A Reporter’s Prayer

My friends have been asking me what I’m doing for Lent, and I don’t have much to say.  I deleted an addictive phone game, but that was less a penitential discipline and more an act of self-preservation.  Since my madly-in-love-with-Kant teenage years, I do like rules, but I’m not sure that I’m actually doing anything good for myself by taking on fasting rules (on top of my same-meals-every-day picky eating) or new prayers (especially while in the midst of the St. Louis Total Consecration to Christ through Mary).

The rules I could make for myself didn’t seem to be the rules I needed and would mostly feed my own pride at hitting the mark.  So, I sort of drifted into Lent without much of a plan except to turn the season over to God and to be open to any demands that turned up.

And, it turned out, my first week of Lent looked like this: Ash Wednesday, CPAC, CPAC, CPAC, Sunday.  I was attending the Conservative Political Action Conference on a press pass for work and had three chaotic days of getting up at 6, schlepping to Maryland, attending panels, and filing stories.  I may like Nisbet more than the next person, but I still view a lot of the causes and organizations at a place like CPAC with distrust.  And I knew there would be a lot of fluff, bluster, and ire available to cover.

So, the way I began my Lent wasn’t with any rule but this: “Is it true, is it necessary, is it kind?”

I wanted to limit the stories I filed to only those that had the possibility of doing someone good to read.  So, pointing out that one of the groups in the exhibit hall had objectionable pamphlets wouldn’t really fit the bill.  Being kind doesn’t mean sugarcoating flaws or being patronizing, after all, fraternal correction is one of the Spiritual Works of Mercy.  But in order to actually be merciful, the correction does need to be fraternal, extended out of agape and framed to be open and inviting to the target.  So, I went to try to find what was good and, if needed, to constructively discuss what was bad.

You can judge whether I succeeded by looking through the stories I wrote.  At any rate, this attitude seemed to do me good.  Although, I entered the weekend with my hackles slightly raised, it was easier to relax, listen, and find things to genuinely delight in when I thought of that as my primary job.  I kept reminding myself that not everything I hear needs an answer or comment from me, and that, if I didn’t have a useful rebuttal, I was allowed to let a speech pass unremarked on and move on to the next topic.

It helped to be sitting in the back of the room, among reporters packed so tight that we kept ruining the wifi connection for each other.  There was no urgency for me to repeat or remark on everything that was done, with so many people (and wire services) filling out the ranks.  I had the freedom to choose what I might be well suited to comment on, and whether I had an audience in mind that would actually benefit from hearing it.

Precluding pieces that would be mostly potshots made me feel more relaxed and curious about what people were saying.  It gave me the chance to wonder and probe to see if I had something to learn, or, if I was pretty sure the speaker or my interlocutor was in error, what good desire was misdirected, and whether I could make a persuasive argument to order it rightly.  It helped me cast the weekend as a time to look for chances to serve, and to be prepared to be taken by surprise by the options at had.

(Plus it totally justified my attending all the panels on math and statistics).