TOKENS PODCAST: S4E14
In the 80s and 90s, the city of Los Angeles was ravaged by what is now known as the "decade of death," a period of unprecedented gang violence, peaking at 1000 killings in 1992 alone. It was in the midst of this unrest, fear, and finger-pointing that Father Greg Boyle became pastor of the poorest Catholic parish in the city, eventually starting Homeboy Industries, which is now the largest gang rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world. In this episode, Father Boyle tells some breathtaking stories, offering wisdom from a life lived in community with gang members: “You don't go to the margins to make a difference. You go to the margins so that the folks at the margins make you different.”
ABOUT THE GUEST
Gregory Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world.
Born and raised in Los Angeles and Jesuit priest, from 1986 to 1992 Father Boyle served as pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights. Dolores Mission was the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles that also had the highest concentration of gang activity in the city.
Father Boyle witnessed the devastating impact of gang violence on his community during the so-called “decade of death” that began in the late 1980s and peaked at 1,000 gang-related killings in 1992. In the face of law enforcement tactics and criminal justice policies of suppression and mass incarceration as the means to end gang violence, he and parish and community members adopted what was a radical approach at the time: treat gang members as human beings.
In 1988 they started what would eventually become Homeboy Industries, which employs and trains former gang members in a range of social enterprises, as well as provides critical services to thousands of men and women who walk through its doors every year seeking a better life.
Father Boyle is the author of the 2010 New York Times-bestseller Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. His second book, Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship, was published in 2017. And his new and third book is The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness that will be out this Fall 2021.
He has received the California Peace Prize and been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. In 2014, President Obama named Father Boyle a Champion of Change. He received the University of Notre Dame’s 2017 Laetare Medal, the oldest honor given to American Catholics. In 2020, he served as a committee member of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Economic and Job Recovery Task Force as a response to COVID-19 crisis. In the same year, Homeboy Industries was the recipient of the 2020 Hilton Humanitarian Prize validating 32 years of Fr. Greg’s vision and work by the organization for over three decades.
ABOUT TOKENS SHOW & LEE C. CAMP
Tokens began in 2008. Our philosophical and theological variety shows and events hosted throughout the Nashville area imagine a world governed by hospitality, graciousness and joy; life marked by beauty, wonder and truthfulness; and social conditions ordered by justice, mercy and peace-making. We exhibit tokens of such a world in music-making, song-singing, and conversations about things that matter. We have fun, and we make fun: of religion, politics, and marketing. And ourselves. You might think of us as something like musicians without borders; or as poets, philosophers, theologians and humorists transgressing borders.
Lee is an Alabamian by birth, a Tennessean by choice, and has sojourned joyfully in Indiana, Texas, and Nairobi. He likes to think of himself as a radical conservative, or an orthodox liberal; loves teaching college and seminary students at Lipscomb University; delights in flying sailplanes; finds dark chocolate covered almonds with turbinado sea salt to be one of the finest confections of the human species; and gives great thanks for his lovely wife Laura, his three sons, and an abundance of family and friends, here in Music City and beyond. Besides teaching full-time, he hosts Nashville’s Tokens Show, and has authored three books. Lee has an Undergrad Degree in computer science (Lipscomb University, 1989); M.A. in theology and M.Div. (Abilene Christian University, 1993); M.A. and Ph.D. both in Christian Ethics (University of Notre Dame, 1999).
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TRANSCRIPT
Lee: This is Tokens. I'm Lee C. Camp.
Starting in the 1980s, the city of Los Angeles, California was ravaged by what is now known as the "decade of death," a period of unprecedented gang violence, peaking at 1000 killings in 1992 alone.
It was a time of much unrest, fear, and finger-pointing, turning many of the city's poorest areas into - for lack of a better word - warzones, desperate for socio-economic stability and communal peace.
And it was in the midst of this hostility that Father Gregory Boyle became pastor of Dolores Mission Church, in what was at the time the poorest Catholic parish in LA in the most violent neighborhood in the city.
Greg: You don't go to the margins to make a difference. You go to the margins so that the folks at the margins make you different.
I was pastor of the poorest parish in the city, as you mentioned. And, it started to become quite intense, eight funerals in a three-week period, all gang related homicide.
So 1988, I buried my first and on Saturday I buried my 249th. And then I on Thursday upcoming I'll bury my 250th.
