(Originally presented Aug. 23, 2009, at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Mich.)
I’ve lived the past 20 years of my life trying to conceal this fact, but because this is a sermon about truth, I’ll share something with you that I’ve told almost no one.
I used to be an altar boy.
This fact is relevant because it leads to two jolting incidents from my upbringing that forever shaped my view of the world and, in some ways, sent me on a never-ending quest for the truth.
Incident No. 1: It is the Good Friday service. The year is 1980- or 1990-something. Dozens of people are gathered to witness the Veneration of the Cross. My role, as altar boy, is to carry a cross that is draped in purple cloth from the back of the church to the altar.
There is more to it than that, of course. Walking alongside me is the priest, who instructs me to stop three times and set down the cross, holding it upright. At each stop, he is to peel back a bit of the cloth and declare, “This is the wood of the cross on which hung the savior of the world.”
(Click here to read how one diocese celebrates Good Friday.)
It is important to note that the cross stands, and I’m guessing here, about 8-feet tall. That puts the arms of the cross at, say, 6-feet.
It’s also important to note the priest stands about 6-feet-2 or so. You might see where this is going.
One-third of the way down the aisle, we stop. I set. The priest peels and preaches.
All is good.
So we walk. Halfway down the aisle. Two-thirds down the aisle. My big moment.
We’re at the point in the procession where we are the most visible to the most people in attendance. This will be the most-watched stop-set-peel-and-preach of the entire service.
So I stop … and I set … and THWACK! … I smack the 6-foot-plus priest atop the head with the arm of the cross.
Now, he could have done any number of things at this point. He could have cast me a scolding look or guilted me into Act of Contrition Submission.
Or, I suppose, he could have taken a seat or fallen or passed out. It must have hurt.
But he did none of those things. Instead, he shook his head a little, peeled back a bit of purple cloth and continued to spread his message, his vision of truth. “This is the wood of the cross on which hung the savior of the world.”
I always admired him for that.
Incident No. 2: Same church. Same priest. But this time, I’m off duty, taking in the service from a pew.
To the best of my recollection, it is a typical Sunday — a standard-issue service. I’m partially participating, rote reciting, half listening, until — THWACK! — sermon time.
This time, it is the priest hitting me over the head — only with his words. And maybe not in the way he intended.
That day’s message: We are the church. Here is the truth — a heaping plate of truth. You accept it all, or you accept nothing — no substitutions. Here, the truth isn’t served cafeteria style.
Fast forward about 20 years, and I’m a copy editor — the essential but unheralded altar boys and altar girls of a newsroom.
That is to say, if we do our jobs well, we blend into the background and go unnoticed. If we are ever noticed, it is because we’ve made a mistake, probably in 50-point type or bigger.
Anyway, it is a Saturday evening, June 13, 2009. And I’m sitting in the hot seat, guiding the copy-editing crew that is putting the final touches on the Sunday newspaper.
It is one day after Iran’s 10th presidential election, the day incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is declared the victor, the day protests break out in Tehran, the day questions of the election’s legitimacy echo across the globe.
And, as it turns out, it is a day the major news networks and wire services are struggling to keep up with the story, struggling to keep up with eyewitness accounts … struggling to keep up with a little blue bird.
Maybe some of you have heard of this thing called … Twitter? This free social networking service with the blue bird mascot has 45 million tweeters worldwide, writing and receiving updates in 140 characters or less.
And, yes, some of these updates actually do qualify as newsworthy under standard definitions of that term.
Now, before I go much further with what I witnessed on this particular Saturday night shift, allow me to quickly answer a couple of questions.
Answer No. 1: Yes, I do tweet. I’m a professional headline writer, so I appreciate the latitude that Twitter allows me.
One-hundred-forty characters? Why, that’s a luxury. I can ramble on and on and on in 140 characters — not as much as I can in a 1,600-word sermon, but long enough.
Answer Number Two: No, I do not believe Twitter is the cure-all future of journalism.
Or, maybe I do believe that. Or, maybe it’s a part of it. Or, maybe journalism doesn’t really need “curing.”
OK. I’ll be honest. I have no idea. And, honestly, I am comfortable — especially within the walls of Fountain Street Church — in declaring myself a platform agnostic.
That is to say, I don’t necessarily believe any one electronic news delivery method is better than any other. I am no Twitter “Tweevangelist.”
