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#90: With Fr. Greg Boyle, founder and director of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles: "If you hate ICE agents, I think your God's too puny."
Description
This week I speak with my friend Fr. Greg Boyle, one of the most well known and beloved religious leaders in the world. A Jesuit priest, he has spent decades accompanying and working with young people and gang members in Los Angeles, and creating new alternatives with them.
Fr. Greg is the founder and director of Homeboy Industries and Homeboy Global Network with 300 organizations in the US and 50 outside the country.
It is the world's largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program, and former pastor of Dolores Mission Church, the poorest church in the city. Between 1988-1998, there were close to a 1000 people per year killed in that L.A. area from gang-related crime.
His books include: Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion; Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship; Creating a Culture of Tenderness: Embracing Our Kinship with All of Life; The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness; and Forgive Everyone Everything.
I ask him about his motto: “We are all unshakably good – no exceptions. We belong to each other – with no exceptions.” “We are trying to offer a model of community, being connected and relational wholeness,” Fr. Greg said. "There's no such thing as a bad person. We’re all good people, and we’re all sick trying to get well."
"Gang violence is all about a lethal absence of hope."
So we’re trying to nurture a movement where people invest in each other and with folks on the margins.
Fr. Boyle tells me about the four things Jesus took seriously, and what the gang members have taught him about God's unconditional love.
Greg said so many amazing things: “We've lost our confidence in love and the God of love is hoping we will regain that. It's important to find the larger love that animates you. It's always about going forward. Love is always the next thing to do, one loving foot in front of the next."
"The point of the love of God is to disarm us and lead us to be peacemakers.”
Listen in, be inspired, and share the podcast with your friends.
Onward in peace with the nonviolent Jesus!
🌻, Fr. John