compassion and kinship

Fr. Gregory Boyle

Father Gregory Boyle, founder and executive director of Homeboy Industries, is an acknowledged expert on gangs, intervention and re-entry and today serves on the U.S. Attorney General's Defending Childhood Task Force. 
 

Born in Los Angeles, one of eight children, Fr. Greg worked in the family-owned dairy, loading milk trucks to earn his high school tuition. An enduring memory of that youthful time is when "...these weathered old truckers would come up to me, put their arms around me and point at my father in the distance, on the loading dock, and say, 'Your dad is a great man.'" Lessons from that first job apply at Homeboy Industries today where employees come to change for themselves and their children. Homeboy Industries traces its roots to "Jobs For A Future" (JFF), created in 1988 by Boyle at Dolores Mission. To address the escalating problems of gang-involved youth, he and the community developed an elementary school, day care program and sought legitimate employment for young people. Boyle serves on the National Gang Center Advisory Board (Bureau of Justice Assistance and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention). He is also a member of the Advisory Board for the Loyola Law School Center for Juvenile Law and Policy and previously served on the California Commission on Juvenile Justice, Crime and Delinquency Prevention. The National Child Labor Committee recognized Fr. Greg with the first Nancy M. Daly Advocacy Award for Service to Children and Youth on January 30, 2012. Homeboy Industries, now located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, is recognized as a national and international model for youth seeking to move beyond gangs and achieve a life of hope. 

homeboy-industries.org

many routes

Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand
 in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them,
 being content to listen to others who have been there 
and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains 
accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least
 dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination.
 Still others, inexperienced and untrusting, attempt to make their own routes.
 Few of these are successful, but occasionally some, by sheer will
and luck and grace, do make it. Once there they become more aware 
than any of the others that there's no single or fixed number of routes. 
There are as many routes as there are individual souls.

- Robert M. Pirsig
from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

roses, late summer

What happens
to the leaves after
they turn red and golden and fall
away? What happens

to the singing birds
when they can't sing
any longer? What happens
to their quick wings?

Do you think there is any
personal heaven
for any of us?
Do you think anyone,

the other side of that darkness,
will call to us, meaning us?
Beyond the trees
the foxes keep teaching their children

to live in the valley.
so they never seem to vanish, they are always there
in the blossom of the light
that stands up every morning

in the dark sky.
And over one more set of hills,
along the sea,
the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness

and are giving it back to the world.
If I had another life
I would want to spend it all on some
unstinting happiness.

I would be a fox, or a tree
full of waving branches.
I wouldn't mind being a rose
in a field full of roses.

Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of.
Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
Or any other foolish question.

~ Mary Oliver

 

break yourself apart

Be with those who help your being.

Don't sit with indifferent people, whose breath 

comes cold out of their mouths.

Not these visible forms, your work is deeper.

A chunk of dirt thrown in the air breaks to pieces.

If you don't try to fly, 

and so break yourself apart,

you will be broken open by death,

when it's too late for all you could become.

Leaves get yellow. The tree puts out fresh roots

and makes them green.

Why are you so content with a love that turns you yellow?

~ Rumi 

 translation Coleman Barks

the road home

An ant hurries along a threshing floor

with its wheat grain, moving between huge stacks

of wheat, not knowing the abundance 

all around.  It thinks its one grain

is all there is to love.

So we choose a tiny seed to be devoted to.

This body, one path, one teacher.

Look wider and farther.

The essence of every human being can see,

and what that essence-eye takes in,

the being becomes.  Saturn. Solomon!

The ocean pours through a jar,

and you might say it swims inside

the fish!  This mystery gives peace to

your longing and makes the road home home.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks