October 23, 2024 • 65 mins
On this episode, we're in conversation with Father Gregory Boyle, the founder of Homeboy Industries, the world's leading gang intervention, rehabilitation, and reentry program. Father Boyle shares his inspiring journey, including transformative experiences in Bolivia, his tenure as the youngest pastor in Los Angeles, and the evolution of Homeboy Industries. The discussion covers the significance of love, community, and foundational healing in transforming lives.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Everything that helps works. Not everything that works helps, So
do the thing that concretely helps. Systems change when people change,
and people change when they're cherished. Cherishing is love with
its sleeves rolled up. He looked at me, stood from
the desk, and he said, I know your heart must
be breaking, and the two of us we just sobbed.
(00:22):
I've never really quite cried like that.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Everybody, it's Cena McFarlane. Welcome back to the Sino Show.
I don't have many heroes in my life, but I
have one here in front of me today. I'm truly
honored to have a truly inspiring guest with me. Father
Gregory Boyle the founder of Homeboy Industries. Father Boyle's dedicated
his life to transform the lives of those impacted by
(00:50):
gang violence and incarceration. Through Homeboy Industries, he has built
the largest and most successful gang intervention, rehabilitation and re
CHI program in the world. His work as a testament
to the power and compassion, community and kinship. He has
shown time and time again that no life is beyond redemption.
(01:12):
He has written many books. This book has changed my life.
I give this book out sometimes before I give the
Big Book of aout to people, every therapist and coach.
This is an absolute must read and I look at
it every week to remind me what's important and give
me balance.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Thank you. It's good to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Boy, there's a lot to cover with you. Olivia had
a profound impact on you.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, Bolivia was nineteen eighty four to for one year.
Then I got really sick, I had to come home.
And then I was just ordained a priest in eighty four,
so I went kind of didn't know what I wanted
to do, and I went down there ostensibly to learn
Spanish or improve it, I guess, and then I just
(01:59):
fell in love immediately. I was, you know, in this
community that hadn't had a priest in twenty five years,
and we had these little gomidas de oss, these small
groups of you know, people who would meet and we'd
reflect about life, and so we did a lot of things.
(02:19):
So anyway, it was just a magnificent experience. It was
the poorest country in the Hemisphere, poorer than Haiti at
the time, and it was just going through the most
extraordinary period politically, and people were really quite suffering. And
yet I found that, you know, in terms of the
(02:40):
poor evangelized me. They just kind of turned me inside out.
That so, I was supposed to go to Santa Clara
University to be campus minister or something, and then I
just begged my provincial please don't send me there. Nothing
against them is just it's not enough. And so he said, well,
(03:00):
I need somebody at Dolores Mission, where I had spent
a summer, and that was the poorest parish in the
city of La So I said, please, yes.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
And what is that instinct in you, father, that that
I don't want to go to that Santa Clair. I'd
be grateful to go there, but I want to go
to the most difficult, scariest place.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Well, I don't think it was so much in terms
of scary. It was that there was something about being
in the proximity with the poor people who who were
totally abandoned and cut out and ignored and kind of
deemed of no value, And there was something about walking
(03:40):
with them that changed my life, even for that brief
time I was in Bolivia. So so I was so grateful.
At first, I thought, you know, I would come to
Dolores Mission. I'd be kind of the third guy on
the totem Pole. But it turned out I was going
to be the past I was really quite young. In fact,
(04:03):
they never were then. Well I was thirty one. Nobody
is named a pastor at thirty one, So I was
the youngest pastor in the history of the diocese. Oh wow,
really really young. So but because nobody wanted to go there,
it was quite an intense place, you know that. Really
(04:24):
people were quite stressed out working there and didn't last
very long. Wow, But I was happy to be there.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Let me just go back a little bit, prober when
when did you know? When did you get tapped? And no,
it's I have a I'm here to serve. How old
were you?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Well, you know, I was taught by the Jesuits, so
I was you know, I just loved them. They were
hilarious and prophetic, they were fearless and joyful, and so
they were all the things I wanted to to be
and so I'll have what they're having. So I was young,
(04:58):
for sure, Wow, but it was you know, I just
loved the spirit of them and the combo berger of
prophetic fearless with real live joy. You know. I suppose
in the early days I thought it was just high
hilarity because they were really quite funny and I liked
(05:18):
being around them. But then afterwards I thought, no, this
is really comes from a deep place. At Homeboy, we
always the homies talk about here at Homeboy, we laugh
from the stomach. And that's the concept, you know, which
is really a deep kind of place from which to
experience joy and to share.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
You have an incredible ability used humor as a great medicine.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
It's a real art.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Yeah, well, I think it's you. It's essential, the attentive
to how things are quite funny.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
So let's start with, you know, being at Dolores and
kind of walking us through in the invent of Homeboy.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Well, in the early days, so that I was. I
was there the summers of eighty four and eighty five,
and then I was pastor in eighty six and so
eighty six to ninety two. And in the early days,
immigration was kind of the thing, because those were the
days of dividing families and deporting folks in families who
(06:19):
didn't have papers. There was the Immigration Reform and Control Act.
A lot of family division was going to happen as
a result of that. People talked about the amnesty, but
it was really dividing families, and my parents was so undocumented.
So that was what the first two years were. But
by eighty eight was when I started to bury kids
(06:41):
a lot, and that's when Homeboys started. We called ourselves
Jobs for a Future, because it was mainly just we
started a school, and then we started a jobs program
trying to find employers willing to hire felony people who
were fell Any friendly, you know, tell any friendly, I
(07:03):
love that, And so we did that for a while,
which was kind of a little half assed as I
look back on it, because because you know, I think
we discovered that an educated inmate may or may not
go back to prison, or an employed one may or
may not. But then I'd say fifteen years ago we
decided and really with great determination, that a heeled gang
(07:28):
member will not reoffend. So then we shifted who we were.
You know, before it was nothing stupsible like a job.
That's what was our t shirt and our motto. But
then we thought, no, this literally was happening where people
we found careers for gang members, and then suddenly that
(07:48):
guy's lady would leave him, and it just threw a
monkey wrench in the works. And now that guy's at
fulsome prison for the rest.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
He didn't have skill set the.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Well, he didn't have any He wasn't sturdy, he wasn't resilient,
He hadn't healed sufficiently to be able to withstand what
the world is going to throw at you. So we
do an eighteen month we call it eighteen month training program.
But if you surrender to that essential foundational healing, recognizing
(08:23):
that healing ends in the graveyard for all of us anyway.
But if you surrender to that, then you can leave
us after eighteen months and the world is going to
throw at you, for sure, all sorts of things, but
you're not going to be toppled this time. You won't
be toppled. But we were finding people being toppled, and
(08:44):
we thought, well, this isn't enough. We still have the
menu of services that a lot of places have, job training,
therapy and tattoo removal and classes, anger management. All of
that is secondary to the or cultural healing. And once
(09:05):
you kind of dive into that, if you surrender to that,
it's going to really work, because it's going to help
you know, and everything that helps works, not everything that
works helps, but everything that helps work. So do the
thing that concretely helps.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
You know, so many things that you talk about, you
know didn't work, and you would just learn from them.
You know, you kind of joke about who would have
thought about the plumbing program?
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Oh yeah, yeah, are you sure about so?
Speaker 1 (09:33):
I always say, you know, we've started all these and
not everything worked. You know, I always say Homeboy Plumbing
was not hugely successful because I suppose ostensibly people weren't
enthralled at having gang members enter their homes. I suppose,
But yeah, that was just a cheap joke. But yeah,
so there you want to try to find. We would
(09:55):
bounce from kind of job opportunities to other ones. You know,
we started a bakery only because there was an abandoned
bakery across the street from our school, you know, Tortillas was.
We were in Grand Central Market. There was an empty
you know, kind of tortilla machine. So and I was,
(10:18):
I was there to get jobs for kind of janitorial jobs.
I said, what is that? They go, well, it's a
tortilla machine. I God, well, wyon't you lease it to
us for free, you know, a dollar a month or something.
So he did, and the Homeboy Tortillas was born. And
that was a black hole that lost a lot of money.
(10:40):
But all the things kind of just sort of evolved
that way. You know, I think we have more intentionality
and clarity and planning now than we did in my
early days.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
But now they talk about you know, some of my listeners,
you know, they need hope, they need persistence, never giving up.
I mean, the Bakery burns down, and what's going through
your head at that time, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Well that was October of ninety nine, and so the
Bakery was born in ninety two, and so it was
kind of you know, starting to find its way. And
that was in the first ten years of our existence
as an organization where we got death threats, bomb threats,
hate mail people.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Really from law enforcement, right mainly.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Yeah, and people who demonize gang members, never from gang members.
It never made sense for gang members to oppose us,
you know, as much as people think they think, oh gosh,
you're taking our soldiers away or something, but that's all mythic.
But if the populace demonize gang members, it's a short
(11:51):
hop to demonize me and Homeboy for helping them. So
it was really intense. So the Bakery burned down in
that period, you know, where you know, I would write
an op ed piece about, you know, if only we
could be smart on crime or see gang members as
(12:13):
human beings, whatever, and there'd be an onslaught of death threats,
bomb threats, hate mail. I mean, we're quite extraordinary hard
to retrieve it now, but it was pervasive.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
And how do you let that affect your mission?
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Well, I, you know, I just because we were kind
of close to the bone and connected to the community
and it was working, you know, it was working, Yeah,
but it was also you know, success. I kind of
agree with Mother Teresa on this one that we're not
called to be successful, we're called to be faithful. So
if you're faithful to walking with people, what difference does
(12:49):
it make, you know, evidence based outcomes? I don't care.
This is the person, you know, the person right in
front of you. But when I look back on that,
because I have a book coming out in November and
I and I think it was the first time I
was able to look back. And so you ask about
the bakery burning down, and that was a tipping point
(13:11):
where on October of ninety nine, bakery burns down and
the La Times the next day does a you know,
editorial that says, Homeboy Industries doesn't belong to father Greg Boyle.
It belongs to the city of La And as I
look back on that now many years later, that was
(13:34):
the impetus, you know, where all of a sudden money came
in that had never happened before. Senators and you know,
people were allocating whatever, you know, federal funding. That's why
we were able to buy the location where our current
headquarters in bakery and you know, so let's rebuild the bakery.
(13:55):
And I think, you know, in the old days it's
starting to resurrect a little bit again. Unfortunately. But you
had the tough on crime versus soft on crime. Well,
if those are your choices, everybody's going to pick tough
because nobody wants to be soft on anything. But if
the but Homeboy posited the notion that the choice is
(14:16):
really tough on crime or smart on crime, and then
people went, I'd rather be smart. And that was kind
of the first time that happened I think in La
County where people went, yeah, let's be smart. So then
they got underneath and what are the issues that undergird
(14:37):
this symptom of gang violence? And so people started to
address the lethal absence of hope. They said, well, what
if we infuse hope to kids for whom hope is foreign?
What if we helped heal trauma? What if we delivered
mental health services in a timely and culturally appropriate way.
