I’ve always had a tendency to focus more on addressing problems that need to be solved than on celebrating the beautiful things that manifest in our world. But I’ve become more that way over the past 15 years, while I’ve been fighting the destructive force that has taken over the political right in America, has gained so much power, and done so much damage.
But in this little piece, I want to turn my spirit away from that darkness, and look instead into something that expands and inspires the spirit, that rekindles the sense of the Good that is possible.
This global epidemic has — on various occasions -- brought out some beautiful expressions of the human heart and spirit.
The first was told to me by a friend who lives in one of the areas around Seattle. My friend (himself a man of great spirit and great mind) is in major self-quarantine, because he is old and in one of the nation’s hotspots. The neighborhood in which he lives fortunately has long had a Facebook page in which people in the area could post whatever — does anyone know a good plumber? did anyone see such-and-such?
When the pandemic hit the neighborhood, the Facebook page started playing another role. Someone on the younger side would post an offer to go grocery shopping for anyone older who would be vulnerable. A woman offered that someone had lost daycare and yet needed to go to work, she was home with her own kid and would welcome someone dropping off theirs. By means such as this, the neighborhood was coming together, reaching out to one another, working together for the good of the whole.
I look at this and think about the huge contrast between that spirit, and the one that has been driving so much of our national life, for years but now manifesting itself in such an extraordinary incapacity for compassion and empathy. That huge contrast calls my attention to there being a powerful stream of goodness that exists within our society, and that needs only to get control of the helm of our nation to be able to make our collective life feel heart-warming and inspiring, the way that story of my friend’s neighborhood makes me feel.
But it is not just in America, that the hardship of the moment has brought something beautiful out of people.
My wife just told me that she heard on NPR that in Spain, as doctors came off duty and walked homeward through the empty streets of the city, the people leaned out of their windows and applauded the doctors, to show their appreciation. And then there’s what I’ve heard of more than once out of Italy, where people have formed an informal community of song, “Balcony singing in solidarity,” coming together each morning to create musically something that expresses how they are all in this together and will maintain their spirit as they deal with this challenging crisis.Humanity has much more good in it than we have figured out how to place in control of shaping our world. But that’s the job.
(I would say that ELECTING JOE BIDEN is at this moment the most urgent way of accomplishing that transfer of power from the force of destruction to the force that expresses what is good in us.)