Mark Labberton: Welcome to Conversing. This episode will be a replay of a conversation I had a few years ago with Father Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries. His story is well known — the work that he has done, along with many others, in gang violence and in gang recovery.
All of the processes and patterns that are necessary to help people extricate themselves from lives that have spiralled in one direction, to be able to actually become healthier and more complete people in a community of kinship. That’s really what this conversation is about.
And we decided to play this episode again for several reasons. First is that my own week has been a bit disturbed by the passing of an extended family relative, a beloved aunt named Aunt Mo. And I’d like to dedicate this episode to her memory. So in part, it’s an episode about loss and grief, which is certainly what Father Boyle is discussing. Even if it’s not about the loss of a life, it certainly encompasses that.
And it encompasses much more as well. It’s also Memorial Day weekend in 2026. Each year, this is a significant moment in our nation’s life, but it’s also a significant moment because of the current war going on in the Middle East and the amount of grief that there is in the world today — over war and violence and poverty and disease, political and social violence, losses of so many, many, many kinds, all around the globe. And what Father Boyle points to again and again is God’s kinship with us and our intended kinship with one another.
I hope this episode will strengthen you as it has me on many occasions, and remind us that in addition to all these things, there’s also grief over the recent Supreme Court decision about the Voting Rights Act — the loss of a gain, that those, particularly in communities of colour, particularly in Black communities, were held together in hope by this act, which has now been undone by the Supreme Court. Grief comes in many forms, and our need for one another is as great as ever.
I hope this episode will be for you an encouragement, a reminder, a hope of God’s kinship with you — and of our kinship with all those who are around us, whether it’s experiencing loss ourselves or whether it’s also experiencing the loss of others. Listen now to this conversation with Father Greg Boyle as we talk about the issues of kinship.
It’s a great joy today to be able to welcome the Reverend Gregory Boyle, the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, to Conversing. I’m very, very grateful that he’s here, partly because he’s been a person who has had a lot of influence on my life, though he probably doesn’t know that. He’s also a person who has been for me an exemplar of a person who integrates, in some of the most tangible, gritty ways imaginable, both the reality of the gospel and the reality of real human need in all of its variations and challenges. I’ve admired his courage and his faithfulness and his creativity, but perhaps most of all, simply his compassion. Father Boyle, it’s really a great joy to welcome you to Conversing.
Greg Boyle: Happy to be here. Thank you, Mark.
Mark Labberton: I know that you grew up as an Angeleno. You were born in this area. Tell us a little bit about that. And in particular, I think I know that you had a family of eight and that you came from a Roman Catholic background. Tell us just about your own spiritual formation earlier in your life.
Greg Boyle: Well, you know, the large family is kind of a thing of the past. Boy, we just had the most fun ever as kids. You know, there were five girls, three boys. Lived over on the west side of town, the Wilshire, mid-Wilshire area. And, you know, we were super Catholic, you know, in as much as we went to Catholic schools. And we were kind of the Norman Rockwell painting of — if you could imagine — just eight kids with the two parents walking to St. Brendan’s Church as kids, you know. So that was always kind of part of who we were.
But my dad, who died about 25 years ago, was just an enormously ethical human being and kind of a silent man, definitely a man of few words. And yet, you know, I used to work at this dairy where my great-grandfather had founded it, and all male Boyles worked. It was an extremely sexist operation, and the females never got a foothold in there. It lasted 102 years old, and then they just recently sold it, I guess. But I would watch him with people, and he just had so much integrity. And so he was kind of, you know, an embodiment for me of what it meant to live as though the truth were true. And this is what it looks like when you put first things recognizably first.
And so he wasn’t kind of fanatical about his faith — he was just so quiet about it — faith in the sense of praying every night and going to church and that kind of thing. But he lived, you know, the gospel, and he translated it into: how will this work in my place of business, or with my kids? So anyway, that was part of the context. But, you know, community — when you live in community, which I would call a large family — indeed. Yeah. You know, when I entered the Jesuits, you could tell the folks who were accustomed to living in community and those who weren’t. Those from families like mine, we knew what it was like. You don’t leave dishes in the sink. Hello. You know, and everybody has a job and everybody does their part. And so there were little things like that. But there was also a spirit of great fun and humour and endless kidding. I mean, we all have developed very thick hides. And large families do that for you, free of charge.
Mark Labberton: Indeed. It comes with the package.
Greg Boyle: That’s right.
Mark Labberton: What would you say were the things that took you on into pursuing the possibility of religious orders? Was that a natural progression for you? Had other siblings done that?
Greg Boyle: Oh, I had an uncle who was a Jesuit. But in those days, you know, I couldn’t say that I knew him very well because there was a lot more isolation. And so he wasn’t coming over all that often. I knew him later once I entered the Jesuits, but he certainly wasn’t a reason why I entered. I have odd reasons.
You know, I was educated by the Jesuits. They were a combo burger of hilarity and prophetic. So this is during the Vietnam War. So I watched them, you know, and they were just wild, you know, and there were like 30 of them who taught at Loyola High. And you could never do this now, but it was like, hop in the car and we’re going to San Francisco for the largest anti-war — yeah, count me in. And we didn’t have permission slips in those days. It was just — God knows you could never do this now — but it was just wild and fun. And I thought, these are joyful human beings and they know how to speak truth to power.
And so I had odd influence. I was just thinking — Jane Fonda has just joined our board. And I knew Tom Hayden. And I was just thinking that when I — you know, the summer of ’68, because I saw this on the news, I think it’s 50 years now — and I could hear the chants, you know, “the whole world is watching.” And I kind of knew him then, knew of him then. We became friends later and I did his funeral. But I remember that oddly. You know, he always kind of got a kick out of this. But oddly, it was one of the reasons why I joined the Jesuits. Because of moments like that, I thought, the whole world is watching — and yes, and people kind of standing out in front and saying, we ought not to let this continue. And so those are one of the things. They seem kind of odd to lead somebody to join the Society of Jesus, but it did for me.
Mark Labberton: When I think of the Jesuits, I think of an intense combination of both activism — which is what you’ve just partly described — but also intense study, reflection, theological considerations are very important to Jesuits. History is especially important to Jesuits, or at least among Jesuits that I’ve known. How more specifically does being a Jesuit affect the course of your life, would you say?
Greg Boyle: Well, there’s what Jesuits would call the charism — sort of tenets of that: finding God in all things, and somehow discernment, and spiritual exercises, and the movements of the Spirit, and “take care to keep always before your eyes first God,” which is sort of a tenet of Ignatius from our constitutions. And so there are all these things that become part of the air you breathe. But there is that notion — you know, part of the notion is intellectual and studies. And God knows, you know, Jesuits study longer than anybody ought to or need to. But there’s also kind of a wide acceptance of — do you want to be a doctor? Go ahead, you know. So we have doctors.
And there’s just kind of a sense of, you would hope anyway, that God’s will is really about doing what you most deeply, profoundly want. That there is no difference, actually, between what God wants for you and what you most deeply want. Part of the discernment is: are you sure you know what you most deeply want? So it’s never this outside-yourself thing — I’m going to try to find, I want to do this, but God wants me to do that. That’s impossible.
Mark Labberton: Right.
Greg Boyle: It’s like a false dichotomy, I think. Yeah. I think it is. So the role of a superior, for example, is to make sure that people are never strangers to themselves, that they know what they most deeply want. So, I mean, I like all that stuff. I think that’s kind of how the Jesuits operate, you know. And we’re always trying to return to that original charism and trying to adapt — what’s it mean now, given what we’re living in, how things change, you know. But coming to know yourself and knowing what you really do desire is — everybody’s process for that is different. And yours involves this formation, this background that you’ve had.
Mark Labberton: It involves education, formal education, but it also involved travel, experiences of ministry in different settings, especially in Latin America, if I’m right. And then you came back to L.A. from that. How did you come to know what it was that you desired, assuming that what you’re doing now is what you desire?
Greg Boyle: Yeah, well, I also think that it came sort of late for me as I look back. You know, I was ordained in 1984, so whatever I was, 30 or something. And so I’m not sure I knew so much before then. You know, I taught here locally at Loyola High. I enjoyed that. I probably could have gone back to that. It wasn’t on my front burners, as odd as that seems — but what am I going to do with my life? What am I going to do when I grow up? Well, I just — you went through the course, you know, you study philosophy and theology and you taught. And then I was ordained and I said, can I go to Bolivia? Because I think maybe I want to really learn Spanish. And so that was an immersion thing in the culture and it just changed me forever. It altered how I saw things. And I went, okay, I don’t know what I’m going to do, but it has to be from below. It has to be at the margins. It has to be with the poor. So I wasn’t really clear.
And then I ended up, as luck would have it, really, assigned to Dolores Mission that the Jesuits administered, and it was the poorest parish in the city. So then there was a vocation within a vocation within a vocation, you know — so it’s with the poor, it’s Spanish speaking, it’s priestly, I guess. And then the parish had the highest concentration of gang activity in the world.