(15:00):
So suddenly things just broke open. And then it was
like for the first also, gang members, you know, really
saw this as an exit ramp, you know, whereas before
people are shaking their fists at gang members and about
the violence, but there was no way to get off
the crazy violent freeway, and Homeboy kind of you know,
(15:25):
galvanized the imagination of the gang members said oh wait
a minute, maybe maybe maybe I don't have to do this,
maybe I can get off, which was kind of new.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
That's so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
I walk me through this I get from you. You
meet people where they're at, when they come in, you
meet them. They they don't feel judged, they don't feel shamed,
They feel love and cared for me from the gate.
Can you talk about that process when somebody comes in
the most hardened people, you see their heart, you see
their soul, you see their little boy, you see their history.
(15:58):
Can you talk to me about how connect with people
and help guide them towards freedom, towards sobriety, towards not
returning to prison, towards being a good father, towards trying
to have a different relationship with their family.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
I will always say, you know, I'm pretty convinced that
I heal nobody, but I think the place that people
find healing there And so that's important because then it's
a culture. It's part of the area you breathe. Homies
will call it an aroma. It's it's a lot of
(16:31):
those things, you know, all hands on deck, everybody is dosing.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Yeah. I love that everybody's providing a dose in the
dose right.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Yeah. Otherwise it becomes the Godfather will see you now,
you know, it's like you come in and see me.
It's really not that, you know, the place is really
alive with that culture. In fact, people visit will say
what is this, you know, because there's a kind of
a thing that they can energy there. They can't put
(16:59):
their finger on it. The energy is really brought to
you by everybody participating, and so there's something to that.
But in general, if everybody walks through those doors with
a disorganized attachment, you know, mom was frightened or frightening,
(17:19):
and how are you going to calm yourself down if
you've never had the experience of actually being soothed, and
if you come in there and you're barricaded behind a
wall of shame and disgrace. As you mentioned, you know,
there's no judgment and there's no shame. Then what scales
that wall but tenderness. So suddenly people are tender with
(17:41):
each other, and people, even if you're new, you're going
you're watching tenderness happen, and then that becomes the highest
form of spiritual maturity for people where you say, yeah,
I want to be tender you in spiritual terms, you
would say, you know, I receive the ten your glance,
(18:02):
and now I'm going to become that tender glance in
the world. That's your intentionality. So I've been at this
for a long time, for forty years, and you you can.
So I always have to catch myself, you know, because
we always talk about.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
You know, like our beautiful thank you.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah. But he you know, he would talk about, Okay,
that homie you fought with him right now because he
took you to that place. We always talk about that.
How do you how do you not allow yourself to
be taken to that place where you you know, you
rile up and you and you go. You want to
(18:45):
take people on rather than get underneath, find the thorn underneath.
The homies always say, if you find the thorn underneath,
you're not going to be taken to that place. And
so it's like Pema children who always talks about catch yourself.
You have to catch yourself. So I find myself. I'm
in that state a lot lately because someone will text
(19:08):
me and come at me sideways and I want to go.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
F me.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Oh hell no, and you know, and you go catch yourself.
So I had about four men. I had four texts
this morning where catch yourself. I had to catch myself. Yeah,
And which is a good thing?
Speaker 2 (19:26):
You know, pause is people always ask me what is
the spiritual awakening or recovery?
Speaker 1 (19:30):
I said, the ability to pause, to pause, to just
take a breath.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Step back, yeah, step back.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
And this person's coming to me at me as nobody
should ever come at somebody. And yet you know it's
not a it's an indicator, you know, and don't be
tripped up by it. So anyway that comes with doing
stuff for a long time, you know, I'm not sure
(19:57):
you even become better at it, it becomes even more
pronounced because there's you've been in this situation a million
times before and you kind of know how it plays out.
But catch yourself pause, which is excellent and so that
you can, you know, keep it new. You know, it's
like beginner's mind is such a hard thing to maintain
(20:20):
because you've been at it a long time, yes, and
you kind of think there's nothing new under the sun,
which is a trap.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
You love people until they can love themselves. You talk
about once they learn how to be cherished. Can you
talk about that? I love when you talk about being cherished.
Once they feel cherished.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
I you know, you find different you know, there was
a home he was talking about. He had a a
word which he called languaging, which I had never heard before,
and he said, I try to study languaging languaging, and
I thought, well, that was interesting because because you find
it different ways of saying things, you know, and like
(21:04):
I have my book is called Cherish Belonging, and my
editor didn't like the title. He just wanted belonging, of
which there are ninety three titles named belonging. But never mind,
but cherish was the key thing, because you know, I
would say, systems change when people change, and people change
(21:28):
when they're cherished. And so cherishing is love with its
sleeves rolled up. You know, there's something about it that's
truly active, truly engaged. It's what relational wholeness is always about.
Where you're cherishing people. So at hombo, you want to
(21:50):
create a place that's safe, where people are seen and
then they can be cherished, because in the end, that's
the only thing that will propel people to a place
where they can discover their true selves and loving. If
you're cherished, you're kind of cherished into that. You're cherished
(22:10):
into knowing that wait a minute, loving is my home.
And once you know that loving is your home, you're
just never homesick. You're never lamenting the love that you're
receiving or not getting enough of, or like home is
the place where you've received the most love. No, if
(22:34):
loving is your home, you're never That's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
You feel safe for the first time. Yeah, yeah, you
need to feel safe.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
So homies who've been in prison a long time and
in particular, would say, you know, we're all used to
being watch, but we're not used to being seen. And
so once you can get them to a place where
they're seen. It's hard to do, you know, I think
cherishing is not hard, Remembering to cherish is exceedingly difficult.
(23:04):
So that's why it's part of your practice. You know,
like even guys in recovery who say one day at
a time, I go, whoa, No, it's way too long.
You know, a day is too long. And that's why
you connect the cherishing to to your own breath, that
you cherish with every breath you take. That's what the
(23:26):
practice is. But it's a practice doesn't make perfect, but
but it can. It can lead increasingly to habitual, which
is what you hope, really really hard. I think easier
to say.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Easier to say, what do you say to family members
coming in their kids are struggling with addiction or and
there the kids are strung out their mental and the
parents don't know what to do. What is the what's
the messaging that you try to see?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Well, you know they're especially in the Latino community. You know,
you'll have a Senyora come in, a mom you know,
I bothery No, I okay, I said, I don't know
what to do. I don't know how to find a
way out of this, and then I said what was happening?
She goes, well, my son is you know, using myth
you know, And I said, well where is he? Oh,
(24:23):
he's he's at home in bed. I go, So no
amount of us wanting him to not do this anymore
will ever be the same as him choosing not to
do it. So, you know, you even at homeboy, even
though it's a you know, a building, perhaps although it's
(24:44):
more home than home for a lot of people, it's
still being clear is very loving. So you go, gosh, Jessica,
we love you so much, but you know you can't
come into the building right now because you're using meth
and you stopped taking your meds, so you're volatile and
you're kind of triggering all sorts of people. But boy,
do we love you a lot, so much so that
(25:06):
we can't let you into the building, you know, and
she'll packed out and go nuts. But but there's the
door marked recovery. We'll help you enter that door of
the minute you want to do it. So I think,
how is that different for that from that mother who's
at her wits end? You know, it isn't different. You
(25:27):
kind of say, oh, I love you so much you
can't live here right now because because you're using meth
all the time. We'll do everything we can to get
you into that place where you can stay for six
months or whatever the prescribed amount of time is, right,
(25:47):
you know, but until then, you know, I don't know
a park bench, or I don't know what you're going
to do.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
It's just that that's just yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
And so people say that's tough love, and I always think, no,
that's clear. Clear is better than tough. It's beautiful right on,
because you want to be clear clear, it needs to
be ultra clear. Yeah, and it's never at any point
rejection or shaming or less than.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Loving love your son. I just can't live here anymore.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Yeah, yeah, I love you so much that you.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Can't can't live anymore son, Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yeah, but that could change tomorrow. And then part of
it is closing doors. Every door is closed except the
one marked. Recovery will help you walk through that door.
But we're well. But if I just go to church more, no,
that door's closed. You know. If I just had a job, no,
you have you have to do this first, beautiful. It's
(26:44):
hard because at homeboy, we're constantly testing and there's lots
of relapsing. And you know, I always say the same thing.
We go, Look, that's where we were talking earlier about
finding beds. Okay, we got a place for you, and
do ninety days right and then come right back to us.
(27:05):
And sometimes they say no, they gough. But it's in
your hands. You know.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
You're so humble about all the things you've learned, all
the mistakes you've made changing your approach. If I understood
this correctly, you know you I think after ten years
you had a big revelation. Like I've been going around
on my beach cruiser and I had a shift in
consciousness and I could you talk about because it had
a big impact on me.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Well, it's like like yesterday I was at Roosevelt High
School and for this event and they were asking me questions.
That was one of them about regrets. There are so
many things I don't ever regret and I'd never do
them again. And that's kind of a difference. So I
don't regret that I had shuttled diplomacy or I tried to,
(27:53):
you know, put that ouzi down. Are you sure you
want to shoot that guy on my bike? Patrolling the
eight Gangs I don't regret that, and I'd never do
it again because it served the cohesion of the gang,
which I didn't really see. I saw that that was
in fact supplying oxygen to gangs, and that seemed clear
(28:15):
to me not to be a good thing. So then
we shifted and it was come see us when you're ready.
When you're ready, yeah, or even if if we have
to let somebody go, because usually it's because of a
relapse and they refuse to go to to handle it
and deal with it, and we'll say, well, come back
(28:36):
when you're ready. We love you, we think you're great,
but come back when you're ready. There's nothing wrong with
not being ready. It's just timing, and right when you
when this, when you can embrace that as as the
path that you need to walk, come right back to us.
But so there were those things. There was the you know,
(28:56):
there's a kind of a notion called gang hardcore gang intervation,
which I don't agree with because I did it and
I saw what it did, and I saw that it
was it's not helpful, you know, because that's kind of
the key I talked about earlier that I can remember
a guy touting a program which was really working with
(29:18):
gang members on the streets and negotiating and truces and ceasefires.
And I remember he was at a conference in San
Francisco on gangs and he was pounding on the podium
and he says, look, this works. And I remember I
wrote in my little program there I said, yeah, but
(29:38):
I bet it doesn't help, you know. And then that
was key for me because I thought, not everything that
works helps, but everything that helps works. So find the
thing that's helpful and then you just do the next,
loving thing. Then you just put one foot in front
of the next concretely helpful as opposed to lots of
(30:05):
things that work that are horrifying, you know. And I
think law enforcement approached to a lot of things sometimes
you would go, wow, that works, look at the numbers. Yeah,
but it's horrifying. Yeah, you don't want to do that.
You could make a case maybe to say that mass
incarceration works, but you could never make the case that
(30:28):
it helps. And so helping, helping always trumps working.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
And didn't you in that time just really come this
it's never about you.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Well that was another moment that was when I was
kind of close to burnout and where oh, Yeah, where
homie who had a dream of his brother had killed himself.
He was in rehab. I went to pick him up
to take him to his brother's funeral. And the dream
was he and I were in a room with no
(31:01):
lights or no windows, pitch black, but somehow he knew
I was in the room. And he said, and in
the dream, you pull out of your pocket a flashlight
and you aim the flashlight steadily at the light switch
on the wall, and no words are exchanged. But I'm
just aiming the flashlight. And he says, I know I'm
(31:24):
the only one who can turn that light switch on.
