by Catherine Malotky

Sometimes I worry about what’s happening out there. I worry because I’m a mother, a citizen, and a woman of faith.

When I turn on the television, I see marketers selling things to us. That’s the point, of course. But should we be worried about the stories being told to get our attention? The dramas, the reality shows, the daytime soaps, even the evening news seem exaggerated to grab my interest.

My observations: I'm hooked on the crime scene mystery shows, where persistent investigators solve a puzzling murder or two. How did it happen? Who did it? What does the evidence say? What fascinating detail will entice me to keep watching right into the commercials?

The reality shows are too much for me. David Walsh, of the Institute on Media and the Family, would say that these shows skip the story and go straight for the stuff that captures our attention: fear, sex, laughter. Most of them are about competition, not about healthy human interaction. (The only ones I can really stand to watch are the ones where the rescue nanny comes and patches up a nasty family dynamic. Sometimes I find good ideas to take into my own life.)

And then there are the soaps. The story is the point here, and oh, the drama! Who will fall in love with whom? Who will break up with whom? It feels like the tabloids, live, right in your family room. But most of the characters need serious work on their values and social skills.

The news used to be pretty much news. Now the news is as much about ratings as reporting. Now the anchors need to be chummy and the investigative reporters need to sleuth out scandal. Sometimes it’s worth it. Most of the time it's just hype.

A DIFFERENT ANGLE
Are we just crabby old fogies if we feel this is not quite right? Are we just hearkening back to the olden days? Should we be worried about the messages we and our children are getting through video games and billboards and magazines and e-mail spam? What are those messages saying to us? Should we fight against all those marketers who are bent on capturing our particular market share and influencing us to buy something?

Rather than thinking of ourselves as victims, let’s look at this from a different angle. The truth is: Marketers know a lot about us. Marketers spend a lot of money trying to find out what motivates us to act. They know what we like to do with our spare time, how we spend our money, and what we hope for, because they have surveyed us, worked with focus groups, and kept track of our shopping decisions.

What marketers know is that we all feel pretty vulnerable. They know that most Americans want to fit in — to be loved, have friends, be admired and maybe even respected, and have some measure of financial security. We want our families to be healthy and our children to be successful.

What marketers also know is that we feel pretty stressed. Life isn’t easy these days. Admittedly, most of us don’t have to toil as our grandmothers did. We don’t cut wood in the grove for the stove or do the laundry in a tub. We don’t heat the water for the weekly bath over a fire, and most of us don’t know the name of the cow that gives us our milk, nor do we can vegetables in August to eat in February.

Instead, we live from paycheck to paycheck. If our children are young, we struggle to find time to use the breast pump at work, or fight traffic to get to the day care center before it closes. If our kids are older, we juggle extracurricular schedules and spend our weekends next to the field, at poolside, or in the bleachers at a gym. If we are empty-nested, we might be working extra to help with those college bills, or to save for retirement, which we weren’t able to do earlier. If we are recently retired, we are often busier than before, volunteering and visiting far-flung family and friends. Even if we are old enough to have begun to cut back, we worry about our health or being a burden, or wonder why the kids don’t call more. And by then we are living with grief all the time, because the people we love are dying, one by one.

UNDERSTANDING OUR WORTH
In this rush of living we are vulnerable, because our lives generally aren’t all that we might hope. Circumstances, our own foibles and wounds, and our struggles with others all conspire to make our lives less than perfect. Marketers know this, and that’s where the products they are trying to sell come in.

It’s ironic that we humans will work so hard to make it all work. In fact, we’ll work so hard that we can get obsessed with creating a better life for ourselves and those we love. We’ll do any number of things to try to ensure success. That’s why the business section is full of articles about how to ask for and get a raise or how to "swim with the sharks." That’s why women’s magazines splash headlines on their covers about how to catch a man’s eye, or how to lose 10 pounds in 10 days, or how to find a school that will give your kids an edge. That’s why ads show gorgeous women seductively selling everything from cars to toothpaste.

So, Christian sisters, where does gentleness come in? Or humility? In a world where nice girls finish last, how do we understand our worth and our influence? How can we, with values like gentleness and humility, make the world a better place and our own lives more whole?

GRANDMOTHER GERTRUDE MALOTKY
I am thinking of the profound gift of my grandmother Gertrude. She is 102 now, an ancient one who has seen many days. She grew up the daughter of a tenant farmer. She married the youngest son of a neighbor and followed him from the seminary to his first call in the woods of northern Minnesota. She sent her children to the outhouse with a gun, because you just never knew when a bear or wolf might come sniffing around. She traveled over the river and through the woods to bear her children in her mother’s house. She has buried her parents, her brother, her husband, one of her great-granddaughters, her son-in-law, and all of her old friends.

Yet I see her in her chair, alert though easily tired. When I come into her home, her face, creased with years, lights up, and she beckons me to her side. She takes my hand and touches my face. "How are you?" she queries. "Tell me!" My grandmother, now so seasoned, makes room for me when I arrive.

This is her humility and her gentleness — she has time for me, interest in me, and room for me. She is not less because I am more. Nor is she more and therefore I must be less. Somehow, she makes enough space for both of us to be. In this, she is spiritually gifted. In this, she teaches me how God’s love is.

OUR POWER AS CHRISTIANS
This is our power as Christian women. It is a potent antidote to the messages we get every day in our nice-girls-finish-last world. Like my grandmother, God makes room for you. God is interested in you, even cherishes you. God does not set up a contest to see who wins and who loses. In fact, God’s love comes first. We have won before the game even starts.

We are the beneficiaries of God’s space-making, God’s welcome, God’s interest. What difference can this make in our lives? My grandmother’s love makes me more resistant to the harmful media messages I hear every day. I can more easily deflect the messages that tell me that I must be so rich, or so beautiful, or so charming, or so gifted, or so successful, or so aggressive, or so seductive — or else I am not good enough. My grandmother’s love, like God’s, delights in me as I am, not as someone says I ought to be.

Now, sisters, if we all lived in the assurance of this kind of love, what difference might it make in the world? What if we all made room for others? What if we lit up when people came into the room, turned to them eagerly to hear the stories they have to tell, and then, in turn, shared our own? What would happen to poverty, warfare, racism, classism, sexism, and all the other scourges that plague humanity? What would happen if we lived gently and with humility?

Maybe with God's help we would change the world.

Catherine Malotky serves the ELCA Board of Pensions as retirement planning manager. An ordained pastor, she has also been an editor, teacher, parish pastor, and retreat leader.