Let the healing begin.
On this (and every) day, bless our hearts. Bless our well-educated and sure hearts. Bless our less educated and unsure hearts. Bless our blind spots and bless our clear vision. Bless our scared, disenfranchised hearts and our sure-footed ones. Bless our angry hearts and our hearts filled with love. Bless those with hatred and racism in their hearts and bless those who tirelessly work for social justice. Bless the hourly workers living in poverty and bless those who shine a light on those disparities in order to have all of us walk into them more consciously. Bless the visionaries and bless those who are too near the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy to have a vision. Bless the liberals and bless the conservatives. Bless the wealthy and bless the wealthy who use their privilege to help others. Bless those who run toward trouble to help and bless those who feel helpless. Bless those trying to break through and bless those who extend a hand to help. Bless the people who agree with us, and bless those who don’t.
James Carse wrote a book called Finite and Infinite Games. I learned of it decades ago from my intellectual mentor, Charles Hampden-Turner, and I think of it daily. A finite game is one we play to win and end the game. Like football, or the World Series. There are rules, we play by them, and at the end, there is a winner and a loser.
An infinite game is played not to win, but to learn.
If we see this election as a finite game, we have all lost. This election has revealed truths about the U.S. that we must learn from, and work to heal.
On this (and every) day, to be truly inclusive, we must embrace those whose ideologies oppose ours, in order to learn from them what needs doing.
Bless all our hearts. Let’s start working on the healing.