Lee: Today Father Boyle is the director of Homeboy Industries, an organization he founded in 1992 for the rehabilitation and re-entry of gang members into their local communities. Since then, Homeboy has become the largest gang-member-rehab program in the world, and has been the epicenter for countless stories of grace, redemption, and hope.
Greg: Big, huge, hulk of a guy sitting in front of my desk, holds his hands and his face and just sobs.
And, he says, I have found my purpose here.
Lee: Today, a breathtaking interview, wisdom gleaned from a life of taking delight in the person in one's midst, and the gladness discovered in just showing up.
All this, coming right up.
INTERVIEW
Lee: Father Greg Boyle is the founder and director of Homeboy Industries, the world's largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program. Former pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles, a native Angeleno and Jesuit priest from 1986 to 1992, Father Boyle served as pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, which was then the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles that also had the highest concentration of gang activity in the city.
He witnessed the devastating impact of gang violence on his community during the so-called “decade of death” that began in the late 1980s and peaked at 1000 gang related killings in 1992. In the face of law enforcement, tactics, and criminal justice policies of suppression and mass incarceration, as the means to end gang violence, he and parish and community members adopted what was a radical approach at that time to treat gang members as human beings. In 1988, they started what would eventually become Homeboy Industries, which employs and trains former gang members in a range of social enterprises, as well as provides critical services to thousands of men and women who walked through our stores every year, seeking a better life. He's also the author of the 2010 New York Timesbestselling Tattoos on the Heart and his new book Barking to the Choir published in 2017. Welcome Father Boyle.
Greg: It’s good to be with you.
Lee: Grateful to have you here with us today. You've been at this work in Los Angeles for quite a while now. Would you tell us a little bit about kind of how Homeboy Industries started?
Greg: Uh, I was pastor of the poorest parish in the city, as you mentioned. And, uh, so that was 37 years ago that I first arrived. So, the Homeboy is 33 years old. I was kind of working with gang members prior to that, but I was kind of forced to, I mean, it wasn't, I never set out to do anything. And then first thing we did was we started a school because we had so many middle school, junior high, age gang members who no school wanted them. So once they got the boot, they were wreaking havoc in the projects and they were writing on the walls and violent and selling drugs. So, so I went out to them and I'd say, hey, you know, if I found a school that would take you, would you go? And, and they said, uh, yes, but the main impetus was the fact that I was burying kids. So 1988, I buried my first and on Saturday I buried my 249th. And then I on Thursday upcoming I'll bury my 250th. So, um, that was a kind of a wake-up call for us as a parish, so that was tough. So we started a jobs program and, you know, and then started enterprises you know, businesses because we couldn't find enough felony friendly employers. So.
Lee: Take it from some of the stories you tell that it was not necessarily welcomed by all in the neighborhood when you started?
Greg: Well when you have to look back, it's hard to retrieve how hostile the wider community was towards Homeboy and the notion of it. So, the first 10 years were death threats, bomb threats, hate mail, never from gang members. Cause we always represented hope to them, but you know, kind of fueled a lot by law enforcement. Many of the anonymous letters were, I'm a police officer. I'm a sheriff. We hate you, you know. You're part of the problem you're not part of the solution, which always seemed sort of confounding to me. It was abundantly clear to anybody close to the ground, that if you invested in them or you engage them in a positive way, they weren't participating in anything negative. And yet they had so been demonized, they were the enemy. So the friend of our enemy is our enemy. And so that became untenable for folks but, you know, the, the good news is that's a memory that's hard to reach. So it's almost you know, over, it's been 20 years since that's been so pervasive in Los Angeles, which is to say, I think, that Homeboy has helped shift how people see what if we were smart on crime rather than just tough.
Lee: Hmm. In addition to that memory being harder to retrieve, are there other kind of things as you look back, that are surprises to you or that you have to kind of remind yourself of? That, oh yeah, this is the way things have unfolded for me.
Greg: Well, you know, in the early days, because we had eight gangs that were at war with each other, so my whole being in the evening was on my big black beach cruiser patrolling. So I would go to all, I'd visit all eight gangs before I went to bed. Sometimes this was, you know, till after midnight, you know. And, and it was a kind of uh calming kind of thing where they'd see me and we'd talk, and why don't you go inside and you don't live here, I'll come back with my car and I'll take you home. Or, put that Uzi down, are you sure you want to shoot that guy? You know, that kind of thing.
And so in the early days I would do peace treaties, truces, and ceasefires, and, and I always say I don't regret that, I did that, and I would never do it again. You know, it was one of those things. In retrospect, you see that, though on paper, it's kind of the outsider view driving the inside of what we ought to be doing. So you think, oh, this is what we should be doing, kind of, Northern Ireland, middle east. Let's get the warring parties to sit down. Huge mistake, because it serves the cohesion of the gang, which is not a good thing. And it supplies the oxygen. Gang life, equally not a good thing. So, so I look back on that and I go, yeah, I mean, it was a natural thing. Now people still do it all over the country and they still think that gang violence is about conflict resolution, but there is no conflict in gang violence. There's violence, but it's not about anything. It's not a conflict.
So you can't sit the parties down, which is always a kind of a misconception that people have, you know?
Lee: So the notion of it giving oxygen to gang mentality or gang identity is simply that, I understand you to be saying that, when you sit them at a table or invite them to a table as gang members, that's reifying that gang identity?
Greg: Absolutely, and at Homeboy we now say we don't work with gangs. We work with gang members.
Lee: Interesting.
Greg: And we don't recruit or cajole or coax, and everybody knows where we are. We call it the, you know, the magic of the swinging doors. You know, you you open that front door, welcome. Welcome Matt, ticker tape parade. They come in, and a homie said there's an aroma, you know. You know, the whole talk about the kingdom. It's about kinship and connection and, people immediately tasting beloved belonging and then wanting that, but we don't try to uh, go out to anybody. Cause It's like rehab, you know, we don't exist for those who need help. It's only for those who want it. So it doesn't work if you don't freely walk in the door. Having said that they're all on a continuum of readiness, you know. It's always like an AA meeting, you know, like who's, there, somebody who's 20 years sober, somebody who's 20 minutes sober, and somebody who's drunk but he's there. And it's that kind of fluid continuum and spectrum is a thing that always happens.
Lee: And do you think then that, you use the word addiction and you've alluded to AA. So do you see attachment to gang identity as an attachment or as an addiction?
Greg: It kind of is, you know, in as much as, you know, the opposite of addiction is community. And so community will always trump gang life, once they have a taste of it, but it's all part of the longing of people. Everybody is born wanting the same things. So once they kind of discover that, but it in recovery, it takes what it takes. And in gang recovery, it's the same thing. It can be the birth of a son, the death of a friend, a long stretch in prison, it takes what it takes, you know, but no amount of me wanting that guy to have a life will ever be the same as that guy wanting to have one.
You know, I always say ours is a God who waits and who are we not to? So you wait for people. It's frustrating because you would like to accelerate peoples feeling cherished and nurtured and accelerate the healing.
Lee: Yeah.
Greg: But it's, it's the same as I, I don't know how else you can do it except to wait for people to show up and to be as attractive.
Lee: You say in your most recent book that you were angrier when you were younger, that you shook your fist a lot. What precipitated a change in you in that regard?
Greg: Well, you know, I think part of it was, I was burying so many kids and there was a kind of a, you know, a killing of Karen Toshima who was killed in Westwood which is where UCLA is. And it's, uh, it kind of a shi shi foo foo neighborhood, you know. It's where you'd go to movies and a nice dinner, that kind of thing. She was a graphic artist and was on a date and got caught in the crossfire, in gang crossfire, and she was killed.
And then suddenly, you know, it was a $25,000 reward. All these detectives were dropped from lots of cases and assigned to this one. And police presence was intensified. And the reward was offered for information that would lead to the arrest and conviction of whoever did this. Now at that juncture, that was kind of the climate. And at that moment, I was burying eight kids in three-week period. And it was clear that one life in Westwood was worth, you know, the 35 I had buried, at that point. And so, so you wanted their lives to matter, you know? But that was a different time for me, you know. I, I suspect I was, you know, you get indignant when you're younger. And you don't want to settle for moral outrage when you should hold out for moral compass, and they're not the same.
Lee: Say that again. That's, that's so helpful.
Greg: You know, moral outrage is kind of where we get stuck, you know, where we shake our fist. And the hard truth of moral outrage is, when I am out raging, it's about me. It's, self-congratulatory, it's strikes a high moral distance between me and others and that's we settle for moral outrage, but we ought to hold out for moral compass.
So moral outreach points things out, but moral compass points the way. You, you know, you want to be able to point the way, you want to say over here, but let's imagine this.
And then you insist on the undergirding principles, that are so essential. We belong to each other, and every single human being is unshakably good. And that's where I begin. Once you start there, you won't fall prey to the seduction that just has you shaking a fist and basically not just announcing something, but, insisting that it be about me.
It's subtle, I think.
Lee: Subtle, but wow. It’s a terribly helpful distinction. You pointed right there to one of the themes that recurs repeatedly in your public speeches and in your writing and that of kinship. Would you describe how that functions for you in thinking about your work and in doing your work?
Greg: Yeah. I, you know, you don't go to the margins to make a difference. You go to the margins so that the folks at the margins make you different. And so then it ushers in this kind of exquisite mutuality. I remember there was a woman. I was at a conference in Rome and we had this kind of social justice conference or something, and we were in small groups. And this woman with great sadness said that she had left work with refugees, really undeniably difficult work, and she felt guilty about doing that. And then she said, I think, you know, there were some moments of joy. And then she proceeded to talk about successes, you know, outcomes, measurable things. And I thought, oh, she's mistaking success for joy. And they're really quite different. And so the essential piece of kinship is to purify your narratives a little bit. You know? Nobody has ever attended a graduation ceremony that didn't say, you know, go and make a difference. But make a difference is really about, if I'm there to make a difference then, it's about me. If I'm there to rescue save or fix, then it's about me. And if the principal is, it can't be about you. So in the gospel, when Jesus says it's really hard for rich people to enter the kingdom. It's not about bank accounts, you know, it's about humility and that the understanding of Jesus, of rich folks is that, there's not a lot of humility. It's really hubris. And so can you receive people? And there was a homie I met in Houston doing hardcore gang intervention in the streets of Houston. And he said, how do you reach them? You know, he kind of pleaded with me after a talk. How do you reach them, meaning gang members. I said, well, for starters, stop trying to reach them.
You know, can you be reached by them? That's a whole other stance. That's different. That's not I'm going to go make peace. I'm going to enter into relational wholeness with people, that's hugely mutual. And I'm going to only begin and only do one thing, which is, I'm going to allow my heart to be altered. I'm going to be reached by this person. I'm going to receive. When I took this course from Henry at Harvard Divinity, I remember a woman asked him what is ministry anyway? And he was quite frustrated with the question. And he said, can you receive people? He said, that's it, can you receive people? Which again feels so passive if we're not for the fact that, it's the most liberating thing for somebody to be received.
Lee: Yeah. And when you say somewhere that you've decided that the key to all this as simply the practice of showing up.
Greg: It feels like, you're not making something happen, that you're not making a difference, which iswhy people burn out, you know, because it's about them.
Lee: Yeah.
Greg: And they're trying to fix and save, but if it's about the other and if all you do is love being loving and you receive people in and you allow yourself to be reached and heart altered, then it's eternally replenishing. You will never burn out. I mean, it's kind of the key. And I think that's an important thing, especially in ministry, as people want to serve. You know, it's hard to enter into kinship with people if it's about you or if it's about hubris rather than humbly accepting people where they are.
Lee: I love the story I've heard you tell about, I think you call him Mario, perhaps on a trip back to Gonzaga. Which I think exhibits so well, this, kinship and unexpected kinship. Would you be willing to share that with us?
Greg: It's funny, stories that, you know, you kind of retire them and, you know, you don't tell them for a long time. But, but I remember he was quite panicked. Uh, he and another guy, and we were going to go to my Alma mater where they had forced the incoming freshmen class to read my book against their will.