I'm really grateful that you had a flashlight. So, as
he's recounting the dream to me, he followed the beam
of light to the light switch, and he stood there
and kind of a deep sigh, and with great trepidation,
he flips the light on and the room is flooded
(31:46):
with light. And now he's sobbing as he's telling me
this dream he had, and he said, the light is
better than the darkness, like you didn't know this to
be the case. And then he said, I guess I
think my brother just never found the light switch. And
I've never had an experience in all my seventy years
(32:06):
of living like that one where I said to myself,
I get it. The source of my near burnout was
that I've been trying to turn the light switch on
for people, right, And you think that's noble and good
and right. And here's the light switch, you know, and
I turn it on, and suddenly you're content to know
(32:29):
that we all own a lot of flashlight and we
all know where to aim it, and that has to
be enough. And suddenly it was enough. I knew exactly
what I had been doing wrong, that I was trying
to turn the flash the light switch on for people,
and I stopped. And I can honestly say that I've
(32:52):
never been near burnout since then, because because turning the
light switch on is about me always, and it can't
be about me. So the minute you do that, you go.
Now I can go to bed, I can go to
sleep at night. Yeah, right, And so it's a totally
(33:13):
different thing. So if you go to the margins to
make a difference, then it's about you. But if you
go to the margins so that the folks there make
you different, then it's about us. It feels passive, but
it isn't because if you're going to the margins to
reach people, then it's about you. But if you go
(33:36):
there to be reached, then everybody in a way that's
really exquisitely mutual. Everyone is inhabiting their own dignity and
their own nobility, and there's nothing passive about that. That's
the whole thing, you know. That's why it's the feeling
(33:58):
is mutual. It's not saving, rescuing, fixing. It's delighting, receiving
who people are, you know, Otherwise it's this is why
people burn out because it's so aligned with success and
evidence based outcomes. It's difficult because funders only care about
(34:20):
that stuff, you know, and we can't care about that stuff.
You just can't do it because it's do you lose
your way. It's a tough thing to straddle because somebody
at Homeboy Industries has to care about evidence based outcomes.
It's not going to be me. But inasmuch as they
(34:42):
do data and they but if that's your engine, before
too long, you're going to stop working with the people
that you set out to work with and walk with,
and you're going to start working with folks who are
going to give you better outcomes, which means you've abandoned
(35:04):
the people who are even you know, in your experience,
like in in rehab or recovery. You know, I don't know,
what would you think of a program that didn't have
people leaving? Do you know what I mean? It's almost
a measure of in some odd way, a measure of
(35:25):
our fidelity that you have people who are relapsing, right
who leave because that's illness. Well, that's as it should
be in a way, you know, because I don't know
do if people ever talk that way, do they ever say,
you know, we run this recovery center. We have one
(35:45):
hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yes they do, and they and they charge a lot
of money, and they're generally in Malibu.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yeah, eight guaranteed rate. Yeah, that's crazy to me.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
It is insanity. Yeah, But like you, I don't I
don't get involved with that. I just keep doing doing here.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
But it's like running off school for kids that nobody
wants to educate. And then pretty soon you have a
board and the board is saying, well, how many of
them go on to universities.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
And how many get their masters? I think we had one.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
And then and then pretty soon a couple of years
in they're saying, one hundred percent of our students go
on to college. Well, of course, because you're only accepting
the most likely to go on to college. Kid.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
You know, well, you bring up something that I'm just
going to add to that rather the one thing I
believe you'll, of course tell me why Homeboy is so successful.
People trust you, They trust you, and they never and
that's a big deal. It's hard to gain trust.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Yeah, I think so. I think they trust the place.
You know, I try, Okay, they trust sure, Yeah, I
think they have ay, they know that this place is
not gonna.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Well, they feel seen. People need to feel seen.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Yeah, is that fair? Yeah? Safe scene and cherished. I
mean I think safe, safe key because when they walk
in the door, they're looking around. They go, I don't know,
am I safe here? And they may not know that
they are yet, you know, they will know.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
I could get it wrong, but I remember one I
don't know what I think, Diane FINSI was maybe running
for governor, I'm not sure, and she wanted to come
visit you guys. Yeah, it is the homegirls and you
propose this to them, right.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
She Well, this was when I was pastor, and this
is not the homegirls, but the women women in the parish.
And they had this campaign to go into their kids rooms,
lift up the mattress, grab that uzzi, and then bring
the gun down to the church. So we had these
big gun events where people would be throwing guns in
(37:48):
a big trash can. And she was running for governor
and she saw it and she she wanted to, you know,
kind of meet with the women. So I remember I
went to the win and who only spoke Spanish, and
and I said, you know, this candidate for governor wants
to visit you, and and I presumed they would say,
(38:13):
oh my god, you know, we're honored, thrilled, and they
said no. They said, if she wants to come here
and tell us what to do with the problems that
we face, they can nobenga tell her not to come. Yeah,
but if she's going to come and listen to us.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
And hear our stories, because we're close.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
To this and we know what we need to be doing,
tell her to come. And she never came. I think
she thought it might be a press event from Hell
or something, so she kind of said, I'm not going
to go.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
So that that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
You you you created a culture where they just felso,
listened to and cared for.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
And yeah, it's important. It's hard to nurture it all
the times, live and flourishing. But that's the challenge.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
You've had thousands of atticts pass in and out.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
A homeboy.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
What's the characteristics of people that stay sober and have
a good life, don't return to prison, don't relapse? If
you could break it down, what have you seen over
the years.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Well, I think it has to do with surrender, you know.
You know, we have a lot of returnees, like even
jose Adi. I know I keep putting him on the
front page, but he was and he'll admit, you know,
it took him several starts and stops and starts and stops,
and now he's vice president. You know. But I remember
(39:39):
I never heard this before. Homie said to me, I said,
why did it? You know it took so many tries
and he he said, I just couldn't handle the love
that I found here, which I thought was interesting, right,
that that would be the too much. It was too
much for him and he left and lapsed or went
(40:00):
back to prison. So I think it's kind of that.
But surrender is kind of the opposite of that if
you surrender to the foundational healing, and part of that
is to you kind of have to agree to the excavation.
You know where you're going. You know, everybody has just
(40:21):
huge wounds and trauma and unspeakable pain that they haven't
gotten near. And so part of the love that sometimes
is unbearable is also is a light that's kind of
helping excavate a wound that needs to be aired out
and clean. And so if you're willing to do that.
(40:45):
There was a period of time that I always found
kind of startling where gang members who were addicted to
gang violence came to Homeboy and suddenly found themselves addicted
to drugs in a way that they had never used
rugs before. Interesting, and I think again it was because
of makes sense, you're numbing the process of the excavation.
(41:09):
So and so we've we've had a lot of struggles
with like, for example, marijuana, there was a time you
test you have to be clean, and now we kind
of don't sweat the marijuana so much when you enter,
you know, but then we go thirty days from now,
we want your levels to be lower.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
You know.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
It's kind of the times in which we live in
a way in the whole that you're still going to
work towards not numbing your pain at all, you know,
harm reduction production. Yeah, so there's a kind of a
sense of that that's different from from how we operated before,
you know. But then you kind of also tie some
(41:51):
things to it. You know, you're going to be part
time because your levels are still too high marijuana obviously,
the flags are any other opiate or math or heroine,
anything like that that's going you know, we're going to
take a time out. We're going to offer you rehab.
We hope you accept it. So, but that's kind of
(42:12):
the thing, because the process is, if it's foundational healing,
then you're by nature you come to terms with what
was done to you and come to terms with what
you also did and then and then it's that's how
the healing happens. But that your original question on this
(42:35):
is how do you kind of you know, who is
the person who was ends up being sturdy and resilient.
It's the one who surrendered, you know, to the place.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
We have a saying here, father, shame on them for
doing that to me, Shame on me for staying that way.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Yeah, we like to shift the narrative.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
We don't.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
We refuse to be our sad stories.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Here or to be locked into a victimized.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Victimized mentality. Yeah, I believe I have this right. You
said if they, if the attics could hear the shrieking
of a mother after they just lost their son to
overdose or murder, it might change their mind.
Speaker 3 (43:20):
Could you talk about that.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Well, that was in the early days when when we
had shootings morning, noon, and night and really quite intense,
and I at one point buried eight kids and a
three week period. So in the projects, this was a
constant and there was that moment. There was the lag time,
you know, when when somebody who was shot was then
(43:42):
declared dead, you know at the hospital, which was where
it normally happened, and I was there with the mother
and their you know, surgery or whatever they're doing, and
he didn't make it, and then there's this kind of
a latina shriek that comes from the earth, you know.
(44:05):
And so I used to say, the homies are never
there to hear that. And then once this kid we
called them bear and the mother stayed at home. There
were other siblings who were at the hospital, but I
went to tell her that he had died, that this kid,
(44:25):
Mario Bear had died, and the homies were all there
outside outside the apartment and the projects, and she, you know,
shrieked in a way that was just primal. And I remember,
I think that's where I wrote on that where I
said and that was the very first time that I
(44:46):
recall that the homies were there to hear that sound.
Normally they weren't. And because they were distant from hearing
that sound, they were all involved in venge and anger
and fury, but they didn't hear that sound. And I
remember looking at them as they heard the sound, and
(45:08):
how to their core it was so uncomfortable to kind
of shift in them, you know, kind of say, wow,
what is this about? And how could it possibly be
worth that sound?
Speaker 2 (45:24):
You know, I think if I got this right, I
wrote this down Freddy after one of the Homeboys was murdered.
Came into your office, Freddy, and.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Yeah, I changed all the names, so I never know.
The name is never the trigger thing. Say more and then.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
I'll know what you talk about. There is I think
he said something. I never cried like that before with somebody.
He was coming in to talk to you about what happened.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
That was the second of our graffiti removal crew team killed.
And then I was at the hospital again when he died.
The mother family members, but I was aware I had
spent hours there already, and I thought I got to
get home and kind of tend to the office because
(46:15):
this kid was much beloved at our office. So I
got there just like fifteen minutes before five, where everybody's
leaving the office. So it was very you know, people
were sobbing, and people were hugging me, and you maintained
a certain amount of trying to be there for them.
And then I thought I was alone, and I was
(46:36):
in my office by myself, and I was just kind
of letting it all in. And when this kid came
from our little conference room in the back. His name
was Chino. I don't know. I guess I must have
called him Freddy, but he he looked at me, stood
from the desk, and he said, I know your heart
(46:58):
must be breaking, and the two of us we just sobbed.
I mean just I've never really quite cried like that,
and and he cried, and I sobbed, and and then
he said all of us are in a river and
we're drowning. M and and you swoop us up. We
(47:24):
started crying all over again. And then he said, on
everything I love. If somebody offered me a million dollars
or a chance to swoop you up, I'd swoop you up.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
Wow man, wow.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Yeah. Anyway, haven't told that story in a long time.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
And it's funny of all the people who would who
would choose to swoop me up? And that's what I
said to him, I said, you just did, you just did.
