Last Wednesday, post-Super Tuesday, I awoke to a vaguely familiar queasiness. When it comes to strong feelings, I’m in the habit of asking myself, “When have I felt this before?” In seconds, I found myself re-inhabiting a little boy body back in Little Flower Catholic Grade School. Back then, that feeling would roll around about once-a-month. The school’s Russian Roulette menu selection process would land on ham & beans and sauerkraut. Imagine seven hundred faces transforming, one-at-a-time into little portraits of Edward Munch’s, Scream, as they step through the front door, and get a whiff of the horror bubbling in the basement kitchen. Each student knew that if Mrs. Baltusuvich was monitoring their lunchroom, she’d force you to eat it! Worse, she’d check your milk carton blocking your one avenue of escape! Worse still, chain vomiting could break out on your lunch shift (Not making it up!). In an effort to stem the urp -tide, Mr. Grills, the maintenance man, would appear with an antiseptic/absorbent product to cover the retch-puddles. It might as well have gone by the name, “Gag-In-A-Box.” To make a long story short, that solution only added to the problem!
Speaking of queasy, are you noticing a generalized nausea regarding this upcoming election season? Do you know anybody who’s actually looking forward to this Clash of the Geriatrics? There’s one side of me that wants to lend my voice and joke about it. (E.G. This year we have to choose between The Lesser of Two Weebles.) Another part of me just feels anxious about a country that feels unfamiliar to me…like it’s not behaving in the ways my eighth grade, or high school civics teachers said it would.
When it comes to my relationship with politics, few people have shaped my conscious approach more than the late Father Bob Coerver. He was my Moral Theology professor at Kenrick Theological Seminary. Like Bob Gibson in his St. Louis Cardinals heyday, he was feared and revered by both friends and foes alike. He didn’t suffer intellectual laziness! More than one unprepared student felt the sting of his projectile chalk and profanity. I don’t know how he got the news that I was failing to keep up with the News in my free-time? Somebody must have ratted me out! Looking back on it, I was probably lucky that the confrontation took place during my yearly evaluation. The five other faculty members in attendance probably lent me social cover to tone down this force of nature. I only remember the life-changing punch-line from that moment. “Wagner,” Father Drill Sargent commanded, “A Christian ought to pray with the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other.” Until fairly recently, I’ve done my best to follow that advice.
Things have changed since the days of Bob Coerver. The multiplication of online news-related outlets, coupled with the diminishment of local newspapers and their staffs, have elevated overheated, thinly-sourced voices. When it comes to my media sources, I feel a little like one of those miraculously musical chickens at my beloved Illinois State Fair. They’d pluck out a tune when pellets of feed were released in a timed, musical sequence over a tiny keyboard. These days, when I sit at my own keyboard, AI-driven algorithms deliver little pellets containing articles corresponding with my interests, fears, and angers. And boy do I peck! During the COVID crisis my hunger for information drove me from one article to the next! News programs and online papers apparently know that nothing captures eyes and clicks better than fear and anger! My addictive scrolling and reading resulted in unsustainable levels of anxiety.
That experience has led me to more carefully curate my news habits. I’m not saying I never fall off the wagon, and descend into an echo chamber or two. I’m trying my best to notice when I’m offered click-bait so that I can back away from the keyboard, the screen, or the useless conversation. In an effort to attend to my own resilience and flourishing, I have developed some media protocols for myself. Have a glance at them and see if they could fortify or affirm your own approach.
Tom’s Rules for Maintaining Peace in an Election Season
Don’t Ask Too Much of Politics. As our nation winds into an election season that never really ended from our last election season, what are you doing to center yourself in a deeper place than politics? Back before my Dr. Tom days, philosophy, and theology were the neighborhoods where I hung out. Back then, I was struck by the triangulation of ideas that emerged in the early Twentieth Century among widely divergent thought leaders (E.G. Carl Jung, Max Scheller, Teilhard de Chardin, Pius XII). Each of them was describing the seamless web that connects all of us. Each indicated that, when anyone in the human race moves more deeply into authenticity, or into intimacy with the Transcendent, there is almost a spiritual principle of physics that subtly pulls the rest of humanity in that direction. Attending to your own spiritual development, explicitly religious or not, is already a form of activism.
Question: What are the disciplines that simultaneously lift and ground you?
Question: What could you do to enhance them until November’s election?
Don’t Ask Too Little of Politics. If good people don’t engage in the public square by keeping informed, voting, and engaging in respectful activities for change, the momentum of the pervasive pessimism in our culture will only grow.
Question: What qualifies as meaningful civic engagement for you?
Question: Will you lend your energy to an election campaign this year?
Develop Somatic Awareness. Once-upon-a-time, cognitive was king in psychotherapy. In the last twenty years, somatic approaches have come into their own. Pay attention to what happens in your body while consuming news. Use the information your body sends you as a discernment tool to keep reading, or step away.
Question: Describe the “where” and “how” of your body’s experiences of well-being.
Question: Describe the “where” and “how” of your body’s experiences of agitation.