“Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.”
~ Rev. Gregory J. Boyle, S.J., Founder, Homeboy Industries
Author, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion & Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship
Imagine that (and how that new-found perceptual skill could enhance all else that we do, all that we ‘be’, and all that we affect).
Father Greg also shared something that he learned six years into living this purpose of his.
“I thought I could save gang members; I was wrong,” he said. “I discovered that you do not go to the margins to rescue anyone. But if we go there, everyone finds rescue.” (American Magazine)
In his TEDx talk on compassion and kinship, he shares various stories from over the years, and his own and other people’s transformations, and says,
“You don’t hold the bar up and ask people to measure up, you just show up and hold the mirror up and you tell people the truth — you are exactly what God had in mind when god made you, and you watch people become that truth, you watch people inhabit that truth.
Sometimes you have to reach in and dismantle messages of shame and disgrace that get in the way, so that the soul can feel its worth.”
How beautiful and inspiring an invitation is that?
Listen for yourself:
Thanks to Lavender Turquoise for sharing Father Greg’s wisdom-bit and pointing the way to the Great Work he and his team have been doing in Los Angeles.
Several musings, and an Energies of Now post, are in the works. Stay tuned.
You’ll find the current Featured Mentor-Coaching and Sophiastrology clue-mapping offerings here.
In the meanwhile, enjoy the inspiration from Father Greg’s work and wisdom.
Big Love,
Related post: Our Soul-Deep Need for a Worthy Horizon
Featured Image Credit: Father Greg Boyle with his team. Photo courtesy of Homeboy Industries.
September 14, 2017 at 3:27 pm
Reblogged this on O LADO ESCURO DA LUA.
September 14, 2017 at 3:41 pm
It’s so easy to judge, instead of understand.
September 14, 2017 at 3:46 pm
It’s the default, I think, or the conditioned default. Until, as Hafiz wrote, “Love sometimes wants to do us a great favor: hold us upside-down and shake all the nonsense out.” 🙂 Thanks for visiting, Andrea.
September 14, 2017 at 3:49 pm
I was just thinking about this today, because the inquiry into the Grenfell tower block disaster has begun and there are now people questioning how many of the residents waiting to be rehoused are working and how many are on benefits – sympathy doesn’t last long…
September 14, 2017 at 4:03 pm
That (and similar) horrors are beyond comprehension, as are some responses to them. It boggles the mind that the conversation turns to ‘work’ and ‘benefits’, though it’s what happens here in the U.S., too.
Maybe sympathy is fleeting if there’s no compassion and an emphasis on efficiency, profit, self-interest? Or that there are no easy answers that don’t require transformation and change, so cognitive dissonance kicks in?