An Antidote to Overwhelm and Anger | Father Gregory Boyle

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32:34I listen to this and I can imagine others listen to this and think that sounds amazing. How do I and how do we create communities that drive us sane? Part of it is trying to fashion some place, even groups. I mean, we're so isolated and insular. You know, we really live solitary lives and people have written books about all of this. And we're kind of bowling alone, you know, and you gravitate to anything from a book club to a church, to a school, to a classroom, to a community like we have here, which is the primary focus here. We'll help people get their driver's licenses and their social security card and their legal matters cleared up.

33:20And the list is long of concrete things that people need to address. But because we're here together, we're surrounding each other. You know, I was sharing this morning in our morning meeting about yesterday we had an earthquake in San Diego, and I could feel it in Los Angeles. And they had this clip at the San Diego Zoo where the elephants, the adult elephants, gathered when the earthquake hit. They gather all the young 'uns, they put them all in the middle, and they form this circle around them. And it was called an alert circle is what the zookeepers called it. They move into this formation where they're surrounded by a calm and soothing presence.

34:04And you can see the younger elephants in the middle of the circle become palpably calmer because they're surrounded. And then when the danger seems to have disappeared, the circle opens again, and they resume whatever elephants do, you know. I thought, that's what we do here. We surround each other, and you choose. It's kind of our intentionality is to soothe people. So again, anyone who walks through our doors here comes barricaded behind a wall of shame, a disgrace, and the only thing that can scale it is tenderness. And so in as much as they come with a disorganized attachment where mom was frightened or frightening, and truly you can't calm yourself down if you've never been soothed.

34:58You have to be retaught that. You have to learn it for the first time even. And so it's kind of how we surround each other here. So to the extent that you can create intentional communities where you can be surrounded and you can engage in that activity of surrounding the others, I think there are a million ways to do it. Listening to you speak about the elephants, I was thinking that that surrounding is soothing for the babies, but I would imagine soothing for the grownups too. There's something about soothing somebody else that is soothing for the soother. Absolutely. That's a key insight because that's part of the engagement, you know, because where is the joy.

35:51You know, Jesus talks about my joy, yours, your joy complete. And the joy is in being able to surround people and to be a source of delighting and safety and protection. And the joy is in being seen, but also be the person who sees. That's a key thing. St. Ignatius of Loyola has a meditation where he says, see Jesus standing in the lowly place. And it's not Jesus indicting. He's not pointing. He's not saying, get your ass over to the lowly place. It just says, see him standing in the lowly place. And it's evocative because it makes you think, why is he standing there? What's he look like? Is he peaceful?

36:42There's something about him being in the lowly place, choosing that in all humility, that is life-giving for him. And so, though he's not beckoning you, all you are seeing is him there. And then pretty soon you kind of have this, I'll have what he's having. I want to go over to that place because I think it's where the joy is, which is the important part about being a soothing presence in the world, exactly as you say, is that you are soothed, that it's exactly the thing that pulls you out of your own self-absorption that keeps you always reminded that loving is your home. And then you go, wow, I am not homesick at this moment.

37:34I'm not missing anything. There's nothing missing here, which is a kind of a key insight as you kind of move out of your own self-absorption into the concern of somebody else who's perhaps distraught or in anguish. Yeah, I've just seen that play out in my own life. One of my little jokes, and it's not really a joke, is that if you're doing self-improvement interpersonal development, spiritual growth. If you're doing it correctly, you should feel like you've been an idiot your whole life until six weeks ago, always. And so in that spirit, I'll say that for most of my life, I've lapsed too frequently into selfishness.

38:14The more in my later years that I've learned occasionally to be the soother, the happier I've become, which is counterintuitive because you would think the route to happiness is accumulation, achievement, acquisition, et cetera, et cetera. In fact, while some of that is necessary, it seems in my experience to be about, to be a little grandiose about it, being a beacon, being a source of comfort and safety, you know, when you have the resources to do it. Yeah, and use the word selfish, and I try to stay allergic to, like selfish is kind of an indictment, as opposed to self-absorption, which is kind of just a human, you know, if you're attentive to how you are being self-absorbed, then you're also attentive to how you are sad, how you're stuck.

