Greg Boyle, S.J. on compassion and kinship

[MUSIC PLAYING] For 42 years, I've walked with gang members. And I can say definitively, I've never met an evil person, and I've never even met a bad person. I've met wounded people, broken people, despondent people, traumatized people, mentally ill people, and addicted people. But I've never met anybody evil or bad. I think if I can understand what a broken wounded person is, how much more so the God of love. Welcome to The Spiritual Life. I'm Father Jim Martin. On this podcast, we reflect on how people experience God in their prayer and in their daily lives. And I'm joined by my seasoned producer after two seasons, Maggie Vendorn. Maggie, good to be with you. Hey, it's great to be here finishing our second season of The Spiritual Life together. Thank you so much, Jim. I can't believe it. I can't believe we've done almost 50 episodes together, which is just-- Yeah, nearly 50. Yeah, time flies. Lots of content for people. Lots of things to listen to as they wait for our next season. But today, we have a very special, frequently requested guest. And can you tell us who we're speaking to today, Maggie? Yeah, I can't tell you how many times we receive an email saying, will you please have the incredible Father Greg Boyle on The Spiritual Life? And that's exactly who we want to leave you with at the close of the season. So a little bit of background on Father Gregory Boyle. He is a Jesuit priest, a best-selling author, and the founder of Homeboy Industries, the world's largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program. For more than four decades, he has worked alongside formerly incarcerated men and women and those seeking to leave gang life behind pioneering a model of radical kinship, healing, and restorative justice. Father Greg has received numerous honors for his humanitarian leadership, including the California Peace Prize, induction into the California Hall of Fame, recognition by President Barack Obama as a champion of change, the University of Notre Dame's LaTaurie Medal, and the Hilton Humanitarian Prize awarded to Homeboy Industries in recognition of its transformative work. Father Greg is the author of several acclaimed books, including tattoos on the heart, barking to the choir, the whole language, forgive everyone everything, and his latest cherished belonging, the healing power of love and divided times. It is such an honor to have Father Greg Boyle on our podcast. Yeah, he is one of my heroes. And I don't know anyone in the Catholic world, a Christian world who knows of him, who doesn't love, admire, respect, and is a little involved in him. I think he's a very saintly person. And so we're just delighted. Yeah, and I actually got to meet Father Greg some 20 years ago. I took an immersion trip at Santa Clara University to Homeboy Industries in East Los Angeles. And so I've been reading Father Greg and listening to his words for well ever since. Me too. And he's just incredible on our podcast today. Now, the audience question that we have this week is actually coming from Lucy. And it was sent in by her father, Michael. So Lucy's question is, how do we know for sure if God forgives us? And I thought, this is the perfect question for Greg Boyle and Jim Martin to tackle together. If you would like to ask Father Jim a question, you can write to us at [email protected]. And I have one more important housekeeping note as we wrap our second season of the spiritual life. And that is that we really want to hear from you our audience. What have you enjoyed about the podcast? Are there guests or conversations that have been especially inspiring or consoling? And what do you want to hear more of next season? So you can help us answer those questions by completing a brief listener survey, which is found in the show notes. And if you're looking for those show notes, they are found directly beneath this episode wherever you listen to podcasts. Or if you watch us on YouTube, they're right there as well. Yes, I hope people know they can watch us on YouTube. We have a lot of people on Spotify and Apple, but this is also a, shall we say, what would you say, video podcast? How do they say it? It's a video podcast, yeah. And if people join on YouTube, they can see your heavenly clouds behind you. And they can also see in this episode, Greg Boyle's really cool office at Homeboy Industries. So yeah, so watch us on YouTube as well. And now onto our conversation with Father Greg Boyle. (gentle music) Greg Boyle, welcome to the Spiritual Life. It's great to be with you, Jim. Thank you for joining us, Greg. You know, I don't know if I've ever told you this. Your unique person in my life, you are both a Jesuit brother and a real hero of mine. So first of all, thanks for your inspiration for me. Can we talk about how you got involved in ministry with gang members and former gang members? Yeah, it began when I was assigned to be pastor of Delores Mission Church, which was at the time the poorest parish in Los Angeles, nestled in the middle of two public housing projects. It had the highest concentration of gang activity in the whole city, eight gangs at war with each other. So we started a school, then we started a jobs program, and then we tried to find felony friendly employers, and we couldn't find enough of them. So we started things. Our first, we had a bunch of, you know, maintenance crew, landscaping crew, a crew to build our childcare center. All made up of members of the eight gangs at war with each other. And then we ended up, we couldn't find enough employers willing to hire our folks. So we started Homeboy Bakery. And now we have 17 social enterprises, lots of restaurants, bakery, electronic recycling, dog grooming, and 10,000 folks a year walk into our headquarters where I am delighted to be filming this with you. And they're all trying to look for a way to reimagine their lives and move beyond gang violence. So you were pastor of Delores Mission and then started this as an outgrowth of that, is that correct? - Yeah, I did it in, while I was pastor, so I was pastor from '86 to '92, so in '88, we were born as an organization. First, we called ourselves jobs for our future. And then by, you know, the early '90s, we had changed our name to Homeboy Industries. So we've just added things where this is quite a huge headquarters in Chinatown and Los Angeles. It's our fourth headquarters. And so we've moved and grown, and we're 38 years old now as an organization. So it's a one-stop shop, you know, we have curricular things. Tomorrow is our graduation, which is anybody who's graduated from any kind of AA degree, BA