Why I’m Pruning Social Media

I have a love/hate relationship with social media. It can be a source of joy – celebrating the birth of a new baby, wishing a friend happy birthday, enjoying wedding pictures, enjoying my own family and our celebrations . . . endless possibilities. It can also be a place of connection to friends and family so that I can pray with someone in their loss or pray for someone in their sickness.

Social media can also be a source of unrest, anxiety, hurt and mistrust. The stories that appear and worse yet, the comments that are written do not create peace in my soul. And my friends, I need peace in my soul. The anxiety-provoking subjects of social media are diverse – politics, the UMC, how someone parents, the latest crime story . . . again, endless topics.

For several weeks, I’ve been thinking about my need to stop social media in my life, at least for a season. Last year during Lent, I stopped Facebook and made it through without this source of information. This year I’ve decided to stop Facebook and Twitter starting now through the season of Lent. When Easter comes, I’ll evaluate the decision.

The reasons for stopping? Here’s the top two:

1) Removal of social media is a spiritual discipline, freeing my time so that I might utilize it in a more life-giving ways.

2) Social media is just not good for my brain and my soul. Yes, there are some examples of stories and comments that touch my heart and mind. However, most of what I read on social media causes me to be angry, sad, anxious and wondering “WHAT?” If I read the comments under the stories, the feelings intensify.

Two weeks from today, I will head to General Conference of the United Methodist Church to be part of a vote that has implications for all God’s people. I want to spend my preparation time in ways that uplift me. Social media doesn’t do that for me right now.

So I’m pruning social media.

This past Christmas, a friend gave me a thought-provoking little book called The Vinedresser’s Notebook: Spiritual Lessons in Pruning, Waiting, Harvesting and Abundance by Judith Sutera. The author uses the experience of tending the vineyard to share spiritual lessons learned in her work.

Sutera writes:

“We practice sacrifice so that our spiritual lives can be more fruitful . . . The world will not become peaceful for us; we have to find our interior peace within the world. The irony is that this peace comes not from having things go more our way but from cutting away at what is disturbing from inside us . . .We will not wake up someday and find everyone around us lovable, but we can prune away our impatience and intolerance, our bad habits and behaviors, and practice the discipline of love. . . . We are what we think about. If we let go of what is not spiritual, we will be slowly but surely transformed. When an elderly sister was asked the secret of her apparent calm and happiness, she replied, “It started when I realized I didn’t have to have an opinion about everything.” (pages 72, 73, 74)

My prayer and my desire is to be a person of peace and calm, a non-anxious presence in a world that is swirling with anxiety, a person that doesn’t have to have an opinion about everything.

May it be so, Lord, may it be so.

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P.S. One more comment on social media – When reading anything on social media, please, please, please check the source. There’s a difference between facts and a sound bite. For all of you who are United Methodist folks, this will especially be true now and in the coming weeks.

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Sutera, Judith. The Vinedresser’s Notebook: Spiritual Lessons in Pruning, Waiting, Harvesting & Abundance. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2014.