Greg Boyle
Does God feel like that same-sex marriage could happen? I don't think anybody who has a connection to God and God's understanding and depth of compassion who's gonna say 'no.'Collection: Marriage
I always have a funny story at communion time that underscores that no one is perfect, and that communion is not for perfect people but for hungry people.Collection: Funny
Redemption is possible, and it is the measure of a civilized society.Collection: Society
You stand with the least likely to succeed until success is succeeded by something more valuable: kinship. You stand with the belligerent, the surly and the badly behaved until bad behavior is recognized for the language it is: the vocabulary of the deeply wounded and of those whose burdens are more than they can bear.Collection: Success
Our best selves tell us that 'there but for the grace of God... ' and that, in the end, there is no distance, really, between us and them. It is just us. Our best and noble hope is to imitate the God we believe in. The God who has abundant room in God's grief and heart for us all.Collection: Hope
The power of community policing is in the relationship. This can happen only if an officer sticks around for a while.Collection: Relationship
I have a lot of people in my life, and I think there's something key: the thing that leads to intimacy and relationship and connection is tenderness.Collection: Relationship
You prevent kids from joining gangs by offering after-school programs, sports, mentoring, and positive engagement with adults. You intervene with gang members by offering alternatives and employment to help redirect their lives. You deal with areas of high gang crime activity with real community policing. We know what works.Collection: Positive
Even gang members imagine a future that doesn't include gangs.Collection: Future
What is ultimately compelling for our children in helping them conjure images of a future for themselves is our willingness to walk with them as they do it.Collection: Future
So complex are all the ingredients that cause gang membership that it seems virtually impossible to isolate one solution that can address them all and thereby manufacture a hope for the future upon which these kids can rely.Collection: Hope
Metro police can't infuse hope into those for whom hope is foreign. The algorithm does not exist that can heal the traumatized. Data-driven predictions won't result in the delivery of mental health services.Collection: Health
The highest hallmark of a civilized society is not the rapidity by which it exacts vengeance, but its ability to hold victim and victimizer in its compassionate heart.Collection: Society
As a society, we come up lacking in many of the marks of compassion and wisdom by which we measure ourselves as civilized.Collection: Wisdom
There is no 'them' and 'us.' There is only us.
You can't reason with gang violence: you can't talk to it, sit it at the table, and negotiate with it.
I have never seen a hopeful person join a gang.
Abject poverty, political instability, torture, and other abuses push thousands across our border. There is not a deterrent imaginable that equals the conditions that force their migration.
If you are paying attention, then the day is going to be pretty joyful, and a lot of delight will fill it.
You are exactly what God had in mind when he made you.
Richard Rohr is a theologian that I read.
What do we know to be true about gang violence? We know we will fail if we fixate on the symptoms and not address what undergirds it.
My job isn't to fix or rescue or to save. It's to accompany, see people, listen to them.
When the vastness of God meets the restriction of our own humanity, words can't hold it. The best we can do is find the moments that rhyme with this expansive heart of God.
I know now that gang warfare is not the Middle East or Northern Ireland. There is violence in gang violence, but there is no conflict. It is not 'about something.' It is the language of the despondent and traumatized.
The desire of God's heart is immeasurably larger than our imaginations can conjure.
We ought not to demonize a single gang member, and we ought not to romanticize a single gang.
I've never met an evil person ever.
The wrong idea has taken root in the world. And the idea is this: there just might be lives out there that matter less than other lives.
Gangs are bastions of conditional love, and one of the ways to counteract it is to offer community, which will always trump gang, and that's what happens at Homeboy Industries.
I founded Homeboy Industries in 1988 after I buried my first young person killed in our streets because of gang violence.
Showing up in the lives of children is everything.
I think not everything that works helps, and not everything that helps works.
I don't save people. God saves people. I can point them in the right direction. I can say, 'There's that door. I think if you walked through it, you'd be happier than you are.'
There is no such thing as a bad cop, only disturbing and dominant cop thinking that will invariably lead to excessive force and tragic outcomes.
God can get tiny if we're not careful.
The draconian spirit that seeks to enhance penalties and to lower the age at which juveniles will be tries as adults, is part of the 'whole cloth' of three strikes. Our failure to address the depair of our inner-city youth is only delayed by our over-confidence in a stance that is 'tougher than thou.'
Children find themselves adrift not because the informational signposts are illegible, but because there is no one around to guide and accompany them.
We don't need a specialized gang unit. We need patrol officers who specialize in knowing their community.
I'm the priest who has been mistaken for an ATM machine.
The idea that any law enforcement agency or person would ever know these gang members better than Homeboy Industries is impossible.
In Los Angeles, the gang capital of the world, we have 1,100 gangs and 120,000 gang members so it is a daunting, complex social dilemma.
You are so much more than the worst thing you've ever done.
Most citizens viewing the tape of Rodney G. King being beaten by police officers were stunned and uncomprehending. Most citizens, that is, but the urban poor.
The Church should say, 'I'm frightened that women will be ordained;' that's honest, say that. But don't say, 'It's a grave sin,' because that's nonsense.
You don't really get Jesus saying very often there'll be pie in the sky when you die. He's really talking about now and today, and it's supposed to be like that. You're supposed to delight in what's right in front of you.
Gang members aren't frightened into acceptable behavior by increased penalties, enhanced punishments, and the promise of new detention facilities.
The poor evangelize you about what's important and what is the Gospel, and that that's where the joy is.
My church is in the detention facilities where I preside and celebrate the Eucharist. To me that's the church. That's the people of God.
For over twenty years, Homeboy Industries has chosen to stand with those on the margins and those whose burdens are more than they can bear; it stands with the poor and the powerless, with the easily-despised and the readily-left out.