Interrupting the Silence

Delete.

Delete.

Delete. 

I just can’t, I said to myself as I deleted another email, unopened and unread. 

The subject lines were enough: Breaking news; What you missed over the weekend; The latest on the war in Iran; Trump says, …; A federal judge ruled …; What you need to know about …; ICE Deports US Citizen; Shooting leaves …; Devastating floods; Wildfire destroys…

Breaking News

Subject lines and headlines no longer alerted me to breaking news. Instead, they announced news that was breaking me and breaking my heart. I was exhausted by it all. I felt overwhelmed and powerless. I was feeling too tender for this world and I just couldn’t. Not this time. Delete. It felt easier and more comfortable to move beyond the news, instead of into and through the news. I began to look at and question my relationship to the news.

Maybe you know what that’s like. Do you sometimes feel like the news is breaking you? In what ways have you tried to move beyond the news? When have you deleted, unsubscribed, or abstained from the news? And how did that work for you?

For me, deleting offers an escape but not a get away. It’s a denial that negates nothing. At best, deleting is a temporary avoidance. 

Deleting lets me hide in my privilege. I can look away and go on about my life, at least for a little while. But not everyone has that kind of privilege. Most don’t. Not only do they not have a delete button, they are often the ones whose lives are being deleted. How can I step over and move beyond them?  

I don’t want to be ill informed but sometimes being informed makes me ill. So I delete. But that doesn’t solve anything and it doesn’t make me feel any better. And…

And it’s not the way of Jesus. He never hit the delete button. Instead, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them.” (Matthew 9:36)

Re-imaging News

I too want to have compassion for them. I want to read the news with eyes of compassion. Don’t you? What would that take?

How do we live with a tender heart without deleting the world around us? What helps us engage today’s world and news without becoming cynical, hard hearted, or indifferent? How do we stay informed without becoming ill?

As I said in a previous post, I’m not looking for a strategy. I don’t expect to find or offer answers. I’m more interested in us looking at ourselves and asking good questions. I want us to be self-reflective rather than deflective of what is difficult or painful.

I hope we might re-image our understanding of and relationship to news. I’m not talking about specific stories or events. I’m talking about our ideas about news and information generally. 

Seeing something new often begins with changing our ideas about what we are seeing. (James Hillman, A Blue Fire: Selected Writings by James Hillman, 52-55.) In that regard, I want to consider two ideas about information: information as a noun and in-formation as a verb.

Information as Noun

We tend to treat information as a thing. It is purchased and sold. We share and exchange it. We can store it. Information is used in beneficial ways and in harmful ways. Sometimes we feel like we have enough information. Other times we need or want more. There is a supply and demand for information. It has economic value. We commodify and consume information.

In short, we all have a relationship with the news. And like all relationships, it can be healthy and life-giving, neutral and benign, or dysfunctional and destructive.

• How would you describe your relationship to the news? Is it what you want it to be? What might need to change?
• Why are you in that relationship? What are you looking for? 
• Are you a passive recipient of the news or actively participating with what you read and hear? Do you accept someone else’s thinking as your own or are news stories and opinions helping you clarify what you think and do not think? 
• What news are you consuming? How much are you consuming? How much is enough?

Those aren’t necessarily questions to be answered, but questions to be pondered, wondered about, mused over. They are questions I am asking myself. I’m not looking for an answer as much as a diagnosis and a better self-understanding. 

Sometimes I read the news as only events that are happening. I don’t ask the deeper question, “What’s going on in what is happening?” Sometimes I have new insights and ask better questions. Other times I enjoy and am entertained by the ridicule of and the potshots taken at those I disagree with. Sometimes I read to confirm what I already know and other times I am desperate to find some good news.

I have some work to do on my relationship with the news which is, at least in part, what writing this article is about. What about you? What are you learning about yourself and your relationship to the news?

In-formation as Verb

The news has power to shape who and what we see, how we think, our values and priorities, what we do or do not do, our relationships with others. It acts on us and is a factor in shaping and forming who and how we are. We are in formation when we read or hear the news. 

• In what ways is the news you are consuming forming and shaping your life? Is it shaping you to be who you want to be? Do you like the way it is shaping you and your life? 
• Does the news your take in only affirm what you think or does it help you ask better questions? Does it deepen your understanding and engagement with what is happening? Does it foster dialogue with yourself and others? Or do you turn away from and reject what you dislike or disagree with? Is it leaving you isolated, angry, and polarized?
• Are you integrating the news you consume into your life of prayer? How are you using the news you take in? Is it a means to respond to the needs of others and the pain of the world or is it more about power and control over others?
• Does it call forth the values and qualities you want to guide your life? Is the news helping you become who you want to be? Does is support or hinder the life you want to live?

Again, let those questions be diagnostic. Whatever your answers might be, try not turn them into judgments or conclusions. 

A Spiritual Practice

What if we read or listened to the news as a spiritual practice? In the same way we might read or listen to scripture. Maybe the practice of lectio divina might assist and guide us here.

• Read the article as a sacred text about someone’s life;
• Listen for what resonates, challenges, invites, disturbs; 
• Be self-reflective about our interaction with and experience of the story, what it offers us and what it asks of us;
• Pray in response to what is rising with in us;
• Embody and enact our prayer through donations, political involvement, civic organizations, conversations, outreach, social justice; and 
• Remember, “It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” (Rabbi Tarfon, Pirkei Avot 2:16)

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Image Credit: Photo by Rich Tervet on Unsplash.