And of course he did easily. Three quarters of my
gray hairs or you know, he's he was the one
who brought them my way. I mean, he was just
(48:16):
a knucklehead. And the funny that he was, he was
the most attentive, you know, and yet you know, just
he's so so hard. He was in his addiction and
he was he you know, I was trying to get
him into a rehab and he he texted me and
(48:40):
he said, hey, gee, you know, can you give me
you know, I need some money. And I don't know
what it was he needed, And I said, son, you know,
other people might give you money, but I love you
so much. I'm not going to give you any money,
and but I'm willing to take you right now to
rehab because he was drinking so much. This is many
(49:00):
years later, and then he I said, of texting him, Look,
I know that you you've burned a lot of bridges
with your family and your friends. I'm telling you right now,
the day will never come when you burn this bridge
with me. That'll never happen. So I pressed send, and
(49:23):
he writes me right back, fuck your bridge. That was
one of those lessons too, where you feel the sting
of it. Yeah, then you once you feel it, then
you let it go and then you I just howled
with laughter. So then I the next day at our
(49:45):
senior staff meeting, our little meeting we called the council,
and Jose was at that meeting, and I told them
that and and then it became this shorthand for you know,
like how it would kind of they would hug me
and they'd whisper in my ear, fuck your bridge, and
(50:08):
and we would howl with laughter, you know, like like
oh gosh, that really moved me, you know, And and
how it became this shorthand for affection, and which was
hard to kind of to arrive at in a way,
but you kind of if you don't, if you cling
(50:29):
to those things into getting butt hurt, as the homies
would say, or getting bent out of shape, or we
just found it really kind of funny.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
I've had many texts like that, and you have to
wrap your arms around it.
Speaker 3 (50:42):
Yeah you love them, Yeah you understand, and.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
Then and then allow it to be as hilarious as
it is, because it really was quite funny, not initially,
but but three beats later it was the funniest thing
I'd ever heard.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
Whither someone comes into your office and he says, you're
talking about faith. And he says, I don't believe in
God or Jesus or And he said, but I want
to have faith?
Speaker 3 (51:09):
What do I do? How does someone find? What do
you do?
Speaker 2 (51:13):
When someone what do you instruct them to do?
Speaker 3 (51:15):
There?
Speaker 1 (51:16):
You know, I don't think God has much interest in it,
you know, so I don't have much interest in it either,
you know, truthfully, because I think in the end you
know where where is your true self? Your true self
is in loving And this is why I think the
brilliance of the twelve step notion of higher power. I
(51:41):
don't think it matters much, doesn't to God? You know,
it's it's however you get there is fine. As long
as you can find your true self. You want to
find your truth and that's always going to be in
loving where you choose to let love live through you,
and that's where the joy is. So that's the whole thing.
(52:04):
So that's what God wants. And from my own point
of view, doesn't want worship me. You know, it's never
believe in me, have faith in me. I don't think
it's any of that God's dream come true as our
kinship community of cherish belonging know us in them, there's
(52:24):
just us and you discovering the truth of who you
are so that you can live from that place. That's it.
Speaker 3 (52:33):
That's the entry point for you, right.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
But otherwise it's like somehow God is wanting, you know,
you to go like this, I go, where would we
get that idea? Yeah, you know, because God is more
self effacing than we are, you know, and if we
were God, we would want people to praise us. But
(52:57):
God only wants joy because Jesus says, my joy yours
your joy complete. That's it. It's not Here's what I'm
hoping is that you'll worship me, you know, which is crazy,
But that's where people get stuck. They project onto God,
you know, this puny notion that somehow God, you know,
(53:21):
just wants to be praised, and you go, well, we
would want that if you were God. But that's just good.
We're human.
Speaker 3 (53:29):
Who's what are your greatest teachers?
Speaker 1 (53:31):
So for forty years, I've you know, walked with gang members,
so they've always been my primary teachers. But you had
people in your life teachers literally, teachers or people who
you admire in terms of like sess up job as
privileged to know him and be a friend with him.
(53:56):
And Jim Lawson who recently died, Reverend Lawson who taught
Martin Luther King about Gandhian principles of civil disobedience and
he was a mentor. So you have those people, but
I would say primarily it was homies, homies years.
Speaker 2 (54:15):
Yeah, okay, I was at the event at UCLA when
you were there with Pema children. Oh really, how did
that relationship for him? And to tell listeners who Pemma.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
Is, Yeah, well, Pemma is a Buddhist monk, I guess.
But she's just a light, you know, She's a I
can't remember what happened. I read her a lot, and
then I think she read tattoos. And then I'm in
(54:46):
my office and I look out and there's you know,
kind of a saffron row shaved head woman sitting underneath
the TV. CNN is on. The room is packed, and
she's in this one chair, and I went, oh, my god,
that's Pama children And I said, what is she's here
to see you? And I go, my god, bring her in.
(55:10):
And so and she was with her daughter, and I
don't know, we just became fast friends, you know. And then.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
Light a homeboy drew her in.
Speaker 1 (55:21):
Huh yeah. So so you know, she's she's always kind
of sending money, and you know, because she has her
foundation and she's just a well, she's amazing. So I
think she said, well let's do something together. Yeah. So
then we had that thing at UCLA. So we write
(55:42):
each other. You know, she has a kind of a
you know, she's in Nova Scotia or wherever the heck,
somewhere cold, you know, for the cold period, and then
she'll come she has kind of a someplace in Colorado,
I think, and then she comes for as her daughter
in southern California. And so I don't know. Over the years,
(56:05):
we've just maintained a friendship and I love her humor.
Isn't that oddest thing, you know, because she has wisdom
and insights, but her humor says everything to me, you know,
because she has kind of a light grasp on things,
you know, so she becomes for me very She's so human.
Speaker 2 (56:27):
I think, like you, she has the ability to goof
on herself, yeah, and not take herself too seriously.
Speaker 3 (56:33):
Yeah, that's a real beautiful thing. You know.
Speaker 2 (56:36):
You've talked recently. I've read articles and I'm certainly facing this.
It's a different game out there at the fetanyl crisis
mental health, and you talk about going into different places
and you just kind of see people just checked out,
you know, and what's.
Speaker 3 (56:52):
What. How are you guys tackling that over at homeboy?
Speaker 1 (56:56):
It's hard, and I would say it is quite different,
you know, because we start to get to this language
that we've never used before, where we say beyond the
scope of our you know, beyond the scope. They'll say,
you know, I think he's beyond our scope, which I
don't really like much because we've had lots of people
(57:17):
who are beyond our scope. But with enough dosing of
cherishing love. People come around. You know, there are tons
of people who have gone through our place or who
are still at our place, who you know, again, it's
more home than home, and that's okay. You just don't
(57:37):
want a critical mass because then it ends up impeding
the growth and health and progress of everybody else. So
that's tough. But I think that's what we're in. We're
in exacerbated by the pandemic, for sure, but we're in
the grip of a real mental health crisis. I mean,
(57:58):
how else do you explain. Not to get political, but
but you know, do healthy people you know, want to
have a dictator, want to live under a dictator or
an autocrat? You just go, no, this is I don't
mean people are dumb or people are bad. I believe
(58:18):
everybody's unshakably good and we belong to each other. So
these aren't judgment calls so much as health assessments. I
don't think you can be healthy. In last night, Barack
Obama was kind of talking about, you know, people saying
that you know that other Americans are vermin and he said,
(58:45):
when did that become okay? And in a sense, it's
about morality. I suppose when he asked that question. But
for me, it's about health. You know. So if you
talk about three hundred percent increase in anti Semitic hate crimes,
and I go, well, no, this is not about hate.
This is about health. If we think it's about hate,
(59:07):
we will not make any progress except shaking our fist
at hate. Just say no to hate. You know, I
believe in love, not hate. Then it's about you, and
you're not that helpful. I'd rather be Let's do something
that helps. But it's about it's about health, not hate.
Like ram Das talks about, we're all just walking each
(59:31):
other home. So how do we walk each other home
to health and wholeness and fullness and joy. Well, let's
just walk each other home. You don't have to say,
you know, here are the bad guys, because there are
no bad guys. You know, not everybody is at any
None of us are well until all of us are well.
(59:53):
So how do we help each other move towards health?
You know? Otherwise it's just more us in them, and
it's demonizing and demonizing is always the opposite of truth.
And I would say the opposite of how God sees things.
And so you want to. I think if it's about health,
(01:00:15):
then it's we're okay. It's okay to say it's okay.
You know, how do we move each other towards a
kind of health where you will feel more full and joyful.
Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Beautiful?
Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
But don't you think that's true? Right? I think we're
at a different place again. In forty years with gang members,
I've never seen this moment, right, And you know, you
can say fentanyl, and you can say I've just never
seen this level of mental anguish and distress than I
have now, Just.
Speaker 3 (01:00:52):
Out of curiosity, what are you your happiest?
Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
Well? I love being at the office and I don't
have much balance in my life because I'm on the
road a lot. And that's that's enjoyable too, especially if
I'm bringing homies or homegirls to help and watch them
get up in front of an audience, like I just
had two guys speak to every single judge in the
state of Indiana, and you know, just, oh my god,
(01:01:19):
standing ovations for these guys and they just love them
and rock stars, you know, and they just got up
and humbly told their stories and it was wonderful. So
that that was that stuff's joyful for me. But I
love being in the office, you know, well because it's
everybody's coming in and there's a sameness to a lot
(01:01:42):
of it, you know, I'm just short two hundred dollars
on my rent. Sameness to it, you know. But it's
always fun, it's always affectionate, it's always heartbreaking, it's always full,
you know, Like yesterday I had I was there the
whole day and I got home. I was exhausted, not
(01:02:03):
burned out, but exhausted, and I thought, Wow, I wouldn't
trade my life for anybody's. That was just so rich.
And you know, you stand in awe at what people
have to carry rather than judgment at how they carry it,
and you go, wow, I've never had to carry what
what she is carrying or what he is carrying. But
(01:02:24):
then you feel just gives you energy. Yeah, totally totally
gives you energy.
Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
Any final thoughts for our audience and how can people
support homeboy.
Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
Well, I hope if you're in LA has come to
the headquarters because it's it's really worth seeing. Come for
morning meeting, which is kind of joyous from ten minutes
to nine to about nine oh five, or come to
the cafe or support us that way, it's important to
see if people walk through those doors, because I don't know,
(01:02:56):
I think Homeboys sometimes, you know, it's really the front
porch of the house everybody wants to live in, you know,
so you get a taste of wow, look at this
as black, brown men, women, gay, straight enemies, multiple multiple enemies.
Everybody has multiple enemies there, and it's kind of this
(01:03:18):
big old hug fest. And then the bakery enemies who
used to shoot at each other making croissants together. And yeah,
so you just it's kind of something to behold because
then it galvanizes the imagination. Then you kind of go, Okay,
I see this, Yeah, this is what we're meant to do.
(01:03:40):
Quite apart from supporting Homeboy, I think it also it
announces a message about a community of cherish belonging, which
is where we all want to be right on.
Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
Final thoughts for those that are in the light and
struggling right now.
Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
I think part of it is there's a duty to
delight if you if we can just that's if we
intend to do that, if we choose to delight in
the people in front of us, and then and to
go where love is not yet arrived and cherish who
you find there. I don't know. That's what keeps us vital.
Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
I cannot thank you enough for making it down to
Venis today we can consider ourselves unofficial Homeboy Satellite Office.
Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
Yeah, maintain the PROB.
Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
Been an incredible teacher and your kindness today is well appreciated.
Speaker 3 (01:04:39):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (01:04:40):
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
Okay, beautiful Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
The Sino Show is a production of iHeart Podcasts, hosted
by me Cina McFarlane.
Speaker 3 (01:04:50):
Produced by pod People in twenty eighth.
Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
Av Our lead producer is Keith Carlick.
Speaker 3 (01:04:55):
Our executive prouser is Lindsay Hoffman. Marketing lead is Ashley Weaver.
Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you
next week.
Everything that helps works. Not everything that works helps, So
do the thing that concretely helps. Systems change when people change,
and people change when they're cherished. Cherishing is love with
its sleeves rolled up. He looked at me, stood from
the desk, and he said, I know your heart must
be breaking, and the two of us we just sobbed.
(00:22):
I've never really quite cried like that.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Everybody, it's Cena McFarlane. Welcome back to the Sino Show.
I don't have many heroes in my life, but I
have one here in front of me today. I'm truly
honored to have a truly inspiring guest with me. Father
Gregory Boyle the founder of Homeboy Industries. Father Boyle's dedicated
his life to transform the lives of those impacted by
(00:50):
gang violence and incarceration. Through Homeboy Industries, he has built
the largest and most successful gang intervention, rehabilitation and re
CHI program in the world. His work as a testament
to the power and compassion, community and kinship. He has
shown time and time again that no life is beyond redemption.
(01:12):
He has written many books. This book has changed my life.
I give this book out sometimes before I give the
Big Book of aout to people, every therapist and coach.
This is an absolute must read and I look at
it every week to remind me what's important and give
me balance.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Thank you. It's good to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Boy, there's a lot to cover with you. Olivia had
a profound impact on you.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, Bolivia was nineteen eighty four to for one year.
Then I got really sick, I had to come home.
And then I was just ordained a priest in eighty four,
so I went kind of didn't know what I wanted
to do, and I went down there ostensibly to learn
Spanish or improve it, I guess, and then I just
(01:59):
fell in love immediately. I was, you know, in this
community that hadn't had a priest in twenty five years,
and we had these little gomidas de oss, these small
groups of you know, people who would meet and we'd
reflect about life, and so we did a lot of things.
(02:19):
So anyway, it was just a magnificent experience. It was
the poorest country in the Hemisphere, poorer than Haiti at
the time, and it was just going through the most
extraordinary period politically, and people were really quite suffering. And
yet I found that, you know, in terms of the
(02:40):
poor evangelized me. They just kind of turned me inside out.
That so, I was supposed to go to Santa Clara
University to be campus minister or something, and then I
just begged my provincial please don't send me there. Nothing
against them is just it's not enough. And so he said, well,
(03:00):
I need somebody at Dolores Mission, where I had spent
a summer, and that was the poorest parish in the
city of La So I said, please, yes.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
And what is that instinct in you, father, that that
I don't want to go to that Santa Clair. I'd
be grateful to go there, but I want to go
to the most difficult, scariest place.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Well, I don't think it was so much in terms
of scary. It was that there was something about being
in the proximity with the poor people who who were
totally abandoned and cut out and ignored and kind of
deemed of no value, And there was something about walking
(03:40):
with them that changed my life, even for that brief
time I was in Bolivia. So so I was so grateful.
At first, I thought, you know, I would come to
Dolores Mission. I'd be kind of the third guy on
the totem Pole. But it turned out I was going
to be the past I was really quite young. In fact,
(04:03):
they never were then. Well I was thirty one. Nobody
is named a pastor at thirty one, So I was
the youngest pastor in the history of the diocese. Oh wow,
really really young. So but because nobody wanted to go there,
it was quite an intense place, you know that. Really
(04:24):
people were quite stressed out working there and didn't last
very long. Wow, But I was happy to be there.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Let me just go back a little bit, prober when
when did you know? When did you get tapped? And no,
it's I have a I'm here to serve. How old
were you?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Well, you know, I was taught by the Jesuits, so
I was you know, I just loved them. They were
hilarious and prophetic, they were fearless and joyful, and so
they were all the things I wanted to to be
and so I'll have what they're having. So I was young,
(04:58):
for sure, Wow, but it was you know, I just
loved the spirit of them and the combo berger of
prophetic fearless with real live joy. You know. I suppose
in the early days I thought it was just high
hilarity because they were really quite funny and I liked
(05:18):
being around them. But then afterwards I thought, no, this
is really comes from a deep place. At Homeboy, we
always the homies talk about here at Homeboy, we laugh
from the stomach. And that's the concept, you know, which
is really a deep kind of place from which to
experience joy and to share.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
You have an incredible ability used humor as a great medicine.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
It's a real art.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Yeah, well, I think it's you. It's essential, the attentive
to how things are quite funny.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
So let's start with, you know, being at Dolores and
kind of walking us through in the invent of Homeboy.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Well, in the early days, so that I was. I
was there the summers of eighty four and eighty five,
and then I was pastor in eighty six and so
eighty six to ninety two. And in the early days,
immigration was kind of the thing, because those were the
days of dividing families and deporting folks in families who
(06:19):
didn't have papers. There was the Immigration Reform and Control Act.
A lot of family division was going to happen as
a result of that. People talked about the amnesty, but
it was really dividing families, and my parents was so undocumented.
So that was what the first two years were. But
by eighty eight was when I started to bury kids
(06:41):
a lot, and that's when Homeboys started. We called ourselves
Jobs for a Future, because it was mainly just we
started a school, and then we started a jobs program
trying to find employers willing to hire felony people who
were fell Any friendly, you know, tell any friendly, I
(07:03):
love that, And so we did that for a while,
which was kind of a little half assed as I
look back on it, because because you know, I think
we discovered that an educated inmate may or may not
go back to prison, or an employed one may or
may not. But then I'd say fifteen years ago we
decided and really with great determination, that a heeled gang
(07:28):
member will not reoffend. So then we shifted who we were.
You know, before it was nothing stupsible like a job.
That's what was our t shirt and our motto. But
then we thought, no, this literally was happening where people
we found careers for gang members, and then suddenly that
(07:48):
guy's lady would leave him, and it just threw a
monkey wrench in the works. And now that guy's at
fulsome prison for the rest.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
He didn't have skill set the.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Well, he didn't have any He wasn't sturdy, he wasn't resilient,
He hadn't healed sufficiently to be able to withstand what
the world is going to throw at you. So we
do an eighteen month we call it eighteen month training program.
But if you surrender to that essential foundational healing, recognizing
(08:23):
that healing ends in the graveyard for all of us anyway.
But if you surrender to that, then you can leave
us after eighteen months and the world is going to
throw at you, for sure, all sorts of things, but
you're not going to be toppled this time. You won't
be toppled. But we were finding people being toppled, and
(08:44):
we thought, well, this isn't enough. We still have the
menu of services that a lot of places have, job training,
therapy and tattoo removal and classes, anger management. All of
that is secondary to the or cultural healing. And once
(09:05):
you kind of dive into that, if you surrender to that,
it's going to really work, because it's going to help
you know, and everything that helps works, not everything that
works helps, but everything that helps work. So do the
thing that concretely helps.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
You know, so many things that you talk about, you
know didn't work, and you would just learn from them.
You know, you kind of joke about who would have
thought about the plumbing program?
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Oh yeah, yeah, are you sure about so?
Speaker 1 (09:33):
I always say, you know, we've started all these and
not everything worked. You know, I always say Homeboy Plumbing
was not hugely successful because I suppose ostensibly people weren't
enthralled at having gang members enter their homes. I suppose,
But yeah, that was just a cheap joke. But yeah,
so there you want to try to find. We would
(09:55):
bounce from kind of job opportunities to other ones. You know,
we started a bakery only because there was an abandoned
bakery across the street from our school, you know, Tortillas was.
We were in Grand Central Market. There was an empty
you know, kind of tortilla machine. So and I was,
(10:18):
I was there to get jobs for kind of janitorial jobs.
I said, what is that? They go, well, it's a
tortilla machine. I God, well, wyon't you lease it to
us for free, you know, a dollar a month or something.
So he did, and the Homeboy Tortillas was born. And
that was a black hole that lost a lot of money.
(10:40):
But all the things kind of just sort of evolved
that way. You know, I think we have more intentionality
and clarity and planning now than we did in my
early days.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
But now they talk about you know, some of my listeners,
you know, they need hope, they need persistence, never giving up.
I mean, the Bakery burns down, and what's going through
your head at that time, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Well that was October of ninety nine, and so the
Bakery was born in ninety two, and so it was
kind of you know, starting to find its way. And
that was in the first ten years of our existence
as an organization where we got death threats, bomb threats,
hate mail people.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Really from law enforcement, right mainly.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Yeah, and people who demonize gang members, never from gang members.
It never made sense for gang members to oppose us,
you know, as much as people think they think, oh gosh,
you're taking our soldiers away or something, but that's all mythic.
But if the populace demonize gang members, it's a short
(11:51):
hop to demonize me and Homeboy for helping them. So
it was really intense. So the Bakery burned down in
that period, you know, where you know, I would write
an op ed piece about, you know, if only we
could be smart on crime or see gang members as
(12:13):
human beings, whatever, and there'd be an onslaught of death threats,
bomb threats, hate mail. I mean, we're quite extraordinary hard
to retrieve it now, but it was pervasive.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
And how do you let that affect your mission?
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Well, I, you know, I just because we were kind
of close to the bone and connected to the community
and it was working, you know, it was working, Yeah,
but it was also you know, success. I kind of
agree with Mother Teresa on this one that we're not
called to be successful, we're called to be faithful. So
if you're faithful to walking with people, what difference does
(12:49):
it make, you know, evidence based outcomes? I don't care.
This is the person, you know, the person right in
front of you. But when I look back on that,
because I have a book coming out in November and
I and I think it was the first time I
was able to look back. And so you ask about
the bakery burning down, and that was a tipping point
(13:11):
where on October of ninety nine, bakery burns down and
the La Times the next day does a you know,
editorial that says, Homeboy Industries doesn't belong to father Greg Boyle.
It belongs to the city of La And as I
look back on that now many years later, that was
(13:34):
the impetus, you know, where all of a sudden money came
in that had never happened before. Senators and you know,
people were allocating whatever, you know, federal funding. That's why
we were able to buy the location where our current
headquarters in bakery and you know, so let's rebuild the bakery.
(13:55):
And I think, you know, in the old days it's
starting to resurrect a little bit again. Unfortunately. But you
had the tough on crime versus soft on crime. Well,
if those are your choices, everybody's going to pick tough
because nobody wants to be soft on anything. But if
the but Homeboy posited the notion that the choice is
(14:16):
really tough on crime or smart on crime, and then
people went, I'd rather be smart. And that was kind
of the first time that happened I think in La
County where people went, yeah, let's be smart. So then
they got underneath and what are the issues that undergird
(14:37):
this symptom of gang violence? And so people started to
address the lethal absence of hope. They said, well, what
if we infuse hope to kids for whom hope is foreign?
What if we helped heal trauma? What if we delivered
mental health services in a timely and culturally appropriate way.
(15:00):
So suddenly things just broke open. And then it was
like for the first also, gang members, you know, really
saw this as an exit ramp, you know, whereas before
people are shaking their fists at gang members and about
the violence, but there was no way to get off
the crazy violent freeway, and Homeboy kind of you know,
(15:25):
galvanized the imagination of the gang members said oh wait
a minute, maybe maybe maybe I don't have to do this,
maybe I can get off, which was kind of new.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
That's so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
I walk me through this I get from you. You
meet people where they're at, when they come in, you
meet them. They they don't feel judged, they don't feel shamed,
They feel love and cared for me from the gate.
