Hello. Would you mind terribly if I started with a bit of housekeeping? For all those who struggled to leave comments on the blog - including me and all the members of my family who could be bothered to try (You bring children up, you do your best then, when you need a little favour - nothing.) Well, all the comments came through at once - all on the same day. I am hoping this is a teething problem, so please don't stop trying to comment. If you want to.
How do you get your news? That's if you are still bothering. I would quite understand if you decided that "news" was not something you needed to be engaging with at the moment. You've probably got quite enough on. We tend to get ours from the BBC. The new set seems a bit of a challenge at the moment. You can tell that sometimes, some of the reporters are forgetting to touch the whacking great touch screen behind them that illustrates their points. So they sometimes end up slapping away at it ten to the dozen until the statistics behind it catch up with the point they are making. Also, all that striding around all the time - and there are steps - it's only a matter of time before someone goes full-length. You knew where you were with Kenneth Kendall.
However, I do drag my feet sometimes, when Six O Clock is approaching - wondering if I can take it or not tonight. Sometimes I wait until the local Spotlight news at 6.30 which is technically news but usually concentrates on barbeque fires on Dartmoor (or the possibility thereof), Covid numbers going up (numbers usually delivered by a doctor who still seems to have a bit of a cough from November 2020) and how much litter the last festival left. These are all important things of course but not entirely insurmountable which is how the main news seems at the moment.
In terms of how we get our news, new research from Ofcom suggests that for the first time, Instagram is the most popular news source among younger people - used by 29% of teens in 2022 - with TikTok and YouTube close behind. The number of people consuming news content on TikTok has increased from 800,000 in 2020 to 3.9 million in 2022. TikTok? TikTok! I mean it's really good for watching a monkey falling out of a tree or a family from Dagenham faithfully reproducing the final scene from Dirty Dancing but news? Also YouTube. I mainly watch it for football stuff but, if I cast my eye along to the sidebar I am often invited to click on a video which can categorically prove that Tony Blair is the devil. (I mean you are entitled to your opinion obviously but I can't see the devil funding Sure Start.) Also, Instagram. Good for someone telling me that I must buy eight things from Beauty Pie to stop my face sliding off (This is not a sponsored post) but news less so. There are exceptions on Instagram - Lovely Lydia (@lovely_._lydia) makes politics interesting and Dr Esmerelda (@dresmerelda) was a constant source of information during the height of the pandemic. Also, Abbie Richards (@abbiesr) is very good on conspiracy theories and also handstands. However, like most things, there is a bias there. They would certainly admit it.
Things aren't always what they seem. Would anyone watching the Martin Bashir/ Princess Di interview have realised for a minute how he managed to get her to talk to him? I just remember thinking that it was good that she got her point across.
How we see the world affects us - mental health, belief systems seeing the future with any level of optimism. Difficult in the present news cycle but it is important because the other statistic from this survey is that the biggest source of news for teens isn't Instagram but their families (65%). So, how we view the world reflects on to others as well. No pressure.
Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Philippians 4
Isn't this all that we can do? Think about the good, the real, the true (not alternative truth or people's truth). Think about the best things, look for good things to call out and be alert for stuff that will only harm. It's true that a lot of reality is both true and upsetting, real and scary. Some of it is within our control to do something about and in the words of someone I can't remember "If you can you should." Some of it you can't change and then what you should do - in the words of someone else I can't remember (Is it me? Can't remember)
You get scared, commit it to God, Jiggle yourself up and remember just who you are committing this to and what he can do, then leave it. Leave it alone. Fill your mind with other stuff - noble good things like... - well I don't know, fill your own gaps in. A flower, a tree, Tomasz Schafernaker. You know what works for you. (I think I am supposed to say God as well there but I'm taking that as read). It's ok to not always be thinking about the unpleasantness. Fill your mind with some good things and carry on.
Have a good week.
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