degree, high school diploma, we'll have 109 graduates tomorrow. It's always a huge event. And so we have free tattoo removal, therapy groups, classes, that kind of thing. - Now, is there a certain, would you say, skill set or spirituality that differs from being a parish priest or a pastor and working with gang members? Would there certain skills you had to develop or a spirituality that you had to develop, would you say? - Well, you know, when people come here, homies and folks right out of prison, what they hope for is a place where they feel safe. And once you've established that, then they can be seen and then they can be cherished. So if it's true, as I think it is, that the traumatized are likely to cause trauma, then it has to be equally true that the cherished will be able to find their way to the joy there is in cherishing themselves and others. You know, especially the lifers, when we have so many lifers right out of prison who never thought they'd see freedom again, they come in, they always say the same thing. We're used to being watched, but we're not used to being seen. So if we can change that equation, then people can surrender to their own healing and they can discover their true selves in loving, which is the whole point. - Now, I know you had experienced the ministering and spending time in Spanish speaking communities. Was there a shift that was needed in terms of, you know, working with this community that you felt you had to make or any challenges that you felt that were, you know, initially difficult? - Well, sometimes people feel like they disqualify themselves, you know, they say, I couldn't possibly minister to gang members 'cause I've never been a gang member, or all the ways that we kind of say that we can't be a beneficial presence. But I think if you're the proud owner of a pulse and you listen to people, and that's the difference because I remember a gang member in Houston who was working with, he was a hardcore gang intervention worker. And after a talk I gave, he said, how do you reach them, meaning gang members? And I think, I found myself saying to them, well, for starters, stop trying to reach them. Can you be reached by them? Can you allow your heart to be altered? Can you let them change you? You know, so you don't go to the margins to make a difference, then it's about you. But you go to the margins so that the folks at the margins make you difference. And then it's about us, you know, where people are finally, you know, walking each other home to the kind of kinship that God has in mind, you know, for all of us. I'm curious how you relate this to Jesus' ministry, obviously. It's a Christian ministry, but this idea that Jesus goes to the margins. And do you feel when you look at the Gospels that he's changed in a way by his experience with people in the margins? Yeah, I think absolutely. You know, it went the times when it says that he's been moved by seeing them and seeing their suffering and they seem to him like sheep without a shepherd. There are all these moments where he, throughout the Gospel, where you can see in a palpable way he's allowing his heart to be altered. It's, you know, in the spiritual exercises in the two standards, the meditation on the two standards. Ignatius says, "See Jesus standing in the lowly place." And it's a powerful image because Jesus isn't pointing at the lowly place and say, "Get your ass over there." It just says, "See him standing there." And you have a sense that maybe that's where the joy is, is standing in that lowly place with humility and receiving people and listening to people and allowing yourself to be reached by folks who suffer so much. And so for me, that's kind of a model of what I hope for always. Well, you know, it's funny you should bring this up because one of the stories I always tell about you, I don't know if you remember, I was interviewing you at the Ignatian Family Teaching for Justice probably about 10 years ago and the sky stood up in the audience and said, "I'm working with people in Camden, New Jersey and they're despairing and do you have any advice for me?" And I don't know if I've told you the story Greg, but I was on the stage and I thought, "Oh, what would my advice be? Here are the 10 things that I would do and here are the 10 things that I would say." And you just said what you just said now, which is, "Are you standing with them? Are you standing with the people you're working with?" And he said, "Yes." And he said, "Well, that's really what we're meant to do." And I think this idea of Jesus standing with people and Jesus standing among people is so powerful. So as it becomes a kind of saving, rescuing and fixing and you wanted to spell that notion, we have like 300 volunteers here who kind of help tutor and walk with people and help them prepare for their driving test or the exam. And I remember once a woman came in and she said, "I have to volunteer here." I said, "Well, why do you have to volunteer here?" And she goes, "I believe I have a message these young people need to hear." And I went, "Yikes." And I said, "You know, the minute you lose that message, I hope you come back to us, you know, because we don't want anybody's damn message, you know, we want. " Can you listen to people? Can you just be tender with people? Can you allow them to teach you something new that you never knew? But we have this notion that especially in volunteering anywhere, you know, we've come to serve which is a good impetus, but you want to kind of leave that at the door because what you're going for is a relational wholeness that will lead to kinship. And it's kind of that idea when you hear people say, "Oh, I worked at the soup kitchen and trust me. I got more from doing it than I gave it." It's that idea where people are surprised by that, you know. But you have to dispel, I think, the notion of, "I'm the service provider, you're the service recipient." You mentioned the spiritual exercises, so I'd like to take you back a little bit. What made you enter the Jesuits? Where did that vocation come from? Well, you know, I always feel like I say the same thing, but it's like, because I was taught by the Jesuits, and in those days, there were a lot of Jesuits at Loyola High School and Los Angeles. I had an uncle who was a Jesuit, but I didn't know him until a way later after I became a Jesuit. But so I found them to be hilarious, and that mattered to me. And then I found them prophetic because that mattered to me. That was during the Vietnam War. I remember Daniel Baraghan though, I once saw him, but I never, I saw him a couple times in my lifetime, but I never actually spoke to him or met him, which I wish I had. But he was one of the reasons why I became a Jesuit. But as I look back 54 years later after having entered the Jesuits, I always say that the marks of the true disciple, the authentic discipleship, is really about joy and fearlessness. That's kind of when I look back and I say, "Helarity and prophetic." It's the same thing, joy and fearlessness. Those are the marks I think of the authentic disciple. And as I look back and retrieve that memory of wanting to say, "I'll have what they're having." You know, I'm going to join the Jesuits. I was attracted to those two things. I thought both things were powerful, the fact that they were joyful and really quite funny, which I think is salvific. And they were fearless. They just put one foot in front of the necks and they were charging forward like Daniel Baraghan did during a particular historic time. So that's why I entered, I think. Is that what drew you to Dan, that joy and that fearlessness that you saw from afar? Yeah, for him, I also, I loved his poetry. So I love poetry. I always think it's a way of communicating the marrow of the gospel. And I always connected to that. So I loved his writings. But at that time, he was on the FBI most wanted list. And I kind of went, "Yeah, I get what he's doing and I'm drawn to that." So it was really kind of wanting to fight and not to count the cost kind of thing. Did Ignatian spirituality fit with you when you were young Jesuit? Did that take with you or rather did that jive with you right off the bat? Yeah, but you know that, you know, so you make the long retreat, the spiritual exercises twice. And then the vision, I was so young. But then when many years later, I did it after 10 years ordination or so and I was in Detroit. And that changed my life. I just, it really altered things because I had this palpable experience of, "Oh, he's new that God was love and that God loved me and God loved us." But I had a palpable experience that it was in fact God's joy to love me. That was radically new and that's never left me. But that came so much later in my life. I had already been pastor and it was like 10 years after ordination. But that's been something that has stayed and has quickened to me as the mystics would say and has kind of lodged itself in my heart forever. But we're at different stages, you know, when we're young, when you enter the Jesuits and then so whatever was your attraction to join, it may not well be the reason why you stay. But you grow and you evolve and things become more settled in your heart. Yeah. If you wouldn't mind talking about that experience on the retreat, I find that really beautiful. Can you describe where you meditated on a particular passage and then what was that experience like? How would you describe your experience of God's love being God's joy? Yeah. Part of it was I was on the heels of having had this extraordinary experience as pastor of Delores Mission and feeling so powerfully the love of the people with whom I was privileged to accompany. So gang members and the women in the parish and so I carried that into the experience of the long retreat. And then that became kind of how I had access to how God saw me. It was a little bit like, you know, we have, we would have these birthday parties at when it was my birthday or one of the other Jesuits there. And they would, they would feign all this kind of, you know, hey, there's a special emergency meeting of the parish council in the hall and you would go in and the lights would go on and it was packed with people in the Maddy-Ajis playing happy birthday. And of course you knew that this was going to happen. And I can remember a couple of years in going to my brother Jesuits and saying, hey, do we have to really do this? you know, do this whole surprise thing. And I remember her, I can't remember what Jesuit said this to me, but he was kind of stern and he says, "Don't think for a minute that this party is for you. It's for the people." And then he said, "It is their joy to love you." And that was kind of a passageway where I was able upon reflecting when I was in Detroit, I thought, "Yeah, that's exactly how God is." Then it's the God who can't take his eyes off of you. It's the God who's too busy loving you to be disappointed. You know, it's the God of love. And my friend Mirabai Star says, "Once you know the God of love, you fire all the other gods." And then that becomes part of your maturation and your growth. You start to say, "Well, I'm gonna fire that God because that's not the God of love." And the God of love, you kind of know in your gut in a way that you don't know in your head. And then you wanna live from that place. And it's a mystic filter, you know, to help you read scripture in a way that, you know, allows it to, you know, speak to you. And the spaciousness of God, the expansive heart of God, or as Ignatius says, "The God who's always greater." And so you always know that once you think you're arriving on something, it's even greater than you're arrival. - So by mystic filter, you mean a new pair of eyes to see God through? Is that the idea? - Well, it's kind of like, so I have a spiritual director, his name is Sergio. He's a gang member, he was a meth addict, he was in prison. Now he runs a food pantry. Every morning, Monday through at the whole every day of the week, we email each other after having read, after having done a kind of a lexio on the readings of the day. And he, you know, he'll always say, you need a mystical filter. So when, you know, you're reading earlier this week, God wipes out 185,000 assyrians or something, and you go, really? Well, you know, that's not the God I believe in. But today, the first reading from Isaiah says, from my mother's womb, and you go, yes, that's the God of love, that's the one I know. So it's a filter, and that's okay, you know, when people are doing the best they can in whatever historical moment they find themselves, and they're trying to explain, you know, why women are in pain during childbirth, and so they end up coming up with Adam and Eve, for example. Or whatever it is, you just kind of filter it out so that you can say, yeah, you know, I've loved you from your mother's womb, which is also to say, God is not waiting you for you to do something in order to love you, and God is not waiting for you to stop doing something so that he will love you. It's from your mother's womb, it's tender, and it's forever, and you're not gonna change God's mind about you. And well, that connects to, I think, to who we are and what we're called to do. And the other day, this, my spiritual director, I call him Sergio, he ended an email by saying, "So today I will surrender into the arms of the God of love and then choose to be those arms." Well, I think that's the whole law and the prophets. You receive the tender glance, you become the tender glance. You notice the notice of God, and then you become that notice in the world. And I think that's the whole movement that Ignatius understood and Francis of Assisi would call the marrow of the gospel, and it's how we take seriously what Jesus took seriously. We're gonna pause for a short break, but we will be right back. What's the most influential Jesuit university in the world? If you answered Georgetown, Boston College, Loyola, or another great Jesuit institution, think bigger. The answer is the pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. Founded by St. Ignatius in 1551, the Gregorian has helped shape the church for nearly five centuries. It is the birthplace of Jesuit higher education, educating generations of popes, bishops, scholars, and leaders around the world. The Gregorian University Foundation helps support students who carry that mission forward. Visit Gregorianfoundation.org to learn more. (gentle music) - I'm wondering how you communicate that to people who might not have had that same experience, who I sometimes say to people that they have these idols in their heads, you know, talking about like the false God, not the God of love, and those idols, you know, we often, we look at the first commandment, people say, "Well, I don't worship idols," but there's a kind of idol smashing that has to happen in people's consciousness is to move out of the idea of, you know, certain kinds of God, you know, the God of vengeance, the God of destruction, and into the idea of the God of love. So how do you move people from one understanding of God to that understanding of the God of love that they've not had experiences of love? And maybe that happens with the, your homies. Maybe they haven't had an experience of the God of love. How do you move people from that? - Yeah, that's an excellent question. And I think it's kind of, addresses the crux of the thing, because I remember being in this office with a homie who just, sometimes it happens, you know, where they're just overwhelmed with what they have had to carry and they're suffering and the trauma and the abandonment and the abuse and this homie, you know, grown man, it was just sobbing and he really was just wailing. Somehow it had unleashed our conversation. He just started to talk about basically what he had been denied throughout his whole life. And then I let him cry and then he finally says, has God abandoned me and then he cries some more. And then he looks at me and he goes, have you? And I realized in that instant that the only way he'll know that this is not on God's mind is to know that it's not on mine either. And that's kind of how we communicate. That's how people will know, you know, if you know the God of love and know the tenderness and the affectionate heart and then you can choose to be that in the world with people for whom hope and love and tenderness is exceedingly foreign. If you can be that for people, then that's compelling. It's not about explaining or teaching or let me tell you who Jesus is. So you want to see Jesus and you want to be Jesus. And the Christ in you recognizes the Christ in him. And that's how you proceed because then it's all heart work. And it comes from the deepest place. And it's how people will come to know, the truth of the God who loves without measure and without regret. - Are there people for whom that's particularly difficult in your experience? Is there a certain kind of group of people that find that hard? - Well, you know, I think part of the problem is, you know, for 42 years I've walked with gang members. And I can say definitively, I've never met an evil person and I've never even met a bad person. I've met wounded people, broken people, despondent people, traumatized people, mentally ill people and addicted people, but I've never met anybody evil or bad. And I think that's gang members have taught me that. If there's one lesson I've learned, it's that. But we've gotten stuck in kind of this moral quest and I think the moral quest has never kept us moral. It's just kept us from each other. It's a way of drawing lines that Jesus wants to erase, you know, thus us and them, the good people and the bad people. And it's difficult because you get into the sheep and the goats and you kind of go, I'm not so sure the God of love sees things that way. And so that's difficult. It's a hard one to kind of, to return to some other, you know, a way that divides us one from the other. And we are the people who follow the gospel and you are the people who don't. And so it's more nuanced. It invites us to something that's, you know, really quite a mystical view, I think, frankly, where we hold. to see people as God does. And once they see you seeing them with those eyes, then they become that truth. They inhabit that truth. And then they know that loving is their home. And once they know loving is their home, they discover they'll never be homesick again because they've connected to their true selves in loving. But I think it's true that sometimes people's access to knowing that they're unshakably good, which is how God sees them, their access is compromised by their trauma, by their mental illness, by their broken lives. It's hard for them to see the truth of who they are. That's kind of the dynamic here at Homeboy Industries that people are cherished into a place of flourishing, not where they do good and avoid evil, but where they know that they're unshakably good. That's the truth of who they are. And then they claim that as their truth. And then they live from that truth and that changes everything. That's really beautiful. What do you do with the sheep and the goats then? What do you do with Jesus saying, "Summer in, summer out"? Yeah, that's a tough one because just like, I kind of put it in a category of when Jesus sees a guy having a seizure, he and the whole crowd go, "Oh, he's possessed by a demon." And Jesus heals him and I don't disparage or doubt the healing. I just think his diagnosis was not correct because he was not possessed by a demon. He clearly had epilepsy. Here's a pill and it'll probably help your seizures. What do we make of that? You go, "That's okay." I mean, none of that stuff shakes my faith. It shapes it, which is the way it's supposed to be. And you kind of like read scripture and you go, "People are doing the best they can, even Jesus." And then it becomes something that's more open-hearted and loving and compassionate. And I don't know what to do with the sheep and the goats except that I kind of believe with the mystics who say, sometimes reluctantly, "Jillian of Norwich" or "Trace of Avila" or people like that will say, "Okay, there's a hell. I think it's empty, but there's a hell." But they're reluctant to acknowledge that because they know the God of love and they just know how God is rooting for us. Like I just had a conversation with a homey just an hour ago who did the closing prayer and it was, you know, and everybody takes turns. And it was a kind of, you know, Jesus is the only way and unless you through Jesus. And it was very off-putting because there are a lot of people here who aren't Christian. And so I gently kind of said, "How does God see the people here who are Buddhist and are Jewish and or who are agnostic and don't believe?" It's kind of like, how do you invite people into a more expansive, generous sense of who God is and how God sees us? And, you know, we had a conversation. He didn't agree with me, but I was trying to kind of have the prayer be a little bit more, or questioning basically the theology of it that is so us and them and that's kind of the opposite of who we are here at home boy industries. But I think it's tough, you know, but I don't know, have you ever met an evil person? I guess I've met people who do evil things. I would say that, right? And you know, you look at history and you see people who are doing evil things. Of course, everyone thinks they're doing it for the right reasons, right? Everyone thinks they're, you know, they have good motivations. You know, two things, as you're talking Greg, I was thinking that I always go back to one, one of our Jesuit brothers, Bruce Moral said this once, "I think on our my tersianship we were together." And he said, "A God who doesn't judge is a God who doesn't care and God cares what we do, which I liked very much." But then I also go back to God's mercy, you know, which is greater than we could ever imagine. And you look at the prodigal son, you know, and the father just forgives him even before the son says anything. So I'm very much, you know, on long lines of God's mercy. And I think Pope Francis said recently that he feels that hell is probably empty. The only people I think they're doing hell, I mean, who knows? Are people who reject God's mercy? That's my understanding that I would imagine who not, I mean, who knows? But that people who might be so arrogant or vain in the afterlife to say that I don't need it might still be stuck in hell. But I would imagine eventually God's mercy overcomes all that too. So I really do believe hell is empty. That's how I see it. Yeah, but I also think, for me, it's like I was just, you know, was watching Barack Obama as he opened the presidential center in Chicago. And you know, he was talking about the presidents who were present there. But he also talked about his opponents like Mitt Romney and John McCain. And he had a whole litany of characteristics, honesty, compassion, sense of duty, things like that. And as I listened to the list, I said, who are the people who have those characteristics? And I would say healthy people have those characteristics. Not good people because I believe that we're all unchakably good and the journey is to discover your goodness. Because that's the truth of who you are from the mother's womb. That's the truth of who you are. But he was describing in my mind healthy adults. So does a healthy adult reject God? No. Does a healthy adult is a healthy adult racist or a misogynist or an anti-Semite? No, nobody healthy is are those things. And so then it becomes like racism is not about hate. It's about health because nobody healthy is a racist, I think. So how do you help people walk them home to health and fullness? And homies when they come here, they're filled with hate for their enemies for its racial hate. And then watch what happens once they kind of feel cherished and whole. And they come to terms with what was done to them. And then they move beyond, they transform their pains so they don't have to transmit it anymore. Find the racism now. You won't. Not because they changed their mind, but because they healed. And now they're they're at a different place. And you mentioned the the prodigal son. The truth is the father doesn't forgive the son. He bypasses it. He doesn't say, what do you have to say? He doesn't. He has the son has a fake ass apology all written. But he doesn't want to hear it because he has moved directly as you say to mercy. And mercy is God as Pope Francis would say. And so you know, and my spiritual director Sergio says, forgiveness, there's too much back and forth back and forth. He goes, I only believe in forth and forth as mercy. And mercy is God. And I share that belief. I'm really curious what you say about the transformation that happens away from hate. And you're describing it as in a sense a result of someone feeling cherished. I'm also wondering in your experience, does it also have to do with coming to know people who are you know, previous objects of that hate? You know, in my experience with LGBT people, there's a lot of hatred in homophobia. But once it's someone in their family, and then it's a lot different. Some curious if people who come in hating someone from a rival gang member or another ethnic group or a racial group, is it also about getting to know them? Yeah, I mean, the truth of the matter is you can't demonize people you know. That's untenable for human beings. And so, you know, we have enemies who are right behind me here in the bakery who are making croissants together. And initially, they won't talk to each other because they used to shoot at each other. But give it some time and you cannot demonize people you know. And once you know people, I mean, does that always happen? It always happens. I mean, it says predictable as can be. Although in the early days, I that would make me panic a little bit. Oh, God, they're not going to talk to each other. And now I just go, oh, go ahead. Don't talk to each other because I know you can't sustain it. But I think it's important to you know, nobody healthy is homophobic. And that's okay. It's an indicator. It's not a problem. It's an indicator. It's telling you that wholeness in all of us, we all have to walk home to hellness and to health and to wellness. And we have to help each other do it. But if you kind of, you know, let's stand up to hate. I go, "Well, who do you think you're talking about? You're talking about human beings." And their hatred indicates that people are broken and wounded and how do we heal? It's like the day might come when we stop punishing wound and sending people to prison and we might decide to heal it. But instead, it's all up in the head. How do we teach people to love? And I go, "Oh, no, just love people." But we need to teach them not to hate anymore. You go, "No, hate is an indicator. It's a symptom. It's not a problem. It's pointing to one." And I learned that with gang members because they were killing each other. And I was bearing eight kids in a three week period and it was horrific. But I knew early on that the gang violence was a lethal absence of hope. So instead of addressing the violence, I wanted to infuse hope to kids for whom hope was foreign. And then watch what happens to the violence. The violence disappeared. It really did. Because you addressed the thing you needed to address, which was the under-girded despair that was lying underneath. Find the thorn underneath, the homies always say, find the thorn underneath, and then watch what happens. We want to address things head on, homophobia, misogyny, antisemitism, racism. I mean, you just go, this is why we don't make progress. Because we don't know that these things are, they're just the cough. We want to find out, is it lung cancer or am I allergic to my cat? That's important to know. Otherwise, we get tripped up by creating us in them. There are those who hate and those who love. Those who are open and those who are homophobic. And I think it's important. It's healthier for us to kind of, but once you know that everybody's unshakably good and we belong to each other, now we can roll up our sleeves and we can really make progress, I think. Well, let me ask you advice. I've never asked advice on the show before, but I was at the Synod of Bishops and in 2023 and 2024. And you know, a lot of people knew that I worked with LGBTQ Catholics and boy, I got some real pushback and some real homophobia. And some of it came from Bishops and who said that it's disgusting, it's awful. And I'll confess something to you, Greg. I felt that if I only was able to sort of share stories with them, let me share a story of these two men who took care of each other, these two women, that somehow would change them. Well, I was sorely mistaken. They just said that's very nice, but it's still awful. You know, I'm curious in those situations, when you meet someone who is just dead set against listening and dead set against any sort of conversion, where do you go from there? - Well, again, I think love never fails. I was on a podcast not that long ago where I was talking about Paul saying love never fails. And he kind of, the guy laughed at me and he kind of said, well, our audience is, you know, they're gonna think you're naive, you know? I don't know, show me a time when love actually failed. You can show me lots of times where we tried love and then stopped or didn't try it at all, but show me when it actually failed. How we diagnose things is so essential. No treatment plan has ever been born from a diagnosis that was faulty. So if a bishop is homophobic, then this is not a moral judgment. It's a health assessment. Can you be healthy and homophobic? No, that's impossible because that's not how God sees our sisters and brothers, period. And so you know that how do you love people into flourishing, into thriving, into being as loving as they can be? But we're so convinced it's about winning the argument. And I think, you know, we just need to abandon that mindset like how am I gonna win them over? In the end, love will prevail. I know it will, we all know it will. But it's hard to be faithful to that. And it's dispiriting, but we also have a kind of a notion that says if somebody went to Harvard, then they really know better and know. And if somebody is a bishop, how can they be homophobic? And you go, welcome to the human race. We're kind of all, none of us are well until all of us are well. And that includes everybody. And so like I don't demonize, for example, the president of the United States. I go, you know, I have huge compassion because I know this is not what wholeness and wellness looks like. And that's okay. I mean, it's, we need to work hard to resist. And so all of us need to be anchored so solidly in love. David French says there are two kinds of churches. The fear of the world church or love your neighbor church. Homeboy industry wants to be a love your neighbor church. But you and I can walk into churches across the country and we have where you go, oh, this is a fear of the world church. This is circle the wagons church. Then you can go to another one. You go, oh, this is love your neighbor church. It's not a circle the wagons. It's widen the circle. It's imagining a circle of compassion and then imagine nobody standing outside that circle. And it's important to talk that way. It seems to me because then it's about, you know, imitating the God of love in the way we worship and the way we gather and how inclusive we are and do members of the LGBTQ community feel welcome in our churches or are people to a frightened of them. And it's important to stand clearly for a church that is welcoming and inclusive. And in the end, Jesus only took four things seriously, inclusion, nonviolence, unconditional loving kindness and compassionate acceptance. And that's the church we want to be. And we can't be dissuaded by whatever other movements there are. We want to return to the marrow of the gospel. And Pope Leo has really done this, speaks this so clearly that it's very heartening. - Well, amen to that. You know, I was thinking as you were talking, you deal with so many different kinds of responses and reactions in the world. You deal with a lot of suffering. You deal with a lot of despair. But I would imagine you also deal with a lot of adulation and praise and things like that. I'm wondering what kind of spiritual practice is you have to keep you grounded in all of that with all these things kind of coming at you? - Well, I don't know. Humiliation is my compass. So, you know, all the time you're being brought low in a way that you can delight in it and laugh at it. And so the trick is to have a light grasp not to cling to anything, not to the adulation or to the people who tell you your full of it. It's like kind of water off a duck's back. You want to just, you receive it, you listen to it. You feel it, you understand it. And then you let go of it as fast as you can. Both praise and blame. Otherwise, it gets crazy making. And so you want to live as little the truth were true and to put first things recognizably first. And like yesterday I