Can you talk about that process when somebody comes in
the most hardened people, you see their heart, you see
their soul, you see their little boy, you see their history.
(15:58):
Can you talk to me about how connect with people
and help guide them towards freedom, towards sobriety, towards not
returning to prison, towards being a good father, towards trying
to have a different relationship with their family.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
I will always say, you know, I'm pretty convinced that
I heal nobody, but I think the place that people
find healing there And so that's important because then it's
a culture. It's part of the area you breathe. Homies
will call it an aroma. It's it's a lot of
(16:31):
those things, you know, all hands on deck, everybody is dosing.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Yeah. I love that everybody's providing a dose in the
dose right.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Yeah. Otherwise it becomes the Godfather will see you now,
you know, it's like you come in and see me.
It's really not that, you know, the place is really
alive with that culture. In fact, people visit will say
what is this, you know, because there's a kind of
a thing that they can energy there. They can't put
(16:59):
their finger on it. The energy is really brought to
you by everybody participating, and so there's something to that.
But in general, if everybody walks through those doors with
a disorganized attachment, you know, mom was frightened or frightening,
(17:19):
and how are you going to calm yourself down if
you've never had the experience of actually being soothed, and
if you come in there and you're barricaded behind a
wall of shame and disgrace. As you mentioned, you know,
there's no judgment and there's no shame. Then what scales
that wall but tenderness. So suddenly people are tender with
(17:41):
each other, and people, even if you're new, you're going
you're watching tenderness happen, and then that becomes the highest
form of spiritual maturity for people where you say, yeah,
I want to be tender you in spiritual terms, you
would say, you know, I receive the ten your glance,
(18:02):
and now I'm going to become that tender glance in
the world. That's your intentionality. So I've been at this
for a long time, for forty years, and you you can.
So I always have to catch myself, you know, because
we always talk about.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
You know, like our beautiful thank you.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah. But he you know, he would talk about, Okay,
that homie you fought with him right now because he
took you to that place. We always talk about that.
How do you how do you not allow yourself to
be taken to that place where you you know, you
rile up and you and you go. You want to
(18:45):
take people on rather than get underneath, find the thorn underneath.
The homies always say, if you find the thorn underneath,
you're not going to be taken to that place. And
so it's like Pema children who always talks about catch yourself.
You have to catch yourself. So I find myself. I'm
in that state a lot lately because someone will text
(19:08):
me and come at me sideways and I want to go.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
F me.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Oh hell no, and you know, and you go catch yourself.
So I had about four men. I had four texts
this morning where catch yourself. I had to catch myself. Yeah,
And which is a good thing?
Speaker 2 (19:26):
You know, pause is people always ask me what is
the spiritual awakening or recovery?
Speaker 1 (19:30):
I said, the ability to pause, to pause, to just
take a breath.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Step back, yeah, step back.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
And this person's coming to me at me as nobody
should ever come at somebody. And yet you know it's
not a it's an indicator, you know, and don't be
tripped up by it. So anyway that comes with doing
stuff for a long time, you know, I'm not sure
(19:57):
you even become better at it, it becomes even more
pronounced because there's you've been in this situation a million
times before and you kind of know how it plays out.
But catch yourself pause, which is excellent and so that
you can, you know, keep it new. You know, it's
like beginner's mind is such a hard thing to maintain
(20:20):
because you've been at it a long time, yes, and
you kind of think there's nothing new under the sun,
which is a trap.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
You love people until they can love themselves. You talk
about once they learn how to be cherished. Can you
talk about that? I love when you talk about being cherished.
Once they feel cherished.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
I you know, you find different you know, there was
a home he was talking about. He had a a
word which he called languaging, which I had never heard before,
and he said, I try to study languaging languaging, and
I thought, well, that was interesting because because you find
it different ways of saying things, you know, and like
(21:04):
I have my book is called Cherish Belonging, and my
editor didn't like the title. He just wanted belonging, of
which there are ninety three titles named belonging. But never mind,
but cherish was the key thing, because you know, I
would say, systems change when people change, and people change
(21:28):
when they're cherished. And so cherishing is love with its
sleeves rolled up. You know, there's something about it that's
truly active, truly engaged. It's what relational wholeness is always about.
Where you're cherishing people. So at hombo, you want to
(21:50):
create a place that's safe, where people are seen and
then they can be cherished, because in the end, that's
the only thing that will propel people to a place
where they can discover their true selves and loving. If
you're cherished, you're kind of cherished into that. You're cherished
(22:10):
into knowing that wait a minute, loving is my home.
And once you know that loving is your home, you're
just never homesick. You're never lamenting the love that you're
receiving or not getting enough of, or like home is
the place where you've received the most love. No, if
(22:34):
loving is your home, you're never That's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
You feel safe for the first time. Yeah, yeah, you
need to feel safe.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
So homies who've been in prison a long time and
in particular, would say, you know, we're all used to
being watch, but we're not used to being seen. And
so once you can get them to a place where
they're seen. It's hard to do, you know, I think
cherishing is not hard, Remembering to cherish is exceedingly difficult.
(23:04):
So that's why it's part of your practice. You know,
like even guys in recovery who say one day at
a time, I go, whoa, No, it's way too long.
You know, a day is too long. And that's why
you connect the cherishing to to your own breath, that
you cherish with every breath you take. That's what the
(23:26):
practice is. But it's a practice doesn't make perfect, but
but it can. It can lead increasingly to habitual, which
is what you hope, really really hard. I think easier
to say.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Easier to say, what do you say to family members
coming in their kids are struggling with addiction or and
there the kids are strung out their mental and the
parents don't know what to do. What is the what's
the messaging that you try to see?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Well, you know they're especially in the Latino community. You know,
you'll have a Senyora come in, a mom you know,
I bothery No, I okay, I said, I don't know
what to do. I don't know how to find a
way out of this, and then I said what was happening?
She goes, well, my son is you know, using myth
you know, And I said, well where is he? Oh,
(24:23):
he's he's at home in bed. I go, So no
amount of us wanting him to not do this anymore
will ever be the same as him choosing not to
do it. So, you know, you even at homeboy, even
though it's a you know, a building, perhaps although it's
(24:44):
more home than home for a lot of people, it's
still being clear is very loving. So you go, gosh, Jessica,
we love you so much, but you know you can't
come into the building right now because you're using meth
and you stopped taking your meds, so you're volatile and
you're kind of triggering all sorts of people. But boy,
do we love you a lot, so much so that
(25:06):
we can't let you into the building, you know, and
she'll packed out and go nuts. But but there's the
door marked recovery. We'll help you enter that door of
the minute you want to do it. So I think,
how is that different for that from that mother who's
at her wits end? You know, it isn't different. You
(25:27):
kind of say, oh, I love you so much you
can't live here right now because because you're using meth
all the time. We'll do everything we can to get
you into that place where you can stay for six
months or whatever the prescribed amount of time is, right,
(25:47):
you know, but until then, you know, I don't know
a park bench, or I don't know what you're going
to do.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
It's just that that's just yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
And so people say that's tough love, and I always think, no,
that's clear. Clear is better than tough. It's beautiful right on,
because you want to be clear clear, it needs to
be ultra clear. Yeah, and it's never at any point
rejection or shaming or less than.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Loving love your son. I just can't live here anymore.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Yeah, yeah, I love you so much that you.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Can't can't live anymore son, Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yeah, but that could change tomorrow. And then part of
it is closing doors. Every door is closed except the
one marked. Recovery will help you walk through that door.
But we're well. But if I just go to church more, no,
that door's closed. You know. If I just had a job, no,
you have you have to do this first, beautiful. It's
(26:44):
hard because at homeboy, we're constantly testing and there's lots
of relapsing. And you know, I always say the same thing.
We go, Look, that's where we were talking earlier about
finding beds. Okay, we got a place for you, and
do ninety days right and then come right back to us.
(27:05):
And sometimes they say no, they gough. But it's in
your hands. You know.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
You're so humble about all the things you've learned, all
the mistakes you've made changing your approach. If I understood
this correctly, you know you I think after ten years
you had a big revelation. Like I've been going around
on my beach cruiser and I had a shift in
consciousness and I could you talk about because it had
a big impact on me.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Well, it's like like yesterday I was at Roosevelt High
School and for this event and they were asking me questions.
That was one of them about regrets. There are so
many things I don't ever regret and I'd never do
them again. And that's kind of a difference. So I
don't regret that I had shuttled diplomacy or I tried to,
(27:53):
you know, put that ouzi down. Are you sure you
want to shoot that guy on my bike? Patrolling the
eight Gangs I don't regret that, and I'd never do
it again because it served the cohesion of the gang,
which I didn't really see. I saw that that was
in fact supplying oxygen to gangs, and that seemed clear
(28:15):
to me not to be a good thing. So then
we shifted and it was come see us when you're ready.
When you're ready, yeah, or even if if we have
to let somebody go, because usually it's because of a
relapse and they refuse to go to to handle it
and deal with it, and we'll say, well, come back
(28:36):
when you're ready. We love you, we think you're great,
but come back when you're ready. There's nothing wrong with
not being ready. It's just timing, and right when you
when this, when you can embrace that as as the
path that you need to walk, come right back to us.
But so there were those things. There was the you know,
(28:56):
there's a kind of a notion called gang hardcore gang intervation,
which I don't agree with because I did it and
I saw what it did, and I saw that it
was it's not helpful, you know, because that's kind of
the key I talked about earlier that I can remember
a guy touting a program which was really working with
(29:18):
gang members on the streets and negotiating and truces and ceasefires.
And I remember he was at a conference in San
Francisco on gangs and he was pounding on the podium
and he says, look, this works. And I remember I
wrote in my little program there I said, yeah, but
(29:38):
I bet it doesn't help, you know. And then that
was key for me because I thought, not everything that
works helps, but everything that helps works. So find the
thing that's helpful and then you just do the next,
loving thing. Then you just put one foot in front
of the next concretely helpful as opposed to lots of
(30:05):
things that work that are horrifying, you know. And I
think law enforcement approached to a lot of things sometimes
you would go, wow, that works, look at the numbers. Yeah,
but it's horrifying. Yeah, you don't want to do that.
You could make a case maybe to say that mass
incarceration works, but you could never make the case that
(30:28):
it helps. And so helping, helping always trumps working.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
And didn't you in that time just really come this
it's never about you.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Well that was another moment that was when I was
kind of close to burnout and where oh, Yeah, where
homie who had a dream of his brother had killed himself.
He was in rehab. I went to pick him up
to take him to his brother's funeral. And the dream
was he and I were in a room with no
(31:01):
lights or no windows, pitch black, but somehow he knew
I was in the room. And he said, and in
the dream, you pull out of your pocket a flashlight
and you aim the flashlight steadily at the light switch
on the wall, and no words are exchanged. But I'm
just aiming the flashlight. And he says, I know I'm
(31:24):
the only one who can turn that light switch on.
