Category: internet

My Last Newspaper Column

I found out just as you did: I saw the headline that our paper was folding. No warnings, no large appeals for renewals, no publisher writing with their regrets. After 27 years of writing essays meant to inspire critical thought on issues of faith and life, I found out with all of you that I’m done. And so are those professionals who worked for our papers, had dedicated their education and livelihoods to the study and practice of journalism, some of whom had just begun working for the paper last month.

You wonder if you’ll miss the small weekly? We’ll no longer have a single place for obituaries, celebrating our youth events, or the opening of new businesses. And no independent reporter will be sitting at our town council meetings where zoning, taxes, roads, and development projects are controlled. No reporter seeking public records and discovering corruption, no journalist sitting through the first part of the school board agenda to report on staffing concerns, campus security, curriculum changes, or book bans. And no place where we can easily read interviews of those running for the elected offices of school board, town committees, or sheriff.

Can the StarTribune expand its coverage? Can the New Prague Times step in? Will our seasoned local journalists rally to create an online newspaper like Eden Prairie? We live in an area with deep financial resources; is there not anyone resident who is willing to organize and fund such a project? Here’s a serious plea: If you know of any journalistic entrepreneurs with a knack for raising up investors, please tell them of the opportunity in Savage and Prior Lake. We need the next version of local journalism to rise up!

As for the rest of us, the serious spiritual work of healthy community remains. The changes that technology has brought, which include losing our small-town newspapers, has let many more of us slowly slide into resignation and suspicion. Sitting on our phones and seeing hours of algorithmic-generated content every day has just increased our current social and political divisions. If we want to stop the erosion of community, we need to encourage one another to embody the core values of respect, collaboration, and support that neighborhoods thrive on. You know that has never exactly been easy; nothing worth doing ever is.

Reflecting on my years in print, I think there are twin threads that run through all my essays. The first is my effort to speak about the Christian faith as the lens through which I have come to experience God, a God of mercy, forgiveness, peace, and creativity. A God who joins us in this human life, coming close to us in loving relationship, and not as some remote, rigid divinity pulling our strings. The second is my deep conviction that we participate with God’s version of power, God’s “kingdom” or “reign,” when love for the neighbor is our ethical cornerstone: when we feed the hungry, heal the broken, and work for justice. God’s kingdom is present when we use power well and resist the pull of human evil, when we uphold human dignity, and protect the weak and vulnerable. Jesus lived his brief life devoted to God’s kingdom power. He invites us to follow and find abundant life.

Thank you for sharing these Spiritual Reflections with me. Occasionally I would receive an email or personal comment about my columns, and those connections cheered me on. (Once or twice, they even spurred an angry letter to the editor!) May we continue to do the work that God gives us to do in the world, each of us a unique expression of that creative and generative God we seek to know and love. Let’s keep striving for a more just, compassionate, and loving world. I’m cheering us on.

Written for last edition of the Savage Pacer 4/27/24

TMI

One of my professional supervisors recently referred someone to my practice for couples counseling. A day or so later, my colleague got an angry call from this same person, wanting to know why he gave him my name. Did he actually know who I was?!

Of course, my colleague said. I gave you her name because she’s a very good therapist.

I looked her up online. Have you read that newspaper column about the Church? he countered.

Well, yes, and I don’t think there was anything in that column about the Church and child sex abuse that wasn’t true, my mentor said. After some other choice words, the caller asked for a different referral.

I think that’s what we call client “self selecting.”
 
One of the risks of writing or speaking in public is that people may actually listen to you. Since most if not all of what I write would be considered persuasive speech, what happens as a matter of course is that some people will agree with me, and some people won’t. And in that process, some form strong opinions of me as a therapist, or former pastor, or even as a human being.

And while occasionally it brings with it positive, affirming comments, it’s the angry, bitter, divisive opinions that most often get shared with me. Before the internet, my audience was my congregation and those who received the local paper. Now, my published words are stored, copied and accessible for anyone who wants to find them online.

Being someone who likes people, ideas and happy relationships, it’s a bit painful to hear that my name is being denigrated for an opinion that is factually true and holds church leaders accountable for their power over children. Am I willing to stand up for what is true, and advocate for change in the Church, for example, even if I get personally attacked? I am. But I will also have to grow a thicker skin, because some people who might have sought me out for therapy will turn elsewhere, convinced I can’t serve them because I don’t think just like them.

Too Much Information: does my writing give potential clients too much information before they contact me? Should a psychotherapist be perceived, as we once were, as aloof, private blank slates upon whom clients projected their lives for reflection and perspective? With all my words out there, that’s not possible for me. I believe that I have been given an important opportunity to write, think and reflect on life in newsprint and online, and I’m not going to waste it.

If people who might become my clients think it’s important to vet my ideas for their own version of truth and correctness, so be it. We probably wouldn’t be happy together as client and therapist, anyway. I seek the light of God in every person I serve. If a client can’t get their focus off of me and onto themselves, we won’t get anywhere.

Best they find themselves a therapist they THINK thinks just like them. I guess that’s what being online does for me: if someone believes their counselor needs to pass a political or religious litmus test to help them, they can test drive me without ever dialing the phone. And I’ll just keep working to help those whose hearts open to include the unique writer, person and therapist I am.