had a homey in my office who was going through a hard time and I knew he was and one of the case managers says, talk to him and so he came in and he said, "Yeah, I had a hard time last week." In fact, I was really thinking to end it all. And then he looked at me and he said, "But then I said, nah, I thought of my dog." And then he said, "And then I thought of you." And I looked at him and I said, "In that order?" Like that. And he just, he died laughing. And I thought, how do we delight in the spirit? How do you breathe in the spirit that delights in your being and how do you breathe that out into the world? And how do you laugh? And how do you try to not get stuck anywhere, even in a place of great difficulty and despair even? And how do you know that all we have is each other. And it was a great moment because it was how do we move beyond a clinging to how hard things are and they're really hard and everybody here I stand in awe at what they have to carry rather than judgment. It's hard to pull off because you have to always maintain a certain kind of courage which is which is really curiosity where you want to lean in and you want to say I wonder what's going on with him rather than you know cut to the chase and off with their heads and you can no longer work here or whatever it is you want to be able to have a high degree of reverence of for what people are going through and the sense of humor I think is the highest form of holiness you know because otherwise you get stuck in places where you don't want to be. Well I like that idea of being free it's very agnation you know not being attached to these things and letting these things go can you talk to us about your your daily spiritual practices that that help you do that you know is it reading the gospels is it taking out a moment of time to pray contemplatively what's your what's your daily practice like. I'm kind of a monk in many ways I first of all I'm an introvert but I I get up stupidly early at 245 every morning and I have my own routine and my prayer and my reading and I sit in front of my little my little altar and I light my candle and a lot of it is Lexi will divvina where you're kind of going through scripture but also I'll read a in a little page here in a page there and of course I've used your books over the many years where I'll read I don't read a lot I'll just read a little snippet and then it allows that to you know my own kind of meditation of breathing in and breathing out so I'm kind of dedicated to that part of the thing is you know it's like homies here who are in recovery you know you you say one day at a time and I go whoa that's way too long you know it really has to be one breath at a time and so though you have your practice and you have to be faithful to it and how you stay anchored and you begin your day and you go yeah now I'm ready well you know give it three hours and you're going to be off with their heads because life happens so it's hard to you know to kind of keep that going it's not once and for all in the same way that your meditation in the morning is not carries you for the rest of the day you have to be mindful as you breathe and you receive people in your office or whatever you're doing and you want to stay as attentive as the God we have and it's hard to do but the more conscious and mindful and anchored you are that's kind of an essential thing obviously so in your work where do you encounter God the most would you say well it's always in the people here and that's why it's it's so essential to find the locus of this in in being Jesus and seeing Jesus and the Christ in me recognizes the Christ in you and is that in everybody it's in every damn buddy and so you want to be able to have the eye it's kind of new eyewear so you can look at people in a way and basically to see how how would God see this guy who's quite belligerent and driving me crazy how would God see you know this guy who just stumbled in who's probably a combo burger of meth and madness how would God see this person and it's all about asking for a mystical lens that sees things differently and obliterates once and for all the illusion that were separate that there's an us and a them if if you really do believe it's just us then then it enables you to to again roll up your sleeves so i mean homeboy doesn't want to shake its fist at anything it just wants to roll up its sleeves and it doesn't really so much want to point things out it hopes to point the way and that maybe people will I don't know see a place like this like the front porch of the house everybody wants to live in and it's not prideful I mean it's just people feel at home and and they're they all come here as enemies with each other and that's not how they leave and I don't know the secret sauce is just trying to create a community of kinship such that God might recognize it well thank you for doing that Greg I would love to talk for another six hours but you're busy and we have we have an audience question we end each podcast with an audience question and this is our first from a child this is from man named Michael Martin no relation and it is on behalf of his daughter Lucy I'm not sure how old Lucy is so here's Lucy's question I will answer it first I'll take a stab at it and then I'm sure you'll be able to handle it it is how do we know for sure if God forgives us so Lucy asks how do we know for sure if God forgives us Lucy I would say to look at the best people you know and to see how they forgive as a sign of God's love for you and for other people so if you've seen your parents or your grandparents forgive to know that this comes from God and to know that if your parents and grandparents and friends can forgive how much more could God forgive but also it's thinking about Jesus and thinking about the stories that Jesus tells in the gospels about forgiveness which are all the time and so Jesus is our our image of God and so if you look at Jesus you can look at God so I would say Lucy maybe look at people in your life who forgive and think of how much greater God is and then also look at Jesus who really shows us through his stories and through himself you know even forgiving someone from the cross that God always forgives so Greg from Lucy how do we know for sure if God forgives us yeah I agree with you about looking to other people you know we I don't know where we got this notion that somehow we were better parents than than God is and you it's not hard for people to imagine as parents you know will you ever change your opinion about your son or daughter you know will the day ever come when you withdraw love and say that's it