And so, you know, I've taken endless, endless homeys with me on trips and, they're all kind of, panicky, you know, but I've never seen anybody like this. We were at Burbank airport which is kind of small, and it's one of those tarmac airports, you don’t. There's no breezeway, you have to walk out on the tarmac and climb the stairs to board. And he was like hyperventilating. And I almost had to go find a bag that he could breathe in. And, I remember I saw two flight attendants, female flight attendants. And they both had Starbucks coffees and they were schlepping up the steps. And Mario, with great desperation, when are we going to board the plane? And I pointed at the flight attendants. I, as soon as they sober up the pilots. We will be able to get on the plane. And then I remember I walked him around the, the airport and he, and this is saying something cause we get about 15,000 folks a year, walk through our doors. He's the most tattooed individual who's ever worked there which is saying a lot. I mean, he, his arms are all sleeved out to his fingertips, neck blackened with tattoos, entire face covered in tattoos. So I'm walking him through the airport trying to calm him down, and I was just startled at how people would clutch their kids more closely and step away. And I thought, wow, because to this day he still works there. If you were to walk in and ask anybody, who's the kindest, most gentle soul here, they wouldn't say me. They would say Mario. And, uh, the day will never come that I have more courage or I am closer to God than this guy. So we get to Gonzaga and I remember they gave, they never they have the big talk, you know, on on the evening of Tuesday evening or something. But What they don't tell you is they have all these classrooms that you're supposed to visit throughout the course of the day. So I said, look you know, I want you guys to get up and talk and, cause I'm going to speak tonight, you know, and they were absolutely panicked, but they did a good job, you know. And it’s stories of terror and torture and, honest to God, if their stories had been flames, you'd have to keep your distance, otherwise you'd get scorched. And I look back and I think I wouldn't have survived a single day of either of their childhoods. So, I don't think I did this that regularly, but I said, get up before me and just give a little snapshot so that I could include you in the question and answer period. And it was like standing room only, packed, thousands of people sitting in the floor. I mean, total violation of fire code. And so they get up and especially Mario was petrified and trembling, but they did a good job. And then I did my 45 minutes. Then I invited them. up and I said, yeah, questions.
And a woman stands up. She, I got a question for Mario. You know, first question out the gate. So he's just a tall drink of water. Skinny guy, gets up to the microphone. Yes? And he's terrified. And she goes, well, you say you have a son and a daughter, they're about to enter their teenage years. What advice, you know, what wisdom do you impart to them? What advice do you give them? And Mario stands there getting a freaking hernia trying to come up with the right answer. And, I can tell he's starting to crumble under the weight of it. And finally he just eeks out, I just, and then he stops and then he kind of holds his face in his hands and people don't know if he can continue. And then he says, I just don't want my kids to turn out to be like me. And there's silence until the woman who asked the question stands and says, with great tears, why wouldn't you want your kids to turn out to be like you? You are loving, you are kind, you are gentle, you are wise. I hope your kids turn out to be like you. And a thousand total perfect stranger stand and they won't stop clapping. And all Mario can do is hold his face in his hands overwhelmed that this room full of strangers had returned him to himself. And they were reached by him, which returned them to themselves, which is the way it's supposed to work.
Lee: Thank you. It's beautiful. It's beautiful.
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This is our interview with Father Gregory Boyle. Coming up, more beautiful stories of beloved belonging.
Part two in just a moment.
HALFWAY POINT
Lee: Welcome back to Tokens and our interview with Father Gregory Boyle.
That phrase, you ended that story with, returning to ourselves. That's another one that shows up often in your writing and your speaking. And I’m about to share a quote from the poet Galway Kinnell, but I will say that especially in Tattoos on the Heart. I want to go back and just collect the quotes you've got in there that hold these stories together. There's so many beautiful and it's like, you know, you got Merton, you've got Wendell Berry, Pema Chödrön, Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver, and so forth. It shows your MA in English, I suppose. It's being put to good work there. But you, quote Galway Kinnell: sometimes it's necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness. And it seems that this is a particularly helpful way to construe what it means to be human, you know, to return to ourselves. I love, I mean my students I’m sure get tired of hearing me talk about Irenaeus, second century. You know, the glory of God is a human being fully alive.
Greg: That's right.
Lee: And I hear that phrase you use, being returned to ourselves, as sort of synonymous with that sort of vision of life.
Greg: I also think, you know, I mean, it's a wonderful poem.
But it's it's a little bit like. People talk about second chances. And, there was a homie who worked at the silkscreen who actually is the supervisor there. And he said, whoever gave them their first chance? And so it's reteach somebody their loveliness as if it had been taught to them before. So that's kind of a misconception because it often hasn't been. But when you talk about unshakable goodness, there are no exceptions to that. And part of our being stuck in moral outrage is we think there are plenty of exceptions to the you know, unshakable goodness piece. So you have to kind of believe that every human being has that, the loveliness, that is their truth. And surely there are things that impede people from seeing that truth. You know, it's about the human being glory of God fully alive, but it's also, the glory of God, you know, in holding the mirror up, and reteaching loveliness, and telling people that truth. Carl Rogers talks about prizing, which isn't so much praising, you know, it's, it's about this notion of fully accepting a person and then prizing who the person is. And that is about the most foreign land that anybody has traversed. And at Homeboy, you know, which is kind of uh, it's the front porch of the house everybody wants to live in. It's the, it's a model, I guess, of a paradigm that could be different, where only in a community of beloved belonging, where everybody's engaged in repairing and attaching and repairing severed belonging. Cause everybody, that's where they begin. They've had belonging severed and it's never too late to repair that and to attach. We have an 18-month training program, that's what they sign on for, and they get paid and it's, they're supposed to, you know, they'll work in a bakery and et cetera. But they're also, equal parts working on themselves, in group, in therapy, but the whole culture heals the whole culture of the place. So if it's true that a traumatized person going to, you know, likely to cause trauma. It's equally true that a cherished person will be able to find their way to the joy there is in cherishing themselves and others.
