Tattoos on the Heart

I am reading Tattoos on the Heart with tears in my eyes, every chapter. Maybe it’s because I’m fifty-five. Maybe it’s because I know humankind can be kind. Maybe it’s one of those exceedingly rare stories of raising hearts into hope in the midst of a seemingly hopeless situation. Or maybe I just love bread.

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Father Greg Boyle planted himself in a tough barrio in Los Angeles many years ago, and like any good Jesuit, he let the sisters in his parish whip up a community salad of caring. Gang activity was overtaking their ‘hood, but these women were mothers with Jesus in their hearts. Whatever the trauma, they were mammas. And mammas didn't close their church's doors to sorrow, violence, poverty or fear.

Two decades later, Homeboy Industries is one result, a place where former gang members can learn a trade, lose tattoos and bake and serve sourdough bread. Father Boyle masterminded this gang intervention program, touring and talking about his work to raise awareness and funds.

If you need a steady dose of goodness, let G-dog give you a tour of his calling among the stressed and oppressed. He believes so strongly in the power of god's unconditional love, that he can hold that space and wait for gangbangers to come into the grace of it. He knows they can come into the grace of it. I love this book for precisely that, Boyle's snapshots of the infallible power of “not two.”*

My favorite quote so far: “Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a covenant between equals.”

*From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Zen demands the practitioner to overcome the dualism operative in the everyday standpoint, which it speaks of by using the phrase “not two.” The use of the phrase “not two” expresses Zen's proclivity to favor the simple and the concrete, such that it is not expressed as a negation of dualism.

And here are two great videos of the Homeboy Industries. A documentary is in the works.