39:10luck I'm not a big sin person because I don't think it helps as a notion it keeps us from progress just as evil does and certainly just as hell does none of it is helpful it really keeps us from progress so in the same way that selfish is a kind of a it denotes you've done something bad, as opposed to you slipped into some concern about yourself, which is natural. But the joy is on the other side of that. If you can move quickly from self-concern, like, will I have enough and what about me? And then instead you move to, does she have what she needs? Is he receiving all that he needs at the moment?

40:03Suddenly, you're in the realm of joy. That's where the joy is. But we don't know that, and we forget that, which is the key to our own practice, is to remind ourselves with every breath we take that that's where the joy is. Would that that insight was once and for all, because it sure would be nice if you could just decide that like a switch and turn it on and it never goes off, but it's a constant. Yeah, you can set it as a North Star and it helps to have practices, as you said. So let's talk about that. I believe, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the practices that you recommend in your new book is, I think this is either a Spanish or Portuguese word, acaramiento, which translates as affectionate awe.

40:52Can you unpack that and also talk about how we can practice it as a way to get some of what Jesus has in the lowly place? Yeah. It's a word that St. Ignatius uses in acatamiento in Spanish, and it comes from the word acatar, which means to look at something with attention. Again, it gets, as you say, it's translated as affectionate awe. And though it was born, no doubt, as a result of some mystical singular moment between Ignatius and his God, I would like to think that Ignatius hoped it would be a disposition, a stance at the margin. So, if the idea is to go to the margins and stand there, that's the only way that they actually get erased is if we stand out at them.

41:42And not to rescue or save or fix the folks on the margins, but to go there so that the folks on the margins change me, alter my heart. And that's when things become exquisitely mutual between anyone going to the margins and anyone at the margins. But it's a disposition. It's a stance. It's how ought we to stand at the margins, not as saviors, not as people who will transform lives, but with affectionate awe where you can receive people and allow your heart to be altered and to be reached by people. Because just that stance alone is able to remind people of the truth of who they are. And so everybody entering in a mutual way into that sense of truth and well-being and inhabiting the core of their own being, the ground of their being.

42:46So, yeah, it's a practice and it's an intentionality. How can we stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than in judgment at how they carry it? But that's not just for the poor and the folks at the margins. It's learning a practice that can lean in and be curious about what's going on rather than exacting and wrathful and judgmental and all the ways that we had images of God that really have never been helpful. So, it's a way of being in the world that can receive people. We're always going to be judging, but we can move from it being a moral judgment to kind of a health assessment, where there's no sense of this is a good person or a bad person, but a sense of, yes, this person's in pain.

43:45This person is broken. This person is wounded. And so in the process, you are welcoming your own wound. Otherwise, you will be tempted to despise the wounded. And despising the wounded is kind of where we are in our country at the moment, because that's the greatest symptom and indicator that mental health is the defining health issue of our time, is that we despise the wounded, the immigrant, the gang member, the drug addict, the homeless person. The list is long, and the reason we can be tempted to despise the wounded is because we haven't welcomed our own woundedness, which requires humility and vulnerability and an acknowledgement of the pain that we all have to carry and the anguish that we struggle with.

44:43This does not sound like a simple, I mean, on one level it is simple, but it's not easy, this practice. So how can we put it to work in our own lives and make sure that we're consistent with it? Well, things cannot be easy, but they can also be clear. There's a kind of a clarity to it. I'm kind of a stickler on the thing about everybody's good. So once you get that out of the way, then you never have to judge whether somebody is good or bad. You can say, well, people are relatively healthy or not so healthy. If you can say, today I wasn't that healthy because I was short with people and I didn't listen and I wasn't anchored in a desire and a longing to listen and to love.

45:32And that's not about sin. That's just self-absorption won the day, but it doesn't have to. And none of us are well until all of us are well. So how do we inch our way to that place? But in the end, what are we to do except to put one loving foot in front of the next? I don't know what else to do. Otherwise, you get caught up in sort of global concerns that keep you from action rather than spur you on. And so, again, it's like Mother Teresa says, it's not doing great things, but small things with great love. And then it becomes doable. Then you're kind of just in the moment. And what's the next tender, loving thing I can do.

