“I keep seeing posts about grief,” Nancy said the other day.

I realized that I have been, too. It makes sense, of course, given what I write about and talk about. But as I thought more, I realized that a couple days earlier I had been feeling the burden of post after post, uninvited, of stories about spouses dying, children dying, parents dying. People that I don’t know at all, people that I’m not connected to.

Apparently, the algorithm at Facebook thinks I need to be fed those stories.

It was getting to be a lot. It was, I realize as I write this, like being a chaplain without it being my work.

In that work, I faced death all day long. And one of the reasons I retired was to have some space to reflect, to understand how to be more helpful.

It’s not, of course, that I’m not interested in being helpful to bereaved people. But if I keep reading about all the people everywhere whose person has died, I run out of emotional energy. And if a profile of me keeps pushing those stories into my feed, then I need to stop looking at that feed.

It’s possible, of course, that when Jesus invites us to follow him, that’s an invitation to reconsider what else, and who else, we are following.

I was already looking at stepping back from social media for a bit. And in reading Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focus Life in a Noisy World along with Mark, I’m sensing that turning away from the outrage and the noise and what someone is trying to feed me, can allow me (and you) to listen more carefully as we follow more closely. And maybe, I’ll be better able to support those who I know who are grieving.