Mark Labberton: Right.
Greg Boyle: Which, of course, I didn’t know when I signed up.
Mark Labberton: Right.
Greg Boyle: And so then that became the reality. I was burying kids starting in 1988 and then shootings morning, noon and night. It was just a historical moment. You know, had I been sent there 10 years earlier or 10 years later, it probably would have been a different thing, I think. Maybe. Who knows?
Mark Labberton: Let’s go back to Bolivia for just a minute before we go back to L.A. So in that period when so much is changing — the height of liberation theology in part in Bolivia, I’m assuming — a lot of engagement around the poor, marginalized people, et cetera, et cetera, a lot of political activity happening and change, rebellion, revolution, all kinds of things happening throughout Latin America, Bolivia as well. Sort of fill in a little bit more about that. It changed the way you saw things.
Greg Boyle: Yeah, well, at that time, Bolivia was the poorest country in the hemisphere. You know, Haiti is, I suppose, now. But then it was Bolivia. And so you felt that everywhere.
And politically, there was a lot of corruption and disruption. And so I was living with young Bolivian Jesuits who were Bolivian, whereas in the past they had all been Spaniards who had come over. And then — so they were kind of indigenous. They spoke Quechua as well as Spanish, and they were completely radical. And, of course, I — you know, we had fondness and affection for each other. But I also represented, you know, the great Satan, I suppose — the white American, you know. So it was very humbling. And so I liked kind of being in that position, as difficult as it was to kind of be maligned really by your own Jesuits. And you had to kind of do battle with that and break through it.
And so, you know, the poor evangelize you. You know, we say these things, and it’s not a romanticizing of the poor. It’s a perspective. How do they see things? And if the goal in the end is to see as God sees, that’s why I think the vantage point of the poor is the widow, orphan, and the stranger. And these are the folks who God believes. These are the folks who know what it’s like to have been cut off. And because they’ve suffered in exactly this way, God thinks these happen to be our own trustworthy guides to get the rest of us where we need to go.
So I had a profound experience of that in 1984 — that in fact it ruined me, you know, so I came back. I’m supposed to go to Santa Clara University and be kind of a quasi-campus minister, to do the link with immersion experiences for the students there. And it just was not at all what I ever wanted to do.
Mark Labberton: Right.
Greg Boyle: Though I had signed up for it before I went to Bolivia.
Mark Labberton: Sort of negotiating the privilege.
Greg Boyle: Oh, yeah. And then I kind of went, no, I can’t do this.
Mark Labberton: Right.
Greg Boyle: And fortunately, I went to my provincial and I think he listened to me, but he also had this need — we need a pastor at Dolores Mission. So he sent me there, and I couldn’t have been happier. So it satisfied that longing I had, which is to allow the poor to continue to evangelize me and to be my trustworthy guides. All the more accessible, because my Spanish was serviceable at best. And so I couldn’t lead from up front. I had to lead from behind, by pushing them. And they had to assume leadership because they could speak the language. So I don’t regret that my Spanish was so bad in the early years, because they had to use muscles that they weren’t used to using.
Mark Labberton: Right. So you come back to Los Angeles, a city that on one level you had known fairly well, but to a different part of Los Angeles and with a completely different vision. Is that how it felt?
Greg Boyle: Yeah, you know, I don’t know if this has changed in the city. I suspect it has. But in those days, you know, we grew up in the greater Wilshire area. I didn’t know Boyle Heights from anything, and I’d never been there. Different zone. I think nowadays, maybe people go and eat Mexican food in Boyle Heights from the west side, maybe. I don’t know. I think they do. But we certainly never did.
Mark Labberton: Right.
Greg Boyle: You know, this was our lane, which was over here.
Mark Labberton: Right.
Greg Boyle: So it was completely unfamiliar. But also the population, especially since the gang thing at that moment had reared its head in a kind of an alarming way — I certainly didn’t know anything about that. We didn’t have that at 3rd and Norton, at all.
Mark Labberton: Right. Yeah, so I had to kind of get myself — that was a hard year, you know, to adjust from returning from Bolivia. Did you find that as you made that adjustment, who were your guides? I mean, especially when I think about the encounters that were, from what you’re saying, just arising, especially around gangs. Who were the people that helped you begin to see your way into that universe that you hadn’t had knowledge of before?
