Thursday, September 3, 2020
Nicole Benevenia
Bear Good News
I’ve been halfway through dozens of FaceTime and Zoom calls over the past few months when the conversation stalls. By that point, my friends and I have unloaded all of our fear, uncertainty, and pain, and we find ourselves quiet, not knowing what to say next. That’s when I find myself practically screaming, “DO YOU WANT TO HEAR SOME GOOD NEWS?”
In April, in the middle of a pandemic and following an abruptly cancelled Fulbright year, my brother started a new relationship. As some of you know, Mike lost his fiancee to cancer back in 2018. His road of healing and grief has been long, and so this new relationship is an especially joyful and exciting thing. To say nothing of the sheer odds of meeting someone in quarantine!
Being in possession of “good news” makes me feel like I have an obligation, a duty to cart it around with me and roll it into other people’s lives. “BEHOLD!” I might as well be shouting awkwardly into cell phones and laptops and from (at least) six feet away. “I BEAR TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY.” As a result, far more people know about my brother’s love life than he would care to imagine. Good news makes angelic messengers of us all.
Bearing good news in 2020 - in the middle of intersecting crises of a pandemic, violence against people of color, and an economic panic - is extraordinarily difficult. But I don’t believe that this challenge simply comes from a lack of good news in our lives or communities. It’s more complicated than that.
In our culture of instant gratification and black-and-white thinking, we often fail to recognize that joy - good news - carries weight. When someone describes “bearing” something, I imagine them carrying that something with them. I picture something with substantial weight and presence: something important. In contrast, we don’t have to work very hard to uncover the bad news of our day. We encounter struggle and pain in abundance out in the world. A certain amount of determination and diligence is required in order to bear news of joy or love amidst swirling despair and ambivalence. Of course, sometimes we resist good news when it highlights the places where loss has touched down all too recently or too often. But a thing that is borne is a thing that must be brought along. It cannot be left behind.
The existence of “good news” - of hope, the stubborn reality of love even in the darkest times - doesn’t eliminate the bad news. But it can be a frame. A widening perspective. An infusion of grace.