. Sheesh. Violent crime is up in many places and everything costs more and just when we think we might be able to jump off this crazy train, something else happens. Right now it is all too easy to grow weary or worse, cynical, about the state of our world and the human condition.

But then you hear about someone like Davyon, a child (!) who just does the right thing, who steps up with courage and service to help others and reminds us that most folks in his world are, in fact, good. Good of soul and good of character. That most people want the best for their loved ones and neighbors and strangers too. That most of us, when challenged with the specter of someone in need or hurting or in need of a little kindness: we will do the right thing.

You might read those sentiments and dismiss them as clueless idealism. Maybe you want to stubbornly hang on to a dim view of humanity, see all the bad in our world right. I guess you could be forgiven for such an attitude. We are all spiritually weary right now, battered by too many months of bad news.

And yet, given the choice? I will continue to seek the good and to see the good. To celebrate the best of human behavior and look for the saints like Davyon, everyday people doing extraordinary things, doing the right thing, and all to make this world a better place. My God and my beliefs tell me it is always better to light one candle rather than curse the darkness. There is still so much good to do and good to find in others if only we look with hearts of faith.

Give us your best, 2022. With folks like Davyon to lead the way, it just might be a very, very good year, to do the right thing.

Cleaning Out the Junk Drawer Called 2021

“Oh! Old rubbish! Old letters, old clothes, old objects that one does not want to throw away. How well nature has understood that, every year, she must change her leaves, her flowers, her fruit and her vegetables, and make manure out of the mementos of her year!”   --Jules Renard, French author

What to save? What to toss? What to hang on to? What to let go of?

This year I got into a strangely satisfying habit, a way to pass the time and organize my house, as I spent too many solitary hours amid COVID's lockdown, surges, and disruptions.

I sorted through my stuff. I sifted through my things. I separated the valuable from the disposable. First, I started small, taking on my kitchen drawers, especially the junk drawer that everyone has, the one that overflows with batteries and extension cords and nails and a radio that doesn’t work anymore, oh and orange twine. Why do I need orange twine?

Then I began to sort through the 1,000 plus books I’ve accumulated in the fourteen years since I moved into my current home. (And no, I am not a literary hoarder and yes, I find it awfully hard to let go of books.) Next, I tackled the garage with all its clutter. A dead snow blower. A tangled string of long burnt-out Christmas lights. A wall sized map of the United States I received as a gift. I was sure I’d love it but still it sits in a forlorn corner, going nowhere. I tried to tackle the scrum of the attic too, with so many old clothes to go through (how many bike shirts do I really need?!) and the steamer trunk filled with a pile of sweaters I no longer wear.

There is something so liberating about letting go of things that we no longer have need of. There is a joy to decluttering, simplifying, getting back to the basics, knowing what matters and is precious and knowing what is excess baggage and just needs to be trashed, donated, or passed on to someone else, so they can deal with it.

At years’ end I also try to do the same thing with all the events and happenings and changes I’ve gone through in the past twelve months. Sort through regrets, sift through mistakes, tease out the sadness and joy, the moments this year when I was so happy to just be alive and the times this year when life just kicked my butt and left me bleeding on the field.  To rummage through my memory of 365 days and then to choose intentionally: what do I want to carry forward into 2022 and what do I want to discard, throw away? Jettison, like so much excess emotional baggage?

You might call it cleaning out the closet called 2021.

To let go of? Well, I’d love to finally say goodbye to COVID and all the ways it’s made life so complicated, anxious, and unpredictable. Omicron is now putting any hope for that on hold so even though the coronavirus won’t soon leave, like a stubborn guest holed up in your spare bedroom, what I need to hold on to for 2022 in the fight against it is this: resilience. We all need to continue to hang on to this most valuable of human virtues.

Resilience somehow always bounces back, no matter what the set back. It tries and tries and tries again.  It picks itself off the ground, dusts itself off and then carries on. Resilience is at the heart of my faith, as I look to my higher power each day to show me the way forward. I get that we are all sick and tired of COVID, but also believe with a passion that we cannot flag nor fail in our struggles against it. May you, may all of us just keep on keeping on.

To hold on to? The sense of how precious and beautiful this life finally is, yes, even with all its challenges and bumps along the way. Perhaps I’m feeling like this because at 61, I’ve got more days behind me than in front of me.  The pandemic and all the ways it still threatens us has certainly reawakened me to the amazing gift of getting up in the morning and just being alive, putting my feet on the ground, and taking on the day.

That’s a good start. Let go of fear and hang on to courage. Let go of weariness and hang on to tenacity. Let go of wasting time and hang on to using whatever time I have left on this earth, wisely and well. And you? What will you let go of before December 31^st and what will you bring forward in the year that awaits us?

Thank you, God, for 2021. I tried my best to use it all up and not waste one second. Thank you, God, for 2022.  I’m definitely ready for it to get here. And to you dear reader: I pray that you are ready too. To let go. To hang on.

See you in the new year.

Being Grateful for the Gift of December Darkness

“Holy darkness, blessed night, heaven's answer hidden from our sight. As we await you, O God of silence, we embrace your holy night.” –Dan Schutte, “Holy Darkness”

Last December I fell in love with walking in the dark in my suburban neighborhood.

I was six months out from a hip replacement, not quite fully healed, feeling stuck in my recovery and so I decided to take a daily walk at day’s end. My hope was that by getting up from the couch and getting outdoors and using my brand-new hip, the lingering pain and stiffness might finally be gone. And I did get better, step by step.

