Of Foot Rubs and Media Diets

I'm pondering a diet.  One of those radical, body- and soul-cleansing events that wrenches out all of the bad and leaves a person feeling both dizzy and clarified.

I'm pondering a media diet.

Yeah, I know.   I teach journalism.  But I'm having trouble consuming it these days.  Take last night, after I'd fed myself 30 minutes of national news.  It was like eating four plates of nachos.  Alone.  Even after a long walk, I was having trouble digesting it all.  And I woke up positively blue this morning, hungover from too much politics and violence and brokenness.

Thank God for my morning walk.  Thank God that the heat has pushed out the good people even earlier into the day, so that I could be blanketed in their simple kindness this morning. 

By the time we reached the rusty sculpture at Woods Park, Finn and I had merged with tank-top lady and red-dress lady and their fine rescue dogs.  Eight people later,  I was starting to feel my body purging all the news that had burdened me.  The sun finally awoke while we were wending our way up "M" Street, its rays poking through surprising morning clouds, their bright fingers lighting up the sidewalk in front of us. 

True, my walk did not solve the world's problems.  But it did help to right my mind a bit, so that I might better see the people and things right here in front of me, and trust that good people are standing at the ready in places that are much uglier than this one I know.

Even Jesus--to the surprise of many, I'm sure--told his disciples to cut themselves some slack.  "The poor will always be with you," he told a flabbergasted Martha, as her sister gave him the ultimate foot rub.

I don't think he was telling Martha not to care so much as he was reminding her that there is value in simply being present, there is good in the small acts of love we lavish upon each other.

One of the people I saw this morning was Jim, a homeless man who has been living in the park's gazebo for the past several days.  One of the poor among us, he had no name to me until I veered off my path to meet him where he was. 

I am not of the habit to do such things, but I felt compelled to make that connection.  I'm guessing it had something to do with all of the horrible things I'd read and heard yesterday.  I was looking for good and I found a bit of it there, underneath the gazebo's metal roof, crickets chirping their approval alongside us.