Father Gregory Boyle's books

Tattoos of t he Heart and Barking to the Choir

Father Greg Boyle is a Jesuit priest who, after working in East LA, founded Homeboy Industries.  This is a highly successful gang intervention program in the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles.  He relates  his stories of working with a wide variety of gang members...young, old, and in between and relays how compassion and understanding has dramatically impacted their lives.  The stories are harsh realities, of chidren abused and neglected and it enriched my understanding of how young people get drawn into their new families of gang  members and what needs it fulfills for those whose lives have had so many harsh, harsh realities. 

I read Tattoos of the Heart years ago so I knew of Father Greg and the Homeboy Industries.  My son in law knew I was a fan of his efforts so he invited me to hear him speak at All Saints Church in Pasadena.  He was telling the stories of his new book called Barking to the Choir:  The Power of Radical Kinship.  I laughed.  I cried...  I reflected on how blessed my life is and how thankful I had parents who really, really loved me and supported me.  After reading Barking to the Choir, I reread Tattoos of the Heart and a rereading did not disappoint.  Only enlightened.

I borrowed Carlos' copy of his new book and really enjoyed seeing the pages he dog-eared...and I added dog-ears of my own.  These are some of the highlights.

Tattoos of the Heart

page 21  "This is a chapter on God, I guess.  Truth be old, the whole book is.  Not much in my life makes any sense outside of God.  Certainly, a place like Homeboy Industries is all folly and bad business unless the core of the endeavor seeks to initiate the kind of God one ought to believe in.  In the end, I am helpless to explain why anyone would accompany those on the margins were it not for some anchored belief that the Ground of all Being thought this was a good idea."


p. 51  "Homies have been "outside" for so long they forget there is an inside.  Their sense of suffering is suffocating...

pg. 67
Jesus says if you love those who love you, big wow ... He doesn't suggest that we cease to love those who love us even when he nudges us to love our enemies.  Nor does Jesus think the harder thing is the better thing.  He knows it's just the harder thing.  But to love the enemy and to find some spaciousness for the victimizer, a well as the victim, resembles more the expansive compassion of God.  That's why you do it.  To be in the world where God is.

pg. 71  Pema Chodrom, an ordained Buddhist nun, writes of compassion and suggests that its truest measure lies not in our service of those on the margins, but in our willingness to see ousrselves in kinship with them."

p. 188  Kinship--not serving the other; but being one with the other: Jesus was not a "man for others"; he was one with them.  There is a world of difference in that.

So much more...

Barking to the choir

p. 27 When we are disappointed in each other, we least resemble God.  We have a God who wonders what all the measuring is about, a God who is perplexed by our raising the bar and then raising it even higher.  We would do well to ask ourselves, How does God handle dismay and disappointment?  Surly God  must be
--disappointed that hunger exists is the world even though we have the means to feed everyone...
--saddened by the number of guns int he United States and people's willingness to use them on each other,
--dismayed that the Catholic Church continues to exclude women from ordained ministry and limit gays and the divorces and remarried Catholic from the fullness of welcomes.

pg. 54  The fourteenth century mystic Dame Julian of Norwich thought tat the truest and most authentic spiritual life was one that produced awe, humility and  love.  But awe gets lost in the triad.  We are at our healthiest when we are the most situated in awe, and at our least healthy, when we engage in judgment.  Judgment creates distance and moves us away from each other.

p. 141  Moral outrage is the opposite of God; it only divides and separates what God wants for us, which is to be united in kinship...

so much more.  Explore...