46:25That in particular, that last thing you're saying seems very practical. Just to hold the question in your mind throughout the day and try to come back to it as a mantra, or what's the next, I mean, this is a recovery phrase, what's the next right thing? What's the next loving thing? As a North Star, it seems pretty solid. Yeah, I think it is. And the right thing, again, keeps us in the binary right and wrong part. But if it's the next loving thing, you're not toppled by whatever behavior you're encountering. countering. This is a silly example, but I was in Glasgow, Scotland with two homies, Caesar and George.

47:10They had never flown across the Atlantic and never had to need passports. But we were speaking at a conference and we were in a hotel. Every morning I said, I'll meet you at eight and we'll walk to the conference where we spoke. They were always on time. They were always waiting for me. They were sitting in the lobby in these big plush chairs. And as soon as they saw me very loudly, they'd say, hello, governor. And I was mortified. And I was texting my staff at home. I was going, how do I get them to stop saying, hello, governor? And they sent it out in public. And they'd see an impressive architectural whatever, a building or a castle.

47:54And instead of saying, wow, they would kind of survey it and say, hello, governor. And it's funny how it bothered me. I was embarrassed and people were looking, and of course, nobody speaks like this. And then I just made a decision. I remember I said, lean in, be curious about this. And in no time, I had moved from my own kind of weird embarrassment mortification where I knew what it was. We were speaking to a church at one point during our trip, and George, who is very even keel, is never excited about anything, he said very calmly to this audience, I cannot contain my excitement in being here in Glasgow.

48:42Well, you could have fooled me. He didn't seem excited, but that's what it was. They were just positively out-of-body giddy to be there and for us to be there together, pretty soon I just wasn't bothered. It was my issue. It wasn't their issue. Because I had leaned in and I was curious about something that was bothering me in their behavior, I realized that I had entered into this whole other understanding. I was comprehending something. It seems silly, but it was really kind of it was instructive to me because comprehension means to get underneath it. What does it mean when somebody says that or does that?

49:29And pretty soon that just is so expansive. and then you're kind of, it's like you have a mystical lens where you can look at behavior and you go, what's that about? What pain is that representing? What wound is being excavated in this person's insistence on something that you're finding annoying? But then you move beyond it, And it's really old dog and new tricks, you know. I really, this old dog learned something new. And it's sort of stayed with me, and I've tried to kind of utilize it. There's something there. We're always judging. Our feet hit the floor out of our bed, and we start judging immediately.

50:20But you can catch yourself, as my friend Pema Chodron says, you know, catch yourself. being judgmental. And you do this ajayri contra, which is what Ignatius talks about. Go against your inclination to be mortified. Go against your temptation to judge. Go against this idea that you're going to disparage somebody because of some behavior, and then get underneath it. comprehend. We talk a lot about compassion and empathy, but then there's this whole other comprehension piece where you understand, oh, I see where this is coming from. And that's liberating. I think there's a French expression to know all is to forgive all or something like that.

51:12And so it feels very related. Understanding the causes and conditions that lead up to somebody's current behavior, that is a form of love. And I believe Thich Nhat Hanh talks about love being understanding, at least looked at from one angle. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. But we settle for our judgments because they're comfortable. Yeah. You know, it's clear and we're right and we're insistent. I remember we had a council meeting, which is a bunch of homies and we're talking about our trainees. And And one guy was complaining about one of the trainees, and he says, you know what his problem is?

51:49He thinks his shit don't stink. And another guy said, no, I think everything he smells stinks. Yeah. So it was a difference between somebody who had done the work and excavated his own wounds and was familiar to somebody who was going to cut to the chase and say, here's the problem. All of you are naive. he just thinks this shit don't stink. And I go, yeah, I'm going to go with this other homie who knows his own wounds enough to recognize that this behavior is a language. And it's indicating something that probably needs our attention. I like that better. I'm with you. And it really does show how self-love, self-compassion does inexorably, or at least can inexorably lead to loving and being more compassionate toward other people.