I'm really grateful that you had a flashlight. So, as
he's recounting the dream to me, he followed the beam
of light to the light switch, and he stood there
and kind of a deep sigh, and with great trepidation,
he flips the light on and the room is flooded
(31:46):
with light. And now he's sobbing as he's telling me
this dream he had, and he said, the light is
better than the darkness, like you didn't know this to
be the case. And then he said, I guess I
think my brother just never found the light switch. And
I've never had an experience in all my seventy years
(32:06):
of living like that one where I said to myself,
I get it. The source of my near burnout was
that I've been trying to turn the light switch on
for people, right, And you think that's noble and good
and right. And here's the light switch, you know, and
I turn it on, and suddenly you're content to know
(32:29):
that we all own a lot of flashlight and we
all know where to aim it, and that has to
be enough. And suddenly it was enough. I knew exactly
what I had been doing wrong, that I was trying
to turn the flash the light switch on for people,
and I stopped. And I can honestly say that I've
(32:52):
never been near burnout since then, because because turning the
light switch on is about me always, and it can't
be about me. So the minute you do that, you go.
Now I can go to bed, I can go to
sleep at night. Yeah, right, And so it's a totally
(33:13):
different thing. So if you go to the margins to
make a difference, then it's about you. But if you
go to the margins so that the folks there make
you different, then it's about us. It feels passive, but
it isn't because if you're going to the margins to
reach people, then it's about you. But if you go
(33:36):
there to be reached, then everybody in a way that's
really exquisitely mutual. Everyone is inhabiting their own dignity and
their own nobility, and there's nothing passive about that. That's
the whole thing, you know. That's why it's the feeling
(33:58):
is mutual. It's not saving, rescuing, fixing. It's delighting, receiving
who people are, you know, Otherwise it's this is why
people burn out because it's so aligned with success and
evidence based outcomes. It's difficult because funders only care about
(34:20):
that stuff, you know, and we can't care about that stuff.
You just can't do it because it's do you lose
your way. It's a tough thing to straddle because somebody
at Homeboy Industries has to care about evidence based outcomes.
It's not going to be me. But inasmuch as they
(34:42):
do data and they but if that's your engine, before
too long, you're going to stop working with the people
that you set out to work with and walk with,
and you're going to start working with folks who are
going to give you better outcomes, which means you've abandoned
(35:04):
the people who are even you know, in your experience,
like in in rehab or recovery. You know, I don't know,
what would you think of a program that didn't have
people leaving? Do you know what I mean? It's almost
a measure of in some odd way, a measure of
(35:25):
our fidelity that you have people who are relapsing, right
who leave because that's illness. Well, that's as it should
be in a way, you know, because I don't know
do if people ever talk that way, do they ever say,
you know, we run this recovery center. We have one
(35:45):
hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yes they do, and they and they charge a lot
of money, and they're generally in Malibu.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yeah, eight guaranteed rate. Yeah, that's crazy to me.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
It is insanity. Yeah, But like you, I don't I
don't get involved with that. I just keep doing doing here.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
But it's like running off school for kids that nobody
wants to educate. And then pretty soon you have a
board and the board is saying, well, how many of
them go on to universities.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
And how many get their masters? I think we had one.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
And then and then pretty soon a couple of years
in they're saying, one hundred percent of our students go
on to college. Well, of course, because you're only accepting
the most likely to go on to college. Kid.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
You know, well, you bring up something that I'm just
going to add to that rather the one thing I
believe you'll, of course tell me why Homeboy is so successful.
People trust you, They trust you, and they never and
that's a big deal. It's hard to gain trust.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Yeah, I think so. I think they trust the place.
You know, I try, Okay, they trust sure, Yeah, I
think they have ay, they know that this place is
not gonna.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Well, they feel seen. People need to feel seen.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Yeah, is that fair? Yeah? Safe scene and cherished. I
mean I think safe, safe key because when they walk
in the door, they're looking around. They go, I don't know,
am I safe here? And they may not know that
they are yet, you know, they will know.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
I could get it wrong, but I remember one I
don't know what I think, Diane FINSI was maybe running
for governor, I'm not sure, and she wanted to come
visit you guys. Yeah, it is the homegirls and you
propose this to them, right.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
She Well, this was when I was pastor, and this
is not the homegirls, but the women women in the parish.
And they had this campaign to go into their kids rooms,
lift up the mattress, grab that uzzi, and then bring
the gun down to the church. So we had these
big gun events where people would be throwing guns in
(37:48):
a big trash can. And she was running for governor
and she saw it and she she wanted to, you know,
kind of meet with the women. So I remember I
went to the win and who only spoke Spanish, and
and I said, you know, this candidate for governor wants
to visit you, and and I presumed they would say,
(38:13):
oh my god, you know, we're honored, thrilled, and they
said no. They said, if she wants to come here
and tell us what to do with the problems that
we face, they can nobenga tell her not to come. Yeah,
but if she's going to come and listen to us.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
And hear our stories, because we're close.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
To this and we know what we need to be doing,
tell her to come. And she never came. I think
she thought it might be a press event from Hell
or something, so she kind of said, I'm not going
to go.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
So that that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
You you you created a culture where they just felso,
listened to and cared for.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
And yeah, it's important. It's hard to nurture it all
the times, live and flourishing. But that's the challenge.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
You've had thousands of atticts pass in and out.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
A homeboy.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
What's the characteristics of people that stay sober and have
a good life, don't return to prison, don't relapse? If
you could break it down, what have you seen over
the years.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Well, I think it has to do with surrender, you know.
You know, we have a lot of returnees, like even
jose Adi. I know I keep putting him on the
front page, but he was and he'll admit, you know,
it took him several starts and stops and starts and stops,
and now he's vice president. You know. But I remember
(39:39):
I never heard this before. Homie said to me, I said,
why did it? You know it took so many tries
and he he said, I just couldn't handle the love
that I found here, which I thought was interesting, right,
that that would be the too much. It was too
much for him and he left and lapsed or went
(40:00):
back to prison. So I think it's kind of that.
But surrender is kind of the opposite of that if
you surrender to the foundational healing, and part of that
is to you kind of have to agree to the excavation.
You know where you're going. You know, everybody has just
(40:21):
huge wounds and trauma and unspeakable pain that they haven't
gotten near. And so part of the love that sometimes
is unbearable is also is a light that's kind of
helping excavate a wound that needs to be aired out
and clean. And so if you're willing to do that.
(40:45):
There was a period of time that I always found
kind of startling where gang members who were addicted to
gang violence came to Homeboy and suddenly found themselves addicted
to drugs in a way that they had never used
rugs before. Interesting, and I think again it was because
of makes sense, you're numbing the process of the excavation.
(41:09):
So and so we've we've had a lot of struggles
with like, for example, marijuana, there was a time you
test you have to be clean, and now we kind
of don't sweat the marijuana so much when you enter,
you know, but then we go thirty days from now,
we want your levels to be lower.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
You know.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
It's kind of the times in which we live in
a way in the whole that you're still going to
work towards not numbing your pain at all, you know,
harm reduction production. Yeah, so there's a kind of a
sense of that that's different from from how we operated before,
you know. But then you kind of also tie some
(41:51):
things to it. You know, you're going to be part
time because your levels are still too high marijuana obviously,
the flags are any other opiate or math or heroine,
anything like that that's going you know, we're going to
take a time out. We're going to offer you rehab.
We hope you accept it. So, but that's kind of
(42:12):
the thing, because the process is, if it's foundational healing,
then you're by nature you come to terms with what
was done to you and come to terms with what
you also did and then and then it's that's how
the healing happens. But that your original question on this
(42:35):
is how do you kind of you know, who is
the person who was ends up being sturdy and resilient.
It's the one who surrendered, you know, to the place.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
We have a saying here, father, shame on them for
doing that to me, Shame on me for staying that way.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Yeah, we like to shift the narrative.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
We don't.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
We refuse to be our sad stories.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Here or to be locked into a victimized.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Victimized mentality. Yeah, I believe I have this right. You
said if they, if the attics could hear the shrieking
of a mother after they just lost their son to
overdose or murder, it might change their mind.
Speaker 3 (43:20):
Could you talk about that.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Well, that was in the early days when when we
had shootings morning, noon, and night and really quite intense,
and I at one point buried eight kids and a
three week period. So in the projects, this was a
constant and there was that moment. There was the lag time,
you know, when when somebody who was shot was then
(43:42):
declared dead, you know at the hospital, which was where
it normally happened, and I was there with the mother
and their you know, surgery or whatever they're doing, and
he didn't make it, and then there's this kind of
a latina shriek that comes from the earth, you know.
(44:05):
And so I used to say, the homies are never
there to hear that. And then once this kid we
called them bear and the mother stayed at home. There
were other siblings who were at the hospital, but I
went to tell her that he had died, that this kid,
(44:25):
Mario Bear had died, and the homies were all there
outside outside the apartment and the projects, and she, you know,
shrieked in a way that was just primal. And I remember,
I think that's where I wrote on that where I
said and that was the very first time that I
(44:46):
recall that the homies were there to hear that sound.
Normally they weren't. And because they were distant from hearing
that sound, they were all involved in venge and anger
and fury, but they didn't hear that sound. And I
remember looking at them as they heard the sound, and
(45:08):
how to their core it was so uncomfortable to kind
of shift in them, you know, kind of say, wow,
what is this about? And how could it possibly be
worth that sound?
Speaker 2 (45:24):
You know, I think if I got this right, I
wrote this down Freddy after one of the Homeboys was murdered.
Came into your office, Freddy, and.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Yeah, I changed all the names, so I never know.
The name is never the trigger thing. Say more and then.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
I'll know what you talk about. There is I think
he said something. I never cried like that before with somebody.
He was coming in to talk to you about what happened.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
That was the second of our graffiti removal crew team killed.
And then I was at the hospital again when he died.
The mother family members, but I was aware I had
spent hours there already, and I thought I got to
get home and kind of tend to the office because
(46:15):
this kid was much beloved at our office. So I
got there just like fifteen minutes before five, where everybody's
leaving the office. So it was very you know, people
were sobbing, and people were hugging me, and you maintained
a certain amount of trying to be there for them.
And then I thought I was alone, and I was
(46:36):
in my office by myself, and I was just kind
of letting it all in. And when this kid came
from our little conference room in the back. His name
was Chino. I don't know. I guess I must have
called him Freddy, but he he looked at me, stood
from the desk, and he said, I know your heart
(46:58):
must be breaking, and the two of us we just sobbed.
I mean just I've never really quite cried like that,
and and he cried, and I sobbed, and and then
he said all of us are in a river and
we're drowning. M and and you swoop us up. We
(47:24):
started crying all over again. And then he said, on
everything I love. If somebody offered me a million dollars
or a chance to swoop you up, I'd swoop you up.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
Wow man, wow.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Yeah. Anyway, haven't told that story in a long time.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
And it's funny of all the people who would who
would choose to swoop me up? And that's what I
said to him, I said, you just did, you just did.