Back to June 13. The wire services and news channels are lagging in their coverage of the unrest in Iran. Not for lack of effort, but for lack of access.
The Iranian government is jamming phone lines and blocking coverage, trying desperately to suppress information.
I, a relative newbie to any form of social media, am sitting at my desk in Grand Rapids, Michigan, watching on a split screen as the story unfolds in two realms.
The so-called traditional media — as they should — are covering the story coherently and clearly, focusing on the big picture.
But, many critics later would say, they are covering it without urgency.
CNN.com, for instance, is leading with a story about how a few thousand rabbit-eared Americans somehow are surprised that their television sets won’t pick up this new-fangled digital TV signal.
On another corner of my computer screen, I am monitoring the twitterverse. And there I see, circulating from user to user to user, dispatches from inside Iran: a flurry of updates and eyewitness accounts circulating almost instantaneously.
Taken individually, these tweets and retweets, as they are called, make very little sense. Taken collectively, however, it becomes clear: Something big is happening — perhaps two revolutions at once.
On that night, it hit me over the head: one of those unexpected moments of clarity.
Now, I ask, “What took me so long?” Marshall McLuhan got it largely right 40 years ago. And I quote:
“Because of today's terrific speed-up of information moving, we have a chance to apprehend, predict and influence the environmental forces shaping us.”
(Read the entire McLuhan interview, originally published in Playboy Magazine, March 1969. Relax. This link does not take you to Playboy's site. It takes you to The Marshall McLuhan Center on Global Communications.)
People, using whatever means necessary — people, using relatively new social media — spread the story. These people were not only witnessing history, they were helping to shape history.
They spread the story like wildfire. They got to the truth. They even prompted CNN to respond the next day with increased coverage of the unrest in their country.
Now, my track record for predicting the future is shaky, at best. And I do not profess to know some secret potion that will “save” journalism.
And, at the end of this speech, there will be no plea to run out and buy a newspaper — even if today’s edition is available for the bargain price of $2 at a newsstand near you.
But I do know that the exchange of news and information and truth MUST flourish.
And I believe it will.
But now, more than ever, in this post-information era when anyone and everyone can easily post anything and everything online, the truth will come from all directions, sometimes from unexpected places.
There will remain a key role for traditional media, from authoritative sources.
Like the stunned but determined priest, traditional media will take their lickings, but they will continue to spread a message of truth as they see it.
Traditional media will not only peel back layers of information, but they will sort it, wash it, make sense of it.
Increasingly, though, the truths of today and tomorrow will be dished out cafeteria style.
Actually, it’s probably more accurate to describe it as potluck style.
Potluck — another church-friendly term, right?
As you know, socially, potlucks work best when everyone contributes.
And, as you might have experienced personally, potlucks work best when you seek out a healthful, nourishing, diverse arrangement of sustenance — sometimes even forcing yourself to sample the unfamiliar, the unknown, the things you’re not sure you’ll like.
And, yes, sometimes even force-feeding yourself the food, the voices that disagree with you — just so you know what’s out there.
This new news-gathering, news-sharing and news-consuming era requires full participation.
It is not the platform, it is the people that will make it work.
It requires individual responsibility to “predict and influence the environmental forces shaping us,” as McLuhan put it.
And it requires vigilance. For every truth that spreads like wildfire, there is a rumor or falsehood that spreads just as quickly.
Actor Patrick Swayze, for example, did not die in May, despite widespread social media reports that he had.
We must recognize that some sources are more credible than others.
We must recognize, too, that we cannot survive on a steady diet of guilty pleasures — tantalizing tidbits such as celebrity gossip and sweet fluff pieces.
Sure, save some room for such desserts, but someone must provide the broccoli — the important if sometimes less-sensational information that shapes our world: The school board meetings, the local developments … the revolutions big and small, near and far.
Fighting for the truth is up to us — all of us. It is full participation.
Sometimes, it is full contact.
Let me end with a few lines from that great Traveling Wilburys song you heard moments ago.
“You can sit around and wait for the phone to ring
Waiting for someone to tell you everything
Sit around and wonder what tomorrow will bring …
Well it’s all right, even if they say you’re wrong
Well it’s all right, sometimes you gotta be strong”
Todd,
ReplyDeleteThat was great man. Seriously. Brilliant.
--Chris Tomassucci