Gregory Boyle - Tattoos on the heart: stories of hope, parables of compassion

Free Press
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Copyright 2010 by Gregory Boyle

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Free Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Free Press hardcover edition March 2010

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Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Boyle, Greg.
Tattoos on the heart : the power of boundless compassion / Gregory Boyle.
p. cm.
1. Christian lifeAnecdotes. 2. Church work.
3. Boyle, Greg. I. Title.
BV4517.B665 2010
277.94'94083dc22 2009032970

ISBN 978-1-4391-5302-4
ISBN 978-1-4391-7177-6 (ebook)

Chapter Nine, Kinship, appeared in slightly different form in The Homeboy Review, April 2009.

The author is donating 100 percent of his net proceeds from the book to Homeboy Industries. Homeboy Industries assists at-risk and formerly gang-involved youth to become positive and contributing members of society through job placement, training, and education.

To the Homies and the Homegirls

This day with me paradise.

Luke 23:43

I suppose Ive tried to write this book for more than a decade. People encouraged me all the time, but I never felt I had the discipline (or blocks of time) to do it. I have all these stories and parables locked away in the Public Storage of my brain, and I have long wanted to find a permanent home for them. The usual containers for these stories are my homilies at Mass in the twenty-five detention centers where I celebrate the Eucharist (juvenile halls, probation camps, and Youth Authority facilities). I illustrate the gospel with three stories and usually tell another one just before communion. After Mass once, at one of these probation camps, a homie grabbed both my hands and looked me in the eye. This is my last Mass at camp. I go home on Monday. Im gonna miss your stories. You tell good stories. And I hope I never have to hear your stories again.

Along with my ministry in jails, I give nearly two hundred talks a year to social workers, law enforcement, university students, parish groups, and educators. The stories get trotted out there too. They are the bricks around which I hope, in this book, to slather some thematic mortar that can hold them together. With any luck, they will lift us up so we can see beyond the confines of the things that limit our view. After recently bumping heads with cancer, I started to feel that death might actually not make an exception in my case. So sensing that none of us will get out of this alive, I asked for and was graciously given a four-month sabbatical by my provincial superior, John McGarry, S.J., and sent to Italy. This will explain the ragu de agnello stains on some of the pages that follow.

There are several things this book knows it doesnt want to be. Its not a memoir of my past twenty plus years working with gang members. There is no narrative chronology that Ill follow, though I will give a brief aerial view of Dolores Mission and the birth and beginnings of Homeboy Industries. The subsequent stories will need that kind of contextualizing at the gate (as the homies say), if they are to make sense. I would refer the reader to an excellent account of those early days at Dolores Mission in Celeste Fremons G-Dog and the Homeboys. Her keen portrayal of the young men and women who struggled with this gang phenomenon in the early 90s in that community has now become an even more powerful, longitudinal study in the sociology of gangs, with her two recent updates of the material. (Young gang members write me from all over the country, after having read Celestes book, and have been deeply moved by it. Most say its the only book they have, thus far, ever read.)

My book will not be a How to deal with gangs book. It will not lay out a comprehensive plan for a city to prevent and intervene in their burgeoning gang situation.

Clearly, the themes that bind the stories together are things that matter to me. As a Jesuit for thirty-seven years and a priest for twenty-five years, it would not be possible for me to present these stories apart from God, Jesus, compassion, kinship, redemption, mercy, and our common call to delight in one another. If there is a fundamental challenge within these stories, it is simply to change our lurking suspicion that some lives matter less than other lives. William Blake wrote, We are put on earth for a little space that we might learn to bear the beams of love. Turns out this is what we all have in common, gang member and nongang member alike: were just trying to learn how to bear the beams of love.

A note on how Ive chosen to proceed. In virtually every instance, I have changed the names of the young men and women whose stories fill these pages, with the exception of anecdotes in which the name is the subject of the story. I have also foregone mentioning any specific gang by its name. Too much heartache, pain, and death have been visited upon our communities to elevate these groupings to any possible fame these pages could bring them. Everything in this book happened, as best as I can recall. I apologize, antemano, if I have left out some detail, person, or subtle contour that those familiar with these stories would have included.

I was born and raised in the gang capital of the world, Los Angeles, California, just west of the area where I have spent nearly a quarter of a century in ministry. I had two wonderful parents, five sisters and two brothers, lived comfortably, went to Catholic private schools, and always had jobs once I was of an age to work. Disneyland was not the Happiest Place on Earth; my home on Norton Avenue was. As a teenager, though, I would not have known a gang member if one came up and, as they say, hit me upside the head. I would not have been able to find a gang if youd sent me on a scavenger hunt to locate one. It is safe to declare that as a teenager growing up in LA, it would have been impossible for me to join a gang. That is a fact. That fact, however, does not make me morally superior to the young men and women you will meet in this book. Quite the opposite. I have come to see with greater clarity that the day simply wont come when I am more noble, have more courage, or am closer to God than the folks whose lives fill these pages.

In Africa they say a person becomes a person through other people. There can be no doubt that the homies have returned me to myself. Ive learned, with their patient guidance, to worship Christ as He lives in them. Its easy to echo Gerard Manley Hopkins here, For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.

Once, after dealing with a particularly exasperating homie named Sharkey, I switch my strategy and decide to catch him in the act of doing the right thing. I can see I have been too harsh and exacting with him, and he is, after all, trying the best he can. I tell him how heroic he is and how the courage he now exhibits in transforming his life far surpasses the hollow bravery of his barrio past. I tell him that he is a giant among men. I mean it. Sharkey seems to be thrown off balance by all this and silently stares at me. Then he says, Damn, G Im gonna tattoo that on my heart.