52:42because it can help you get to this new paradigm that you're suggesting, which is instead of judging, once you start seeing it through the health assessment, like what is going on for that person? Yeah. Because you've done it for yourself. I haven't figured this one out entirely, but I think it's that the health assessment is the opposite of the moral judgment. It takes out all this stuff about us and them or bad or good or villain or enemy. It insists there's no such thing as them, that really, truly it's just us. And the only way to maintain that is to allow people to belong, to really imagine a circle of compassion, and then imagine nobody standing outside that circle.

53:36That's our insistence. We won't let anybody stand outside that circle. But you do get to a point where you just say, except this guy, he needs to be outside the circle. But you have to catch yourself. You have to say, no, that this is a kind of a truth. If you insist on it, then you really will do the work, which requires your steady practice. But you're really going to do the work to say, I will do everything I can so that this person feels welcome inside this circle. I don't ever want to reject them or send them elsewhere. And so you dismantle the barriers that exclude, which is the primary job of loving, is so that things become more inclusive tomorrow than they were today.

54:29Coming up, Father Boyle talks about some of his own antidotes to despair, his own daily practices, many of them deeply influenced by Buddhism, and more.

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57:02The book again is called Cherish Belonging, the Healing Power of Love in Divided Times. And you talk about creating a community of cherished belonging as an antidote to the polarization and hate and division we're seeing in the world right now, in particular in the United States. And I'm just curious, what's your level of optimism that things will improve, no less that will actually create a writ large, a community of cherished belonging. I always say hopeful rather than optimistic, but I'm hopeful. I'm completely hopeful because being here, which is very sustaining for me, it's the front porch of the house everybody wants to live in.

57:44And so that's okay to be that simultaneously with helping people concretely, jobs, training, money in their pocket, recovery, all those things are concrete and helpful. And at the same time, we're the front porch of the house everyone wants to live in. So you want to hold up some kind of, you don't want to hide your light under the bushel basket, put it out there where people can see it. And that's kind of important to me here, because it's like the great John Lewis used to say, we all live in the same house, and it was declarative. It wasn't aspirational. It was one day we might live in the same house.

58:27No, this is who we are. We all live in the same house. And it's not about some are in the basement and some are on the first floor. No, we all live in the same house. So, the more you can kind of announce that with your lives so people can see it and say, yeah, we need more of that. Or I need to find a way to do that in my own life where we're intentionally inclusive and dedicated to soothing each other in our anguish because we don't really hold different views. We're just held by the same anguish. and so how do we intentionally move closer to the home that we're all invited to of wholeness and well-being and health did you ever see that movie the year of living dangerously it came out in the 80s oh yeah yeah great movie yeah great movie mel gibson before he lost his fucking mind

59:36And there's a scene in there where he's talking to his co-star, whose name I've forgotten. And she says something to the effect of, he's bemoaning the state of the world and what do you do about it? And she says, you know, you just add your light to the sum of light. That's right. And that seems to rhyme with what you're saying today. That's so right and true. And I'm remembering that line. and otherwise you get overwhelmed and you think there's nothing you can do and that will lead to a kind of despair but we're hopeful anchored in the ability of what i can do right at this moment not even today but what can i do right in this moment as i am breathing that just puts it in its place, you know, where it needs to be, which is me doing the next loving thing that I can do.

1:00:33And being attentive, you know, because that spirit of acatamiento is from the word acatar, which means to look at something with attention. And so, in my language, I suppose, I'd say, you notice the notice of God, and then you become that notice in the world. A homie ended an email with me the other morning, and we email every day. I call him my spiritual director. But he ended his email by saying, today I will surrender into the arms of God, then choose to be those arms. And that's kind of the whole law and the prophets right there, because it's about receiving the tender glance and becoming the tender glance.

