Gregory Boyle - Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship

For Mike Hennigan

Marge Sauer

and

Kathleen Conway Boyle

S tart with a title.

Its a terrible way to write a book.

So Im in my office at Homeboy Industries talking with Ramn, a gang member who works in our bakery. Lately, he has been veering into the lane of oncoming traffic. Hes late for work, sometimes missing it entirely, and his supervisors tell me he is in need of an emergency attitude-ectomy. Im running it down to him, giving him kletcha schooling him, grabbing hold of the steering wheel to correct his course. He waves me off and says, self-assuredly, Dont sweat it, bald-headed... Youre barking to the choir.

Note to self: title of my next book.

I immediately liked, of course, the combo-burger nature of his phraseology. The marriage of barking up the wrong tree to preaching to the choir. It works. It calls for a rethinking of our status quo, no longer satisfied with the way the world is lulled into operating and yearning for a new vision. It is on the lookout for ways to confound and deconstruct.

What gets translated in Scripture from the Greek metanoia as repent means to go beyond the mind we have. And the barking is directed at the Choirthose folks who repent and truly long for a different construct, a radically altered way of proceeding and who seek a better God than the one we have. The gospel can expose the game in which the Choir can find itself often complacently stuck. The game that keeps us from the kinship for which we longthe endless judging, competing, comparing, and terror that prevents us from turning the corner and bumping into that something new. That something is the entering of the kinship of God... here and now, no longer satisfied with the pie in the sky when we die.

The Choir is everyone who longs and aches to widen their loving look at whats right in front of them. What the Choir is searching for is the authentic.

In a recent New Yorker profile of American Baptists, the congregations leadership resigned itself to the fact that secular culture would always be hostile to Christianity. I dont believe this is true. Our culture is hostile only to the inauthentic living of the gospel. It sniffs out hypocrisy everywhere and knows when Christians arent taking seriously, what Jesus took seriously. It is, by and large, hostile to the right things. It actually longs to embrace the gospel of inclusion and nonviolence, of compassionate love and acceptance. Even atheists cherish such a prospect.

Human beings are settlers, but not in the pioneer sense. It is our human occupational hazard to settle for little. We settle for purity and piety when we are being invited to an exquisite holiness. We settle for the fear-driven when love longs to be our engine. We settle for a puny, vindictive God when we are being nudged always closer to this wildly inclusive, larger-than-any-life God. We allow our sense of God to atrophy. We settle for the illusion of separation when we are endlessly asked to enter into kinship with all. The Choir has settled for little... and the barking, like a protective sheepdog, wants to guide us back to the expansiveness of Gods own longing.

The Choir is certainly more than the Church. And in many ways, Homeboy Industries is called to be now , what the world is called to be ultimately. The Choir understands this. Homeboy wants to give rise not only to the idea of redemptive second chances but also to a new model of church as a community of inclusive kinship and tenderness. The Choir consists of those people who want to Occupy Everywhere, not just Wall Street, and seek, in the here and now, what the world is ultimately designed to become. The Choir, at the end of its living, hopes to give cause to those folks from the Westboro Baptist Church... to protest at their funeral.

The Choir aims to stand with the most vulnerable, directing their care to the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the poor. Those in the Choir want to be taught at the feet of the least. And they want to be caught up in a new model that topples an old order, something wildly subversive and new.

Begin with a title and work backward.

Its been more than thirty years since I first met Dolores Mission Church as pastor and ultimately came to watch Homeboy Industries, born in that poor, prophetic community in 1988, evolve into the largest gang intervention, rehab, and reentry program on the planet. Homeboy has similarly helped 147 programs in the United States and 16 programs outside the country find their beginnings in what we call the Global Homeboy Network.

As in my previous book, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion , the essays presented here, again, draw upon three decades of daily interaction with gang members as they jettison their gang past for lives more full in freedom, love, and a bright reimagining of a future for themselves.

Ill try not to repeat myself.

I get invited to give lots of talks: workshops, keynote addresses, luncheon gigs. YouTube is the bane of my existence. I can go to, say, the University of Findlay in Ohio, or Calvin College in Grand Rapidstwo places Ive never been beforeand there will be a handful of folks whove heard that story before. It happens. I was invited once to give the keynote at an annual gathering of Foster Grandparents in Southern California. I had spoken at the same event the summer before. Virtually the same people, and Im not sure why they invited me back two summers in a row. After my talk, a grandmother approaches me. I think she liked the talkthere were big tears in her eyes. She grabs both my hands in hers and says, with great emotion, I heard you last year. She pauses to compose herself. It never gets better. I suppose Im delusional in thinking she misspoke.

Anyway, Ill try not to repeat myself.

I cant think, breathe, or proceedeverwithout stories, parables, and wisdom gleaned from knowing these men and women who find their way into our headquarters on the outskirts of Chinatown. We are in the heart of Los Angeles, representing the heart of Los Angeles, and always wanting to model and give a foretaste of the kinship that is Gods dream come true. Homeboy Industries doesnt just want to join a dialogueit wants to create it. It wants to keep its aim true, extol the holiness of second chances, and jostle our mind-sets when they settle for less. As a homie told me once, At Homeboy, our brand has a heartbeat.

In all my years of living, I have never been given greater access to the tenderness of God than through the channel of the thousands of homies Ive been privileged to know. The day simply wont ever come when I am nobler or more compassionate or asked to carry more than these men and women.

Jermaine came to see me, released after more than twenty years in prison. He is a sturdy African American gang member now in his mid-forties. His demeanor is gentle and so, so kind. As Im speaking with him, I ask if hes on parole and he says yes. Then I ask, High control? He nods affirmatively. I hope you dont mind me asking this: How did someone as kind and gentle and tender as you end up... on high-control parole? Jermaine pauses, then says meekly, Rough childhood? Both his manner and words make us laugh. His mom was a prostitute and his father was killed when Jermaine, the oldest of three brothers, was nine. After his fathers funeral, his mother rented an apartment, deposited all the boys there, walked to the door, and closed it. They never saw her again. In the many months that followed, Jermaine would take his two younger siblings and sit on the stoop of neighbors porches. When the residents would inquire, hed say simply: We aint leavin till ya feed us. We ended our conversation that day with him telling me: Ive decided to be loving and kind in the world. Now... just hopin... the world will return the favor.