What to do when ‘breaking news’ breaks your heart?  

I’ve been asking myself this question, this week, as the Boston Globe covers every angle of the Lindsay Clancy trial.  Lindsay Clancy is a 35-year old Duxbury resident who killed her three young children in January 2023.  I won’t say more here, the story and trial is there for the Google searching.  I will say, with emphasis, that Lindsay Clancy and her family areour neighbors.  M+ is an organization of “neighbors helping neighbors…We help take care of others while taking good care of ourselves.”   Whatever I say about our South Shore neighbors, I want it to be helpful, careful, and kind.

I’m grateful for the Globe’s thoughtful coverage, including an editorial explaining “How and Why We’re Covering This Story.”  And I’m disgusted by the lurid, click-baiting “Breaking!” notifications that sensationalize these real human beings, reducing them to actors in an unfolding drama.  As I type these words, part of me asks if I have just managed to make this terrible experience about me and my disgust.  We contain multitudes, I like to say (quoting Walt Whitman), and my own multitudinous parts feel…confused, even a little ugly in the face of this particular story.

Mindfulness practice helps me hold these tensions.  The practice of sitting quietly encourages me to stop and pause….my attention gently settles on whatever is presently at hand…and I can simply be…extending non-judgemental curiosity to myself and to the world at large.   Mindfulness practice doesn’t help me make the “right” choice, and I’m often unsure what the right choice is.  Thinking of Lindsay Clancy and her children, It doesn’t feel wrong to be curious about how and why terrible things happen.  It feels right to imagine the unimaginable, necessary when the unimaginable becomes reality.  It feels right both to read the Globe’s coverage and wrong to click every breaking alert.  Whatever choices I make, wherever my attention goes, can I keep my heart open and soft?  Can I help take care of my neighbors, while also taking good care of myself?

These are the questions that keep me coming back to Sunday Reflection.  What about you?  Come with your questions to the beautiful Beechwood space…enjoy live music (this week, jazz guitarist Andrew Cornish)...and connect with supportive community.

Bring a friend!