So then they are reteaching loveliness to others. And then it becomes, that's where the joy is, but the 18 months, how did we arrive at that? You know, what we said, well a year is probably too short, two years is too long. Okay, 18 months. But then we looked back and then just by kind of a coincidence that 18 months is the time it takes, they say, for an infant to attach to the caregiver. And we went, that's it, you know. We hadn't thought of that, but then it became, our reason was, yeah, this is about attachment repair, where people who, you know, all, of them, you know, all of them are a nine or 10 on the ACEs, on the adverse childhood experiences spectrum. You know, I'm a zero on the ACES and I grew up in the same city as these folks, but that's just, you know, if you want to talk about white privilege. That's just, you know, the lottery of my parents and zip code and education and siblings. But then you can stand in awe at what folks have to carry and, uh, what brought them to walk through the swing of the doors there at Homeboy.
Lee: Yeah, in one of your chapters, I think it's entitled “Disgrace.” And you tell the story about it, I think a young woman coming to see you, who's kind of undone one day and she says, I am a disgrace. So you work a lot in that chapter with this notion of undoing shame. And as you look back and think about poignant instances of that, what are some examples of how that's happened or people in whom that's happened or what that looked like for you to see the undoing of shame or the dismantling of shame so that a new healthy attachment can occur?
Greg: Well, Marcus Borg, the scripture scholar says that the principle suffering of the poor throughout scripture and history is shame and disgrace. And, and I think that's quite right. And so it's the thing, it's the pervasive sense, not so much that they've done wrong, but that they are essentially wrong. And that they can't shake that. And so the only way to counteract that huge power in their life is to offset it with, you know, seeing them as God does, which is easy. You're not pretending. I'm going to pretend that there is a reason to prize this person. That, that part has always been easy, you know? And it doesn't feel like it might be, you know, tattooed, menacing looking folks. But like, during the pandemic because I have leukemia, they set up this tent outside in the early part of the pandemic. And it was, think more Lawrence of Arabia, it was just a huge white with windows. It was quite spectacular. It had a rug and my desk. And, you know, and they kind of surprised me with it cause they were just petrified of me actually being in the building, you know? So, we have a security guy named Miguel, who's just the largest guy, you know, who has ever worked there, and, you know, has this big shirt that says security on the back. And so he's, he's kind of traffic cop. So he's escorted people in, make sure people have their masks on. And then he she shows them how to leave, you know, how to exit and, so I'm watching him, and he's, especially with the younger homeys who came in to see me, you know. And the whole thing is kind of the godfather will see you now.
You know, and so they bring them to me and, and they're six feet apart and all this kind of stuff. And, and so then he would direct the young guys out and I would hear him say, hey Papa, you can leave this way. Now Papa is something you would call your son and it's very affectionate. And it's a loaded word because it's just steeped with a very healthy good father son relationship. Papa, if you could just go out that way, you know, very tender. And then a homie comes in, later on, and he sits down and he says, you know that guy back there? And he points to Miguel and he says, well, he's my worst enemy in the whole world. And right now he just gave me advice that consoled me, which seemed like an incredible word to use. And then, you know, he left, but at the end of the day I called Miguel in. And I wanted to prize him, sort of, you know? And I wanted to say, hey, you know, I noticed how, you know, you would say Papa to the younger kids, that was so tender and you know, affectionate. And then I mentioned that kid who was his enemy. And he knew who, exactly who, I was talking about. And, he so valued your advice to him. Well he, just big, huge hulk of a guy sitting in front of my desk, holds his hands and his face and just sobs.
