Patrick B. Reyes - Nobody Cries When We Die: God, Community, and Surviving to Adulthood

Praise for Nobody Cries When We Die

In Nobody Cries When We Die Patrick Reyes vibrantly presents our common yearning to embrace a vocation to life. What God wants for us is life in abundance, to walk the life of justice and compassion with joy. Reyes anchors his narrative at the margins and in this, we all find the good soil and invitation to live fully.

Gregory Boyle, Founder/Executive Director of Homeboy Industries, Author of Tattoos On The Heart

Patrick Reyes offers a brilliant mix of theological reflection and biographical snippets to demonstrate how narrative can be used to discern vocation. Reyes grounds us in his firsthand accounts of ministry of la lucha among la comunidad in a way that is not gratuitous but instead ensures the reader gets a sense of both the struggles and the ingenuity of oppressed people. This broader and necessary education will help us remember the way the call of God shapes our lives. What is more, it will implore us to commit our lives, according to Reyes, to helping call our communities to life.

Pamela R. Lightsey, Boston University School of Theology, Author of Our Lives Matter

Nobody Cries When We Die is a captivating narrative of redemption. Patrick captures the readers attention with compelling stories of tragedy and grief while pointing us towards Gods triumph and grace. Nobody Cries When We Die lifts up the voices and stories of people who often suffer in silence but whose voices deserve to be heard. Patrick has provided us with a gift. His transparency shares both pain and purpose on a journey to turn wounds into scars (the evidence of healing). God has clearly used Patricks journey as an instrument of redemption.

Romal Tune, Author of Gods Graffiti

Nobody Cries When We Die is an outstanding journey. Reyess collection of stories offers an eye-opening window to Latinx life in the US. Written in a beautiful prose, the author recounts his experiences in a community forced into violence and finds a common thread in the permanent struggle for justice and healing. It is his Christian vocation that makes him keep strong in his convictions in front of heartbreaking stories. This is a must read for anyone who trusts we can build a better world.

Santiago Slabodsky, Florence and Robert Kaufman Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies, Hofstra University, New York

With a riveting writing style, Reyess memoir invites readers to explore their own inner labyrinth of Christian vocational discernment. At each twist and turn on the journey, questions abound: How am I going to live? Who is calling me to life? Can anything good come from my neighborhood? His approach to examining the depths of wisdom in the lived experience of ordinary, often overlooked people is a breath of fresh air for theological writing and a gateway for readers to encounter the Divine in the seemingly mundane.

Gregory C. Ellison II, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, and Founder of Fearless Dialogues

Patrick Reyes has given us a beautiful witness to the power, creativity, and resilience at the heart of Christian community. This is a book that every young person needs to read to be encouraged and enlivened in their call, and every leader in churches, theological education, and non-profits must listen to if they are going to adequately create space for the future generation of leaders.

Brian Bantum, Seattle Pacific University, Author of The Death of Race

A compelling narrative, practical theology, and vocational formation book all in one. Reyes is a scholar who courageously intertwines the reality of his life with deep and serious theological and theoretical reflection with the purpose of guiding one in vocational discernment. It is about time that a scholar need not leave his life aside to do theology and theoretical work, which comes from the core of ones life. Now this makes sense and will make sense to every generation reading it as mentors and prodigies, ministers and parishioners, or just people sharing deeply about faith matters around their coffee. This brings a full community around the table to discern, to heal, and to know God more profoundly. I will use it for my Christian ministry students for sure.

Elizabeth Conde-Frazier, Dean of Esperanza College, Eastern University, and Author of Listen to the Children

Walter Benjamin once said, It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us. This book is the best interpretation of this saying to our days. Patrick Reyes writes about the world and himself, showing the inside and the outside world in which the Latin@ community lives. There, without hope, we learn what hope is all about. This is a book to cry, rejoice, and ponder with at every page. I will read it to my students, to my community, and to my family.

Cludio Carvalhaes, Union Theological Seminary, New York City

At times both poetic and prophetic, Nobody Cries When We Die is a passionate hybrid of autobiography and theological reflection. Reyes writes such that biblical stories and theological ideas that are often flattened are fully rendered with depth, flesh, and feeling. To read this book is to enter into the world and experience it through the lens of a faithful Christian who sees struggle and injustice all around him, and there, in the midst of it all, finds God calling out for mercy and change. Reyes has heard this call. Nobody Cries embodies Gods demand for justice and prophetic transformation, and does so in a voice that never veers from compassion. It belongs on every shelf that holds Willie Jennings The Christian Imagination and Ta-Nehisi Coates Between the World and Me .

Callid Keefe-Perry, Author of Way to Water, cohost of Homebrewed Christianity, cofounder of the journal Theopoetics

Patrick Reyes provides us with a way through some of the most difficult questions of our time as a theologian, a scholar, and a community-accountable activist. His book will be a classic text in the canon of literature produced by liberation theologians and speaks to students who often are invisible in the seminary classroom. Teach it, read it, and maybe most important of all, live it!

Najeeba Syeed, Founder and Director of Center for Global Peacebuilding, Claremont School of Theology

Reyes does not pull any punches as he takes his reader on a journey that can be a both heartbreaking and profoundly affirming story. Through a powerful retelling of his own spiritual autobiography, Dr. Reyes demonstrates how through Gods redemptive power, his sense of calling and vocation have emerged, even in the midst of trauma, pain, loss, and oppression. The text challenges the reader to consider how ones own vocation can be heard and expressed in the messiness of everyday life.

Michael W. DeLashmutt, Vice President and Dean for Academic Affairs, The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church

Copyright

Copyright 2016 by Patrick Reyes

All rights reserved. For permission to reuse content, please contact Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, www.copyright.com .

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Scripture marked NASB is taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE , Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977. Used by permission.