But the real revelation of those journeys after sundown, and all the endless circles I walked in my cul-de-sac laden neighborhood, was my discovery of just how beautiful the dark finally is, especially December dark. Like the dark that contains the glow of moonlight on a full moon night. The dark that surrounds all the colorful holiday lights on house after house after house, blinking and bursting forth in mellow whites and colorful reds and greens and blues and yellows. How sublime is the darkness I see in an ink black night sky that takes my breath away, so many stars spilled across the sky like a bucket of milk, like a milky way.  I love the dark that embraces the one light in my living room, a quiet light that shines down into the street and reminds me that I am almost home again.

If you are into the dark, this is your time of year.

Just this week, on the 21^st day, was winter solstice, at 10:59 am Eastern Standard Time. At that exact moment, the sun was at its farthest southerly point in its angle towards the earth, hence the shortness of the day: sunrise at 7:10 am, sunset at 4:15 pm. Just nine hours, four minutes, and thirty-five seconds of light. The next day we gained two seconds and began our long journey back into the light, which will peak on summer solstice, next June 21^st when we will bask in more than 15 hours of the light.

This is where I’m supposed to kvetch about the dark and the cold of December. It’s almost a cliché in these parts of the world to complain about the winter and the dark and the snow and to pine for summer and the light, and the sun. I might have done so in years’ past but this December? I say bring on the dark. I say celebrate the dark. I say love the dark. 

The dark gets a bad and undeserved rap in our culture and language. The bad guy always wears a dark hat, and the dark is where nefarious folks hang out to do their dark deeds. The dark is about shadows, places we can’t see and therefore are supposed to be afraid of. Bruce Springsteen laments about “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and Batman is so threatening as the Dark Knight and…well you get the picture.  The dark always seems to be seen as malevolent. Bad. Look up the word “dark” in a dictionary and almost all the synonyms for it are downright, well, dark: dingy, gloomy, dire, and dreadful, to name but a few. 

But the dark…it is where we spend the first nine months of our lives, in the darkness of our mother’s womb. It’s in the dark where God shapes us, where we come to be as human beings. Before the world was, it was first full of darkness and without form, as the Bible notes. No dark. No creation. No life. The dark is where we will spend half of our lives, in the night, in the twilight. Nature needs the dark: more than 60 percent of invertebrate and 30 percent of vertebrate creatures are nocturnal, and hunt, forage and live in the dark. And in my faith tradition, three wise men from the east needed a dark night sky with one blazing star up above, to find a little baby who would grow up to change the world forever.  

December dark.

Maybe instead of seeing this time of year as a burden or something to be put up with on the way to “blessed” spring and summer, perhaps we might reconsider. See the darkness as our friend. Explore the darkness and discover what we might not have paid attention to before.  So, this month, I say, thank you December, for the dark.  Thank you for inviting us in. The light will return soon enough, but for now?

Who wants to take a walk?

 

 

 

 

Another Variant, Another FREAKOUT!!!! Or Maybe Not.

"Don’t Panic.” –“Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”, Douglas Adams

You’re allowed one freak out, just one. Get it out of your system. Do what you must.

Yes, in response to the latest COVID variant to visit our already angst and fear filled world, go ahead. Yell and scream. Jump up and down. Ball your fists tight and scrunch up your face in a scowl and snort with anger and frustration.  Throw something—but please be careful! I don’t know—hit a pillow?! Let out an exasperated dramatic sigh. Swear with your best obscenities, the ones you reserve for special occasions but please make there are no young’uns within listening distance. 

There. Feel better?

I hope so because at this point in our twenty-two plus month COVID journey, we can’t afford to spend too much time kvetching, complaining, moaning, whining, or freaking out about variant number 354 to come down the path.  Okay, I pulled that number out of thin air, but it certainly feels like that is how many times we’ve had to zig, zag, adapt, shift, and change our behavior in response to a new variant, a surge in cases or overcrowded hospitals, since this whole nightmare began in March of 2020.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are, in fact, five variants we’ve had to keep a close eye on, all named after Greek numbers: alpha, beta, gamma, delta and the latest, omicron. As I write this essay, scientists are scrambling to figure out just how virulent this latest version of COVID is, how the present vaccines will work against it, and what that will mean for all of us. It’s like déjà vu all over again.

To be honest, I am tempted to panic, to be swept up in the now familiar media frenzy at this latest COVID threat. Maybe I should go out and buy more toilet paper or more home test kits or maybe I should cancel my trip to Florida later this month. Maybe I should lockdown my life again, close the doors, park the car in the driveway, and wait it out until this current threat runs its course.

Or maybe not.

Because then I remember (and recommend we all do as well): we’ve done this before and we did pretty well, and we can, and we will do it again. We know how to distance and how to mask, how important it is to be vaccinated, and now to also get a booster. We know how to work from home and our kids know the drill at school. Most of us have worked out in our minds the level of risk we are willing to take as we seek to live as “normally” as possible. 

We can do it! Absolutely.

One of the lessons my faith has taught me is that of being resilient, enduring the toughest of times and not being overcome by whatever life throws my way. Resilience teaches us to be calm, to put our heads down and to move ahead. And so, I pray and hope for the wisdom to lean into the toughest of situations, depend upon others for help and then turn to a power greater than myself to put life into perspective. I think of the generations that came before and faced and overcame what threatened them in their times, in their history. War. Depression. Polio. Social upheaval. They somehow found the strength to keep calm and to carry on.  They kept on keeping on. They kept the faith. They did what they had to do.  And they got through.

So can we. So will we! Just remember one strategy, one defiant act of resilience, to stay the course, and to live life well and live it fully, despite COVID.

Don’t panic.