Greg Boyle: Gang members themselves, because it was pretty new territory. So the decade of death in this city was ’88 to ’98. So I arrived first, you know, newly ordained in ’84, summer of ’84 and ’85. But I arrived as pastor in ’86. And immigration was really sort of the issue then. So remember, the Immigration Reform and Control Act had just happened. Amnesty. Separation of families. So there were a lot of issues — and we declared ourselves sanctuary. So we were the first sanctuary church in the country to include undocumented Mexicans along with Central American folks, which pissed off the sanctuary people.
I go, I’m just the janitor here. The people want to do this. That was their insistence. We don’t want it to just be a statement. We want it to acknowledge the undocumented Mexicans who come across the border, whose only crime is trying to feed their kids. So, and I thought that was quite prophetic of them.
And then I started burying kids. So there was not a lot of guideposts that I can recall, except gang members themselves. So we were all trying to find our way in listening. You know, we started a school because so many of them had been junior high age gang members who’d been given the boot from their home school and nobody wanted them. And so we started a school. That was the first thing we did. And then they said, if only we had jobs. So then we’d try to find them, kind of dispatch gang members to felony-friendly employers. And then we couldn’t find enough. So we started businesses. So roughly that’s kind of how it worked. But truthfully, there wasn’t any place to go and say, hey, how do you do this?
Mark Labberton: Now, when you first start, are there other Jesuits that you’re working with in this process, or are you the priest alone?
Greg Boyle: Well, I mean, we had other Jesuits connected to the parish.
Mark Labberton: Right.
Greg Boyle: But it was all the parish.
Mark Labberton: Right.
Greg Boyle: And then while I was pastor, this was born. And so we started what we called the People’s Nonprofit, which was called Proyecto Pastoral, which still exists. And under that umbrella, Homeboy began. And under that umbrella was — for 32 years now, or whatever it is — the Guadalupe Homeless Project, for the homeless and undocumented who sleep in the church, and after school programs and all these different things that we got started. But the priests were mainly all connected to the parish, and not really to this.
Mark Labberton: No.
Greg Boyle: But now, you know, we’re 30 years as an organization. And so I have two other Jesuits who work at Homeboy. One is a case manager who’s a scholastic — not yet a priest. And the other one is a priest who kind of — he’s a therapist.
Mark Labberton: Some people undoubtedly listening to this are aware of Homeboy and what’s called Homeboy Industries, which has become the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. It’s an amazing phenomenon of how this has emerged. But tell people a little bit more about how that arc began from out of the place of violence that you’re describing.
Greg Boyle: Well, we just evolved. You know, people come to our headquarters now, which is in Chinatown, in downtown L.A., two blocks from Union Station. And so all roads lead to us for the gang member, you know, which is why we chose that for the fourth location. And so people walk in there and they just go, wow, you know, how’d you think this up? And the truth is nobody thinks anything up. I don’t know — you evolve. You respond to this thing that’s right in front of you. Okay, what if we — I don’t know — what if we remove tattoos for free? You know, what if we got doctors? So now we have, you know, 45 doctors who, along with one paid physician assistant, remove tattoos. So, you know, and what if we — how about therapy? You know, that would help maybe. And so now we have four paid therapists and 47 volunteer therapists, including two psychiatrists as volunteers. So, you know, and then curriculum and classes. And so, you know, in 30 years, we’ve changed how we see things.
It starts as a bakery. What other businesses are there? There are nine now, you know — a café. We have a diner at City Hall, a restaurant at LAX. We have farmers’ markets. We have electronic recycling. A silkscreen plant that’s been around for like 27 years. Our merchandise division. We have a thing called Homeboy Grocery, which is where we sell chips, salsas and guacamole — mainly in Ralph’s in California, but all the Stop & Shops, if anybody knows, in five states on the East Coast. Yeah. So, and I’m sure I’m missing something. There should be nine in there.
Mark Labberton: So when all this is unfolding, you’re, again, muddling along, you might imagine — you’re thinking, we’re just doing this, it’s the next obvious thing to do.
Greg Boyle: Completely seat of the pants, yeah, at every turn.
Mark Labberton: Right, right. But one of the things that happens along the way is not only are lives being dramatically changed, they’re being given a whole new beginning in all kinds of ways. And people who have read some of your books — one that was one of the first longer pieces of your writing that I ever read was called Tattoos on the Heart, which is really a remarkable story of taking the image of tattoos and using it as a way of describing both the physical reality of tattoos and the population that you’re working with in gangs and so forth, but also the ways that our hearts need to be tattooed by the love of God for the sake of people that are around us. I mean, it’s an amazing, amazing story that really unfolds. So it felt like you were flying by the seat of your pants, but you end up being one of the best comprehensive storytellers of anybody that I’ve ever met. You have an extraordinary ability. I think anybody who has ever had impact either in person or public speaking or in your writing — the way that you’re able to tell this story so vividly makes it feel like it must be somehow a plan, because it feels so extraordinarily natural and organic and clear, even in the midst of all the rawness.
Greg Boyle: Well, I didn’t have anything to do with all that. You know, I mean — the other thing, too, is if you listen and if you appreciate how people speak and say things, you know, and so then it becomes quite rich. And paying attention is sort of the key thing. So you want to be attentive to how they say things.
Boy, that’s incredible. You know, a homie just the other day who talked about how his gang was near the beach. And he says, but I never knew how to swim. And he goes, to this day, I don’t know how to swim. So my uncle — he said — who I trusted and I love, took me to the beach. I was five. And he walked me out into the ocean and he tossed me in. And here’s this kid — this kid told this story in front of a group that I was with. And he said, and I started to drown. I mean, I was five. I was underwater, taking water, flailing my arms. And he’d come up, and he’d see his uncle standing there saying something. But I was too panicked to really understand. And so he goes under the water one more time and is, again, taking in salt water. And then he comes up, and for some reason, now he’s able to make out what the uncle is saying. And the uncle is saying, párate — stand up. And so he stands up. And the water’s at his waist, you know.
And he said, I realized only now at Homeboy Industries, after many years of being in prison, that all these years I had been drowning in the shallow end of my own thoughts and mindset and lifestyle. But not anymore, because Homeboy taught me to stand up.
Well, it’s a beautiful image.
Mark Labberton: Right.
Greg Boyle: You couldn’t really think it up or write it, you know.
Mark Labberton: Right.
Greg Boyle: And it just got this standing ovation from all these people, and very powerful.
But you’re always trying to figure out, you know, how do you put words on this? How do you put words on homies who come to our place barricaded behind the walls of their own shame, really? And then an utter conviction that only tenderness can scale those walls. And how does that work? And why does that work? So you’re always trying to find new ways of speaking. Maybe it’s because I’m an English major or something. But I like kind of the fresh take on stuff. Even as we all evolve in our own understanding of who God is and how God sees, you go, oh, okay. Well, now in an instant, I’m saying things differently.
So that’s such a helpful image. You kind of say, just stand up. Just — stand up. And then suddenly, you know, the gospel — I think for today is quoting, of course, in the Old Testament, about the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light. You know, well, stand up. You probably, if you stand, somehow the light — you’ll have contact and access to it. Anyway, it’s not so much stories or storytelling as it is allowing yourself to be reached by people.
Mark Labberton: Well, I do think the word you used a minute ago is a significant way, I think, of tying a lot of this together — which is that somehow in the mercy and grace of God, and in your own formation, your own learning to stand up — is a remarkable quality of tenderness that pervades a lot of what you’ve done. So a lot of what is so striking — that I’ve seen in your writing and in times I’ve heard you interviewed or give presentations — is that in the middle of what feels like just this turbulence and violence and criminality and pain of people’s lives, the golden thread that emerges is this golden thread of your tenderness toward a real person in a real narrative with real dignity. And that’s a remarkable piece of how I think all this is. And it’s hard to pull off, frankly.
Greg Boyle: I mean, if there are spiritualities that undergird what we do, certainly Ignatian spirituality is there. But it’s also the spirituality of Jean Vanier and L’Arche community. Because for him, he says tenderness is the highest form of spiritual maturity. And so that’s kind of a tenet that I mull over a lot at Homeboy. And because tenderness is foreign.
And I think the whole incarnation was necessary — not because of sin or salvation even. It’s just, for me, it’s God’s love needed to become tender. And that’s why it happened. And because then you receive the tender glance, and then you’re compelled — you have no choice but to be that tender glance in the world. You know, behold the one beholding you and smiling.
I had mentioned earlier that my mom had died. And, you know, she died in her own home, surrounded by her kids — and although I was the only one there when she actually died. But, you know, she was just not at all afraid. And at one point she said, “I’ve never done this before,” you know, like it was skydiving — and ecstatic. I mean, completely exhilarated at the prospect of dying. It was really quite sweet. But as she was dying, you know, in the last days when one or two or eight of my brothers and sisters were there, she’d come into consciousness and then she’d lock on to one of us. And she’d say with breathless delight, “You’re here. You’re here.”
And afterwards, after I buried her, I thought, well, that’s the whole thing. I think that’s the singular agenda item for our God — is just to look at you and say, “You’re here.” That’s it. But we’re so screwed up with some kind of spiritual arrested development, where we think that there’s all these other things, like — measure up, and I wish you again, and I wish you would really perform better, and I wish you were this, that, and the other thing. Are you really trying? It’s none of that. You know, I suspect that Jesus in the desert for 40 days was 40 days and nights of “you’re here, you’re here.” And then you have no choice but to say back to the world, “you’re here.”
And I think that’s the definition of what the tenderness is — that folks come to our place at Homeboy and unspeakable things have been done to them. They didn’t make bad choices. And certainly they’re not bad people. I’ve never met a bad gang member, not once, ever. But unspeakable things were done to them. And then to come to a place where they are held with tenderness, where countless people are saying, “Oh, you’re here,” with breathless delight — oh, that’s so foreign. But I think it’s the singular agenda item for our God. And if we knew that — oh, imagine how things would change. How dramatically it would change things.
Mark Labberton: Well, that ties into another major theme that I think you have woven throughout your ministry and work, which is the theme of kinship — this deep sense of the connectedness of people, and what it is that tyrannizes kinship and what nurtures kinship and all that. Can you just say a bit about that? Because I want to be sure that people have had a chance to realize what a central theme that is.
Greg Boyle: Well, Homeboy wants to be what the world is ultimately invited to become, which is a community of kinship — such that God might recognize it. So that’s God’s dream come true. Tenderness.
You know, it’s quite apart from how God sees us. God says this not so that we can herniate ourselves into achieving it. But my joy, yours, your joy complete — here’s where you’re going to find it: in kinship. It puts all these other things as kind of byproducts — huge things: peace, justice, and equality. Huge. But if you think that’s the goal, it isn’t. It’s the byproduct of our underlying, undergirding, essential kinship with each other. So no kinship, no peace. No kinship, no justice. No kinship, no equality. It’s how it works. And a lack of peace or justice or equality is really something else.
So this is why people burn out. “I’m going to fight for justice and I’m going to make a difference.” I go, good luck with that, you know, because A, it’s about something else. And people burn out and they can’t hang for the long haul. But if what their effort is is to try to nurture kinship in a real way at the base — you know, the effort is to somehow imagine a circle of compassion, and then imagine nobody standing outside of it. My joy, yours, your joy complete. That’s how it works.
So Jesus doesn’t say love your enemies because it’s the harder thing. But it’s the thing that most resembles where you can be if kinship is your goal. And, you know, it’s about loving, being loving. It’s not about return, or, you know, measured outcomes. It’s about — well, here’s where the joy is. So God is always just pointing us to the place where the joy is. And we get that so muddled. We think it’s all about — I’m less than, how can I do more? I really need to make a difference. I need to reach more people. I need to rescue people. And it’s all nonsense, I think.
Mark Labberton: Just that would be worth spending another hour or two having a conversation about that theme, because certainly in a context like the one that we’re living in now in the United States — but really around the world — where we see all kinds of evidences of abuses of power in all kinds of terms, whether economic, social, political, gender, sexual, et cetera — holding on to tenderness as the guide that is actually the truest light of leading us into those places of what can feel like just such overpowering force. That tenderness feels like it’s opting for the inverse of where many people would instinctively want to go, right? Because we’re looking for fortification and safety. And clearly tenderness in any kind of context is a call beyond that, right? It’s a call to something much more profound and much more — really, in the end — than those things. But it’s easy to get distracted. It’s a shiny object of overwhelming influence compared to perhaps missing the vulnerability of tenderness as such a key ingredient.
Greg Boyle: Yeah, again, I think we’re in difficult times and divisive, polarizing times. But everybody’s born into the world wanting the same things. And everybody had a mom, you know, and was brought into this world in the same way. And you kind of say, well, I think part of the problem is — you know, in terms of even evil — you know, reading the LA Times recently about crime and then a kind of an assessment of Jerry Brown’s legacy. And, you know, people, law enforcement critical, saying, well, what’s happened to accountability and consequences? I go, well, that’s not a very sophisticated take, you know, because part of the thing is, if you think there are evil people, then that’s where you’re going to go. But if you think there are despondent, traumatized, and mentally ill people, well, you’re going to go another place. And I, for my money, that’s a more sophisticated take. And it’s an equalizer. But we’re always trying to strike the high moral distance between us and them, and both sides of this political debate at the moment, you know.
And the Dalai Lama always says, you know, we all have Buddha nature. And I don’t think Jesus thinks differently. You know, there’s unshakeable goodness in everyone, even in the occupant of the White House. And so you just go, that’s just the way it is. Now, how do we help each other? Because, you know, people are impeded from seeing their unshakeable goodness. They don’t operate out of that. They operate out of fear and diminishment, and they don’t want to erase margins. They want to draw lines, you know. And yet there aren’t good guys and bad guys, you know, and God doesn’t see it that way, as hard as that is for us to conceive.
Mark Labberton: Well, I do think that one of the things that your example and your own theology and anthropology teaches us in such a profound and, in a way, disturbing way — is that very fact that there aren’t the distinctions that we tend to draw. And that’s part of what makes it so difficult for us to be able to ever get beyond those paradigms, because it means actually laying them down in order to actually see through the lens of the tenderness and kinship that you’re describing a completely different reality.
Greg Boyle: Well, find somebody who doesn’t belong to us. And Mother Teresa says that’s the problem in the world — is we’ve forgotten that we belong to each other. But find somebody who doesn’t belong. Right. Now, we’d like to say, you know, Republicans don’t belong, or whatever it is we want to say. But yeah, no — we belong to each other. That’s the truth. And the sooner we can get to that, the better off we’ll all be.
But demonizing is the opposite of who God is, and it is the opposite of how God sees. And if working with gang members has taught me anything, it’s about that. So we’ve been around 30 years, but the first 10 years was death threats, bomb threats, and hate mail, because the demonizing was so full here in the city. They were never from gang members, because obviously we always represented hope to gang members. But they were from people who hated me and our organization for helping gang members, because the friend of our enemy is our enemy. And they all — law enforcement thought I was some fraternizer with the enemy. Well, you know, that’s a worldview that obviously needs healing.
And we’re not there anymore. I mean, when was the last time Homeboy ever got a piece of hate mail? We got it regularly, every day. And I’d say it’s been, I don’t know, 20 years probably.
Mark Labberton: Wow.
Greg Boyle: Which is incredible. So the city has made this movement, you know, away from this “tough on crime” or “soft on crime.” But they go, no, Homeboy’s part of “smart on crime.” Leave him alone. What are you talking about? So for people who think, oh, we don’t make any progress — well, you’re not paying attention. Of course we do. I remember Operation Hammer and the most draconian, awful responses to gangs that were born of a bad analysis and a bad diagnosis. But it’s important to know that God never demonizes, ever, ever. And that’s kind of exhilarating. It is. Once you know that, that’s the truth.
And as a person, you know, you can’t demonize somebody you know. So if you can put yourself in the vicinity of somebody who’s, you know, outside your circle, then your circle widens. And that’s kind of the trick. And that’s why at Homeboy, you know, it’s Black, Brown, Asian, men, women, gay, straight, enemies — guys who used to shoot at each other. Now we’re making croissants, you know. So you kind of want this to announce a message to the world. We could do this, you know.
Mark Labberton: Right. So take us with that lens to what must be one of the most profound challenges across the country right now, which is the challenge of homelessness — and into Los Angeles with a 50 or 60,000 person homeless population. Through the lens that you’re describing, how do we avoid the unsophisticated understanding of what’s happening and have a more sophisticated understanding of what’s happening?
Greg Boyle: Well, we’re so impatient. You know, we go from zero to 60. And it’s always about content rather than context. And it’s about information rather than transformation. So the largest mental institution in the world is L.A. County Jail. So now what does that tell you? And who are the homeless population? I had lunch today with somebody who was saying, you know, there are people who’ve lost their jobs and, you know, don’t have a place to live. I go, yeah, principally, no. You know, it’s mentally ill folks who are self-medicating. And that exacerbates their underlying condition. So what if we knew that?
But we want to go from zero to 60. So we want to give roofs for everybody. And then we’re scratching our heads when people walk out to folks in tents on Fifth Street and San Pedro and — no, I’m okay, thank you. Well, yeah. Now, I don’t know what the solution is. But I know that the diagnosis isn’t “people have lost their jobs” or something like that. No. The new frontier really will be mental health.
Yeah. Because, you know, gang members — kids join gangs because they’re either despondent or traumatized or mentally ill, on a continuum of severity. The folks who wander into our office from the 120,000 gang members in L.A. County come with a palpable, profound sense of despair, trauma, or mental illness. You know, it’s not like they’re dumb, or they’re not trained, or they’re not educated. They need to be healed from the darkness of their despair. They need to transform their damage and their trauma. Otherwise, they’ll keep inflicting that pain. And they need to have mental health services delivered in a timely and culturally appropriate way. I would stand by that diagnosis from here till Tuesday.
But if you think jails are filled with bad people, well, we’re not going to get very far. And if you think homeless tents are filled with people who just are down on their luck, I don’t think we’re going to get very far either. And I don’t know how to do that — I mean, I kind of have a sense how to do that with gang members. But it’s a very similar population, homeless and gang members, because they all are laden with big, huge, fat backpacks filled with chronic toxic stress. So unless you can offer them rest and relief from what they’re carrying, you’re not going to be able to deliver any services. You’re not going to be able to provide them with shelter even.
That’s certainly true of gang members, and that’s what we hope to do at Homeboy. But I think there’s a parallel between the homeless population and — but the minute we want to move very quickly and just go, oh, homeless, oh, housing. Or gang members, oh, jobs. Even we have abandoned “nothing stops a bullet like a job.” That was our early T-shirt, you know, and our motto. But then we realized, once we knew gang members, oh, it’s about healing. It’s not about employment. Because an employed gang member may or may not go back to prison, but a healed one won’t ever go back to prison.
So I don’t know exactly how to deepen ourselves in terms of a greater sophistication around the homeless thing. But I suspect the fact that L.A. County Jail is the largest mental institution in the world should be an indicator to us. You know, once we closed mental institutions — and you can say what you will about that — where did those folks go? They’re in a tent or they’re in L.A. County Jail, by and large, you know. Because don’t even talk about mental illness. Just talk about health. What does health look like? Has a healthy human being ever joined a gang? No. No, of course not. Has a healthy human being ever gone to prison? Never. That hasn’t happened once.
And once you know that, and you go, well, then how do we lock arms, create a community of kinship, and foster and nurture a sense of health and wellness? Once we do that, then we don’t have to worry about bad people who are in jail, or lazy people who are living in tents. No, none of the above. It’s folks who need to be helped to move in the direction of wellness and well-being and health.
Mark Labberton: I was a pastor in Berkeley for a little more than 25 years. And one of the things that certainly was clear in the homeless population all around the campus of the University of California, and on Telegraph Avenue, and all of that, was exactly what you’re describing. And certainly some of the people that I knew who lived on the street lived on the street for as long as I was there. And they had every possible service available to them that they couldn’t ever get beyond themselves to a place of healing in many cases. A place of stasis often, but not necessarily a place of healing.
One day I was meeting with the mayor of Berkeley, who at that time was a particularly kind of crazy character, really. And he was explaining to me what he saw as the best programs in Berkeley in response to various kind of social service needs. And then after he’d given me his sort of official spiel, he said something that I think is profoundly connected to what you’re saying — which is, he said, you know, what all this is about, all this is about the fact that we realize everyone does better if they have a friend. And everything I’ve just described to you is just an elaborate, socially paid-for scheme of creating friendship. And if that’s all we can do, that’s actually to do quite a lot, he said.
Greg Boyle: That’s wonderful.
Mark Labberton: It was. It was an amazing statement. Yeah.
Greg Boyle: Because it’s, again, it’s about connection and somebody paying attention. And accompaniment and it’s intimate, and the primacy of the relationship. And so that’s what works. I mean, if there’s a secret sauce at Homeboy Industries, it’s that. It’s the primacy of relation. It’s relational wholeness that everybody’s being invited to. I don’t bestow this on this gang member. Together, we’re allowing each other to be reached by the other. It’s not me reaching gang members or saving gang members, for God’s sakes. It’s we all allow ourselves to be reached by each other, and then the soul feels its worth, and suddenly we’re all inhabiting the truth of who we are. And then you’re anchored in gratitude, and then there’s rest. There’s relief. Okay, now I should go to the anger management class. Okay, all that stuff is good. And maybe, you know, I could get my GED. Or maybe there are some skills that I could pick up to cope better. But in the end, it’s really about the primacy of the relationship. And that’s just key, I think.
Mark Labberton: Father Boyle, thank you again for being here today and for this conversation. I am so grateful for your ministry and for the way that it’s affecting not only those that are in gangs in Los Angeles, but in many, many other places, because of the way that the work that you’ve done has become known. And I’m always inspired and always challenged, but also I’ve always come away from any contact I’ve had with your writing or your speaking feeling more loved. And I’m grateful for that.
Greg Boyle: Oh, thank you. That’s very kind.