And of course he did easily. Three quarters of my
gray hairs or you know, he's he was the one
who brought them my way. I mean, he was just
(48:16):
a knucklehead. And the funny that he was, he was
the most attentive, you know, and yet you know, just
he's so so hard. He was in his addiction and
he was he you know, I was trying to get
him into a rehab and he he texted me and
(48:40):
he said, hey, gee, you know, can you give me
you know, I need some money. And I don't know
what it was he needed, And I said, son, you know,
other people might give you money, but I love you
so much. I'm not going to give you any money,
and but I'm willing to take you right now to
rehab because he was drinking so much. This is many
(49:00):
years later, and then he I said, of texting him, Look,
I know that you you've burned a lot of bridges
with your family and your friends. I'm telling you right now,
the day will never come when you burn this bridge
with me. That'll never happen. So I pressed send, and
(49:23):
he writes me right back, fuck your bridge. That was
one of those lessons too, where you feel the sting
of it. Yeah, then you once you feel it, then
you let it go and then you I just howled
with laughter. So then I the next day at our
(49:45):
senior staff meeting, our little meeting we called the council,
and Jose was at that meeting, and I told them
that and and then it became this shorthand for you know,
like how it would kind of they would hug me
and they'd whisper in my ear, fuck your bridge, and
(50:08):
and we would howl with laughter, you know, like like
oh gosh, that really moved me, you know, And and
how it became this shorthand for affection, and which was
hard to kind of to arrive at in a way,
but you kind of if you don't, if you cling
(50:29):
to those things into getting butt hurt, as the homies
would say, or getting bent out of shape, or we
just found it really kind of funny.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
I've had many texts like that, and you have to
wrap your arms around it.
Speaker 3 (50:42):
Yeah you love them, Yeah you understand, and.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
Then and then allow it to be as hilarious as
it is, because it really was quite funny, not initially,
but but three beats later it was the funniest thing
I'd ever heard.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
Whither someone comes into your office and he says, you're
talking about faith. And he says, I don't believe in
God or Jesus or And he said, but I want
to have faith?
Speaker 3 (51:09):
What do I do? How does someone find? What do
you do?
Speaker 2 (51:13):
When someone what do you instruct them to do?
Speaker 3 (51:15):
There?
Speaker 1 (51:16):
You know, I don't think God has much interest in it,
you know, so I don't have much interest in it either,
you know, truthfully, because I think in the end you
know where where is your true self? Your true self
is in loving And this is why I think the
brilliance of the twelve step notion of higher power. I
(51:41):
don't think it matters much, doesn't to God? You know,
it's it's however you get there is fine. As long
as you can find your true self. You want to
find your truth and that's always going to be in
loving where you choose to let love live through you,
and that's where the joy is. So that's the whole thing.
(52:04):
So that's what God wants. And from my own point
of view, doesn't want worship me. You know, it's never
believe in me, have faith in me. I don't think
it's any of that God's dream come true as our
kinship community of cherish belonging know us in them, there's
(52:24):
just us and you discovering the truth of who you
are so that you can live from that place. That's it.
Speaker 3 (52:33):
That's the entry point for you, right.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
But otherwise it's like somehow God is wanting, you know,
you to go like this, I go, where would we
get that idea? Yeah, you know, because God is more
self effacing than we are, you know, and if we
were God, we would want people to praise us. But
(52:57):
God only wants joy because Jesus says, my joy yours
your joy complete. That's it. It's not Here's what I'm
hoping is that you'll worship me, you know, which is crazy,
But that's where people get stuck. They project onto God,
you know, this puny notion that somehow God, you know,
(53:21):
just wants to be praised, and you go, well, we
would want that if you were God. But that's just good.
We're human.
Speaker 3 (53:29):
Who's what are your greatest teachers?
Speaker 1 (53:31):
So for forty years, I've you know, walked with gang members,
so they've always been my primary teachers. But you had
people in your life teachers literally, teachers or people who
you admire in terms of like sess up job as
privileged to know him and be a friend with him.
(53:56):
And Jim Lawson who recently died, Reverend Lawson who taught
Martin Luther King about Gandhian principles of civil disobedience and
he was a mentor. So you have those people, but
I would say primarily it was homies, homies years.
Speaker 2 (54:15):
Yeah, okay, I was at the event at UCLA when
you were there with Pema children. Oh really, how did
that relationship for him? And to tell listeners who Pemma.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
Is, Yeah, well, Pemma is a Buddhist monk, I guess.
But she's just a light, you know, She's a I
can't remember what happened. I read her a lot, and
then I think she read tattoos. And then I'm in
(54:46):
my office and I look out and there's you know,
kind of a saffron row shaved head woman sitting underneath
the TV. CNN is on. The room is packed, and
she's in this one chair, and I went, oh, my god,
that's Pama children And I said, what is she's here
to see you? And I go, my god, bring her in.
(55:10):
And so and she was with her daughter, and I
don't know, we just became fast friends, you know. And then.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
Light a homeboy drew her in.
Speaker 1 (55:21):
Huh yeah. So so you know, she's she's always kind
of sending money, and you know, because she has her
foundation and she's just a well, she's amazing. So I
think she said, well let's do something together. Yeah. So
then we had that thing at UCLA. So we write
(55:42):
each other. You know, she has a kind of a
you know, she's in Nova Scotia or wherever the heck,
somewhere cold, you know, for the cold period, and then
she'll come she has kind of a someplace in Colorado,
I think, and then she comes for as her daughter
in southern California. And so I don't know. Over the years,
(56:05):
we've just maintained a friendship and I love her humor.
Isn't that oddest thing, you know, because she has wisdom
and insights, but her humor says everything to me, you know,
because she has kind of a light grasp on things,
you know, so she becomes for me very She's so human.
Speaker 2 (56:27):
I think, like you, she has the ability to goof
on herself, yeah, and not take herself too seriously.
Speaker 3 (56:33):
Yeah, that's a real beautiful thing. You know.
Speaker 2 (56:36):
You've talked recently. I've read articles and I'm certainly facing this.
It's a different game out there at the fetanyl crisis
mental health, and you talk about going into different places
and you just kind of see people just checked out,
you know, and what's.
Speaker 3 (56:52):
What. How are you guys tackling that over at homeboy?
Speaker 1 (56:56):
It's hard, and I would say it is quite different,
you know, because we start to get to this language
that we've never used before, where we say beyond the
scope of our you know, beyond the scope. They'll say,
you know, I think he's beyond our scope, which I
don't really like much because we've had lots of people
(57:17):
who are beyond our scope. But with enough dosing of
cherishing love. People come around. You know, there are tons
of people who have gone through our place or who
are still at our place, who you know, again, it's
more home than home, and that's okay. You just don't
(57:37):
want a critical mass because then it ends up impeding
the growth and health and progress of everybody else. So
that's tough. But I think that's what we're in. We're
in exacerbated by the pandemic, for sure, but we're in
the grip of a real mental health crisis. I mean,
(57:58):
how else do you explain. Not to get political, but
but you know, do healthy people you know, want to
have a dictator, want to live under a dictator or
an autocrat? You just go, no, this is I don't
mean people are dumb or people are bad. I believe
(58:18):
everybody's unshakably good and we belong to each other. So
these aren't judgment calls so much as health assessments. I
don't think you can be healthy. In last night, Barack
Obama was kind of talking about, you know, people saying
that you know that other Americans are vermin and he said,
(58:45):
when did that become okay? And in a sense, it's
about morality. I suppose when he asked that question. But
for me, it's about health. You know. So if you
talk about three hundred percent increase in anti Semitic hate crimes,
and I go, well, no, this is not about hate.
This is about health. If we think it's about hate,
(59:07):
we will not make any progress except shaking our fist
at hate. Just say no to hate. You know, I
believe in love, not hate. Then it's about you, and
you're not that helpful. I'd rather be Let's do something
that helps. But it's about it's about health, not hate.
Like ram Das talks about, we're all just walking each
(59:31):
other home. So how do we walk each other home
to health and wholeness and fullness and joy. Well, let's
just walk each other home. You don't have to say,
you know, here are the bad guys, because there are
no bad guys. You know, not everybody is at any
None of us are well until all of us are well.
(59:53):
So how do we help each other move towards health?
You know? Otherwise it's just more us in them, and
it's demonizing and demonizing is always the opposite of truth.
And I would say the opposite of how God sees things.
And so you want to. I think if it's about health,
(01:00:15):
then it's we're okay. It's okay to say it's okay.
You know, how do we move each other towards a
kind of health where you will feel more full and joyful.
Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Beautiful?
Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
But don't you think that's true? Right? I think we're
at a different place again. In forty years with gang members,
I've never seen this moment, right, And you know, you
can say fentanyl, and you can say I've just never
seen this level of mental anguish and distress than I
have now, Just.
Speaker 3 (01:00:52):
Out of curiosity, what are you your happiest?
Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
Well? I love being at the office and I don't
have much balance in my life because I'm on the
road a lot. And that's that's enjoyable too, especially if
I'm bringing homies or homegirls to help and watch them
get up in front of an audience, like I just
had two guys speak to every single judge in the
state of Indiana, and you know, just, oh my god,
(01:01:19):
standing ovations for these guys and they just love them
and rock stars, you know, and they just got up
and humbly told their stories and it was wonderful. So
that that was that stuff's joyful for me. But I
love being in the office, you know, well because it's
everybody's coming in and there's a sameness to a lot
(01:01:42):
of it, you know, I'm just short two hundred dollars
on my rent. Sameness to it, you know. But it's
always fun, it's always affectionate, it's always heartbreaking, it's always full,
you know, Like yesterday I had I was there the
whole day and I got home. I was exhausted, not
(01:02:03):
burned out, but exhausted, and I thought, Wow, I wouldn't
trade my life for anybody's. That was just so rich.
And you know, you stand in awe at what people
have to carry rather than judgment at how they carry it,
and you go, wow, I've never had to carry what
what she is carrying or what he is carrying. But
(01:02:24):
then you feel just gives you energy. Yeah, totally totally
gives you energy.
Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
Any final thoughts for our audience and how can people
support homeboy.
Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
Well, I hope if you're in LA has come to
the headquarters because it's it's really worth seeing. Come for
morning meeting, which is kind of joyous from ten minutes
to nine to about nine oh five, or come to
the cafe or support us that way, it's important to
see if people walk through those doors, because I don't know,
(01:02:56):
I think Homeboys sometimes, you know, it's really the front
porch of the house everybody wants to live in, you know,
so you get a taste of wow, look at this
as black, brown men, women, gay, straight enemies, multiple multiple enemies.
Everybody has multiple enemies there, and it's kind of this
(01:03:18):
big old hug fest. And then the bakery enemies who
used to shoot at each other making croissants together. And yeah,
so you just it's kind of something to behold because
then it galvanizes the imagination. Then you kind of go, Okay,
I see this, Yeah, this is what we're meant to do.
(01:03:40):
Quite apart from supporting Homeboy, I think it also it
announces a message about a community of cherish belonging, which
is where we all want to be right on.
Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
Final thoughts for those that are in the light and
struggling right now.
Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
I think part of it is there's a duty to
delight if you if we can just that's if we
intend to do that, if we choose to delight in
the people in front of us, and then and to
go where love is not yet arrived and cherish who
you find there. I don't know. That's what keeps us vital.
Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
I cannot thank you enough for making it down to
Venis today we can consider ourselves unofficial Homeboy Satellite Office.
Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
Yeah, maintain the PROB.
Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
Been an incredible teacher and your kindness today is well appreciated.
Speaker 3 (01:04:39):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (01:04:40):
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
Okay, beautiful Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
The Sino Show is a production of iHeart Podcasts, hosted
by me Cina McFarlane.
Speaker 3 (01:04:50):
Produced by pod People in twenty eighth.
Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
Av Our lead producer is Keith Carlick.
Speaker 3 (01:04:55):
Our executive prouser is Lindsay Hoffman. Marketing lead is Ashley Weaver.
Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you
next week.
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