He says, I have found my purpose here. Now this is a guy, when he was, 12, you know, lived with his stepfather who just would torture and beat his mother. And he was sexually abused by three adult relatives. And one day he came home and he couldn't find his mom. And she was tied up and gagged in a closet. And the stepfather once had thrown her through a window, like you see in the movies. And so he killed him, he was, whatever he was, 14. And he went to what we call then youth authority, which is where they send very young, seriously offending kids. And he was there till he was 25 and then they sent him to prison for an additional 10 years. And now he works for us, but he's found his purpose. And, I've never had to carry what that kid carried. And so it's reteaches loveliness, but loveliness was a foreign land, for a kid like this, but now he loves being loving, and was he always unshakably good? Yes. Did he always know it? Rarely.
Lee: I want to close that section with another quote from your book, quoting Belden Lane, divine love is incessantly restless until it turns all woundedness into health, all deformity into beauty, and all embarrassment into laughter.
As you said at the beginning you started doing what you did not because you've set out to go look for it, but because it needed to be done, and that's informed, it appears, a lot of the stuff that you've done, like even tattoo removal, I think, you've started as this was something that needed to be done. But what's been the significance of something like tattoo removal, for example?
Greg: Yeah. I mean, it's funny, you know, just everything, you know, when Ray Stark who had $500 million, wanted to help. And how should I help? And I said, well, I don't know, you could buy this abandoned bakery across the street from our school. And you could fix the ovens that don't work and that kind of thing. So, had it been something else had, had it been an upholstery shop you know, we would have had Homeboy upholstery or something, everything was quite random and reactive. People come to our headquarters now, which is huge and impressive. And how did you think this up? And the truth is you don't think things up, you evolve. And so tattoo removal was there was a need and we did it and, we don't force anybody to get their tattoos removed, but it's all part of their own, uh, you know, desire. You know, turn their life around. In the early days we had just one hour a month from a Dr. Vanora at White Memorial Hospital who would remove tattoos. And, and I remember a homie came and, and we were trying to limit, alarming tattoos, neck and face, elbow down, and he lifted his shirt and his whole chest was covered with the name of his gang. And I thought, well, keep your shirt on, you know, and no one will see it. And he goes, my son will. I go okay. I mean, it's so painful, it's so arduous a tattoo like that would have taken 30 treatments, painful treatments, but he was willing to do it. And that was in the recovery mode, it took what it took, which is why we don't ever, I remember once we had a kid who was court ordered to get his tattoos on his face removed. And once he was off probation, he just put them all back on.
Lee: Hmm.
Greg: He didn't work at Homeboy but I knew him in a probation camp.
Lee: Yeah.
Greg: And they would transport him there and since he was under order. Even if a minor comes in with a parent, which requires a parent permit, we always isolate the kid and say, hey, do you really want this off? If the kid says no we won't do it.
Lee: Hmm. Yeah. I wondered, so you said a moment ago, this week you'll be conducting your 250th funeral. And I hear what you're saying about adverse childhood experiences, your friends that you're working with, a lot of them are nine and 10 and yours was a zero. But I also look at your ministry and think about the trauma of doing 250 funerals like this of young men and women that you love. And so I wonder, how do you take care of your own self? How do you deal with what surely has to feel traumatic at times and attending to yourself?
Greg: Yeah. You learn as, a homie who I buried named Moreno used to say, death is a punk. He said that when his brother died in his arms and the, the guy who shot him came back to see if he was also dead. And he had to pretend as he was lying there that he also was dead. And then two years later he was killed, but after his brother died. He said, death is a punk. How is that different from death where is your sting? Or, Paul says death had no power over him. It couldn't hold him, it says. And so, it doesn't mean that you, kind of don't feel things, but if you don't put death in its place, then you'll be toppled by it, you'll be toppled by life itself. And so coupled with, you know, how do you stay anchored in the present moment and how do you delight in the person in front of you? Because that's all you have and we're only saved in the present moment. So that keeps at bay a certain thing. You don't get depleted because you're delighting in the luminous now.
Now that may feel like you're not grieving, but you allow grief to not leave you where it found you. Grief sort of loosens you and you allow that to happen. But most people kind of look at, maybe, what I do for a living, and the presumption is that would be hard and I've never had that experience. I really haven't. It's mainly delighting only because you choose, you choose to cherish with every breath you take and you choose to delight in the person in front of you. That's hard to do because you have to decide today and then you have to decide tomorrow and it's never once and for all, but it's, you know, the practice doesn't make perfect, but it makes it permanent. And so you are able to continue to do that without being depleted and it's eternally replenishing because it's mainly people being tender with each other and you laugh a lot.