I mean no healthy parent has ever done that so then how much more so God as you say correctly I think you know that but we can connect to our own as grandparents or parents how you love your kids without measure and without regret and nothing will change it it just nothing will change that God delights in us and even if we're less than delightful God doesn't delight in us less it's just how it is behold the one be holding you and smiling that's how parents are so look to people in your life who are like that and yes indeed how much more so God imagine well Greg Boyle I want to thank you for so much first of all thank you for being a great Jesuit and a great Jesuit brother thank you for inspiring me and so many people with your work particularly your work and with the homeboys thank you for being just a wonderful model of Christianity for people and thanks for your time on the spiritual life and thanks for being so honest with us so basically thank you I love you Jim I'm so proud to call you my brother thank you well anytime we are able to have Father Greg Boyle on the podcast is a great day Jim what an incredible conversation what stood out to you about it well first of all I just like being with him I just like being in the same space with him even if it's virtually he's a very holy person and you know really walks the walk I was really interested since as you could tell since I asked the question about how one does deal with praise and criticism because you know I get a lot but everyone gets a lot right I mean you get a lot everyone listening or watching gets a lot and I think that kind of radical detachment which is a very Jesuit way of looking at it like you know water off a duck's back that you don't sort of you listen to it as he said which I thought was very wise you listen to it you pay attention but you don't let it kind of make a claim on you which is what I heard him saying which was super helpful and that detachment works both ways because sometimes you know we're encouraged to just let it go water off a duck's back and usually people are referring to criticism but it's also true when it comes to praise and adulation as well that you know you can't cling to that and then expect not to be hung up on a piece of criticism yeah right and then you get greedy or I think you know for more and more praise it's never enough in another episode I think I quoted Thomas Merton who also said the humble person realizes that it all goes back to God and so praise you know it doesn't disturb that person because it's not really ultimately about you. It's about God's gifts for you and through you. So I found that really clarifying and you know just a personal bit of advice. How about you Maggie? What stood out for you in that standout interview? Yeah so every time I listen to Father Greg speak, I'm reminded of something that I think is just so core or kind of like the marrow of the gospel that he said that God is love and we can have lots of competing visions or images of God that are not loving and that paradigm shift that that God is in fact love and that through those goggles or that I wear we are meant to see one another and to see the world. It sounds radical at first and I might be tempted to think that I need to go to a retreat or a monastery in order to see the world like that but Father Greg shows that it's quite the opposite. He's doing it on the streets of LA you know with former gang members so that kind of love is very possible and I'm just glad to be reminded of it. Yeah even in the most difficult circumstances I mean when he was talking about you know people coming in and being violent I mean most of our lives you know aren't that violent and that he's able to you know just continue to love in that situation it's really it's such a yeah it's such a goal for so many people. And at the same time he did indicate that they have boundaries. Yeah. That you can look at someone with love and say come back when you're ready. You know and I think having a healthy set of boundaries is also pretty critical to the spiritual life. No I love that very realistic and very gospel oriented. Yeah so we are closing our second season of the spiritual life. We'll miss talking to you but only for about two months we're going to be back in miss September and we would love it if you would complete a listener survey that we have created just to let us know how you're enjoying the show. Who you'd like to hear from next. Some of the guests that have stood out to you so far. So Jim where can our listeners find the listener survey. Yeah so Maggie those are in the show notes and that is the description found immediately beneath this episode wherever you listen to podcasts or watch us if you follow along on YouTube. And I just want to say thank you to you for I can't believe almost 50 episodes. You've been such a great producer. I give you lots of different adjectives prayerful, indefatigable, wonderful. So thanks for all of your wonderful questions and prods and helps and also thanks to all the listeners and viewers for following us along. We have a great slate already for next season and I also want to say if you're sad that it's ending for this season just go back and listen to all the many shows we've had for the first two seasons and maybe do a little repetitio as Ignatius would say repetition. Yeah these are all worth revisiting and Jim and has been my great pleasure to be a producer on this show. I feel like I am sitting just listening to really sage men and women talk about the spiritual life and you've brought all of these good friends and new friends onto the podcast. So thanks for letting me be a part of it. You're welcome and I've written an article based on today's show about heroes in our lives. Moral heroes in our lives and the link is in the show notes. Also I'd like to let you know that I have a new book out a memoir called Work in Progress. It's the story of finding work through a variety of crazy summer jobs like bus boy dishwasher, caddy, factory worker and many more and eventually finding God. Basically it's a lighthearted spiritual memoir about growing up in the 60s, 70s and 80s and is available in print, ebook and audio anywhere books are sold. I really hope you enjoy work in progress. The spiritual life with Father James Martin is produced by Maggie Van Doren, Sebastian Gomes and myself, production assistants from Kevin Christopher Robles and Will Gwaltieri. Adam Buck Mueller engineered the show. The theme scores courtesy of Teddy Abrams and Nate Farrington. You can follow me across social media at James Martin SJ. Thank you so much and God bless you. [MUSIC]