Welcome to Spin City
Keeping your heart open in hell
To hear the related 5-minute audio file that I uploaded today as my Morning Journal flash briefing for Alexa devices, please click on the play button:
Love in Divided Times
Two things happened yesterday.
Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris for the Presidency, and Gregory Boyle published a new book, Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times.
Father Boyle, 70, is a Jesuit priest who in Los Angeles founded Homeboy Industries, the largest gang-intervention and rehabilitation program in the world.
I heard about his new book yesterday from Mirabai Starr during her online “Awaken the Mystic Within” course. She praised Boyle for his work, which he has described as “keeping your heart open in hell.”
My feelings today, as we drove from Savannah to our hotel on Jekyll Island, were a jumble—confusion, fear, anger, and dread. They reminded me of Spin City, the laundromat where yesterday afternoon I figured out how to buy Tide and load money onto a Spin City card which operated the washers and dryers. I might as well head into the last week of our drive with clean clothes, I thought.
It’s been 40 years since I’ve washed clothes in a laundromat.
I felt way out of place, a guy driving a teal Tesla from one Bonvoy hotel to another on his way to Florida. I did some meditating in one of the plastic chairs. I heard the whir of machines and the screaming of a little girl who was making her mother’s task of cleaning clothes challenging, to say the least.
When I was done, my Spin City card had money left on it. I offered it to an elderly woman who was visiting with another woman at a folding table.
“I’m traveling, so I won’t be able to use this,” I said. “Can I give it to you?”
“Thank you, young man,” she said. “Blessings to you for a safe trip.”
We just watched Kamala Harris’s concession speech at her alma mater, Howard University. She acknowledged that many people feel that we are entering a dark time. If that turns out to be so, she called on Americans to fill the sky with “the light of optimism, of faith, of truth, and service.”
The reaction of some in the crowd to her use of “truth and service”—and the Vice President’s knowing smile—made me wonder if those words have special resonance at Howard.
Indeed they do, I found out. The school’s motto is veritas et utilitas, truth and service.
It turns out the principles of Greg Boyle’s Homeboy Industries rhyme with Howard’s motto.
I bought his new book, and it looks terrific. I find it grounding in the aftermath of the election to find out what he has learned about reconciliation among warring gang members in East Los Angeles and around the world.
Here are the principles:
Everyone is unshakably good (no exceptions) and
We belong to each other (no exceptions).
He continues later in the Introduction with this quote from the poet Amanda Gorman:
“Our only enemy is that which would make us enemies to each other.”
Onward.
Amazing. Thank you.