So the presumption is that death would win and it doesn't if you put it in its place, you know.
Lee: The third main topic I wanted to raise with you is, so the one, you just pointed to, and that is delight and in gladness, which is another kind of thing that keeps repeatedly bubbling up in your writing. You tell this story about being on a live radio show and something funny happening, and then you're driving away. And you said I steep in the utter fullness of not wanting to have anyone else's life, but my own, which reminded me of one time hearing Stanley Hauerwas read a paper in which he opened up with a phrase from an Englishman who was an Oxford trained writer, and then had decided to go back home and be a shepherd. And in one of his essays, this Oxford trained writer, who's a shepherd, is reflecting upon one day looking at the sheep and says, quote, this is my life. I want no other.
Greg: Yeah.
Lee: And, I remember Stanley saying, this is what it means to live life is to find yourself, as you look back upon your life, being able to say, this is my life, and this is what I'm grateful to receive, and this is what I want. But could you share with us more about what’s it look like for you to learn to delight and to learn to practice gladness?
Greg: Well at Homeboy, there was a homegirl who was giving a tour. We always had, you know, three or four tours a day in big groups from lots of countries and all over the place. And so the homies give tours and they're walking through. And I heard the homegirl say here at Homeboy we laugh from the stomach, which everybody knows exactly what that is. That it's deep, it's profound. It alters you. It's not superficial. And so, again, during the pandemic, on his break a guy named, we call him Chamuco, and Chamuco means it's kind of a playful name that in Spanish for the devil, you know. It's kind of affectionate actually, Chamuco, because he has two big devil's horns tattooed on his forehead and he works in the, to his credit, he's getting them removed, but he works in the bakery. So he comes in and he's, you know, dusted with flour and has his apron on, and he has his hairnet on and he has a mask on. So this, during the pandemic, and he's standing in front of my desk and during the pandemic I was able to fix his teeth and he wanted to express his gratitude. So he says, can I take off my mask to show you my grill? They always say grill when they're talking about to show you my grill. And so he he's kind of broadly smiles, a big Colgate smile. And then he looks at me and he says, not only did you pay for this smile, you are the reason I'm smiling. And then there's was the silence. And he goes, hey, that's good. Write it down. And so I started to write it down and he's, he's re-dictating it. And not only did you. And I think he was just hoping to give him my third book and he did, he right under the wire. I begin my epilogue with that, but the two of us we just laugh from the stomach. And, uh, uh, he went with me before the pandemic with another guy, Robert, and we went to Sacramento to give some talks. So we got in late, later than I liked to on a Sunday night, you know? And so we're at Sacramento airport. We're going to, you know, the shuttle bus to take us to the rental cars. And so we get in and I'm sitting across from this guy, Robert, well Chamuco goes and sits in the back, the very back of the bus. And then, you know, people start to fill on the bus, but as soon as they see him, nobody wants to sit on either side of this guy. So they assiduously do this fox trot to avoid him until finally there are only two seats left on either side and people very reluctantly sit down next to him.
And then we start to go to the rental car thing. And if you've ever been there, it's very kind of wooded secluded, dark. And somewhere in the middle of this wooded and secluded place, the electric thing, just all the lights go off. And the bus shuts down. And for some reason everybody is silent and you can hear clicking, that, sorry, I'm working on it and silent. And in, in this dark secluded place, this voice from the back of the bus says, I saw this in a movie once. It does not end well. Well, the whole bus laughed from the stomach. And it was so joyous.
And, and at that particular, time, you know, you know, I almost certain, that half the bus voted a certain way in a presidential election and the other half voted in another way. But, somehow this kinship was brought to you by the guy with the devil's horns, sitting at the back of the bus that nobody wanted to sit next to. And suddenly, kinship so quickly and connection and beloved belonging brought to you by this guy.
Lee: We've been talking to Father Gregory Boyle, founder, and director of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, California. Thank you so much for your time and for your work and your goodness and delight in the world. Thank you.
Greg: Great to be with you. Thanks.
Lee Camp: You've been listening to Tokens: public theology, human flourishing, the good life.
If you would like to hear more stories of courageous peacemaking in the midst of great brokenness, check out our episode with Irish poet, peacemaker and theologian, Padraig O'Tauma.
And if you'd like to more about the practice of vulnerability in undoing our own shame, then make sure to check out our episode with Dr. Curt Thompson on his book The Soul of Shame.
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Thanks for listening, and peace be unto thee.
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