1:01:23It's about noticing the notice of God and then choosing to be that notice in the world where you are looking at things with attention. It's the mystical lens. It's how to see the world where you surrender to however you want to say it, to the core of your being, to the ground of your essence, and then choosing to be that spirit in the world all at the same time. It's exhilarating, I think. It is. I can feel it in my body as you speak. I would just add one little potential tweak, which is, you used the word mystical, and maybe this isn't a contradiction, but it strikes me as very practical. You can acknowledge the mystery, the fact that none of us knows shit, and also decide that the smartest way to live in this confusing situation is to be as useful as possible.

1:02:21And all of that lines up with what we know from modern psychological research about how to be a healthy whole person in the world. Yeah. And we get tripped up by a word like mystical because it feels like it's not meant for me. But I recommend a book, Mirror by Star, Ordinary Mysticism. And she talks about how to connect this mystical view to ordinary living and how it is to be recognized in that. So it's not some otherworldly sense, but it's only in this world and in the present moment. So. I may have asked you this question before, and you mentioned your long running friendship with Pema Chodron, which I believe we talked about the last time you were on the show.

1:03:09I'm curious, like for you personally, your life at Homeboy Industries is a practice, but do you have some sort of personal meditation or centering prayer or some sort of practice that allows you to stay anchored in a very demanding environment? Yeah, I mean, I get up really early, like 2.45 in the morning. It's ridiculous. But I spend a lot of time in that practice, along with having something to eat and checking emails, which is when I kind of do. And then I check in with my spiritual director every morning. Yeah, that's my practice. I mean, I have my little chair and my little altar and my little space.

1:03:53and then i try to do other ways to kind of reconnect my own breathing to the present moment to if there's a lull in the action which is rare around here but when there is if i'm walking to my car i try to find the peace and every step that i take and i always call it breathing in the spirit that delights in my being, and then breathing it out into the world. It's like breathing, inhaling, and exhaling. It's not meant to stay singular and with you. It's meant to always be exhaled out into the world, you know, with every loving step you take. How do you do that, you know that's my practice is a kind of early morning thing but i'm beyond the idea that there's a once and for all to your morning practice god knows because in as soon as i i'm all set to go and i'm walking into the office suddenly you're bombarded with 93 unrealistic demands placed on your time and you're and you can lose it so you want to be able to carry that through the whole day.

1:05:08It's a challenge. Cherishing is not hard, but remembering to cherish is exceedingly difficult. And so you always want to remind yourself to remember. Yes. Yes. You probably know this, and this is one of my common riffs, and we can close on this, is that the word mindfulness, the original translation of that word in the ancient language of Pali, the word is sati, S-A-T-I, in the Pali language. We translate it as mindfulness, but the original translation was recollecting, remembering. That's the practice. That's excellent. That's helpful. You are excellent and helpful, Father Gregory Boyle. Final thing I'll ask of you before we let you go.

1:05:46Can you just remind everybody of the name of your new-ish book and then anything else you've put out into the world that we should know about? Oh, well, it's called Cherish Belonging. And you probably have the subtitle right there. I'll say it. It's The Healing Power of Love in divided times. There you go. I knew it was something like that. I don't know. I love talking to you and with you and listening to you. And I'm a big fan. So thanks for the invitation. That feeling is heartily mutual. Thanks. I really look up to you. And I just also want to recommend one of your previous books, which is Tattoos on the Heart, which was recommended to me by my meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, and everybody should look at and consider supporting the work of Homeboy Industries.

1:06:38Father Boyle, thank you again. And if it's okay with you, maybe the next time I'm in LA, I'll send you an email because I'd love to meet you in person. Oh, please come by and get the cook's tour of Homeboy. Okay.

1:06:55Thanks again to Father Boyle. I love that guy. I would love to meet him in person someday. And a reminder, head on over to danharris.com where you can get a guided meditation that is tailored to this podcast episode. The idea is we're going to help you get the wisdom from Father Boyle and pound it into your neurons in an abiding way. The meditation is called An Antidote to Nihilism. It's all about how to stay engaged as a citizen without losing your mind. It comes from our Teacher of the Month, Dawn Mauricio. She's doing all the guided meditations for our Monday, Wednesday episodes this month.

1:07:30Head on over to danharris.com. Many other perks for membership over there. Finally, thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the awesome people over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote RV.