There is no such thing as a bad cop, only disturbing and dominant cop thinking that will invariably lead to excessive force and tragic outcomes.
— Greg Boyle
Relapse happens, especially when you're dealing with folks who are frankly the least likely to succeed based on their own pasts and difficulties. We can work with the most likely to succeed. I'm not interested in that.
I know now that gang warfare is not the Middle East or Northern Ireland. There is violence in gang violence, but there is no conflict. It is not 'about something.' It is the language of the despondent and traumatized.
I feel called to be faithful.
Most employers just aren't willing to look beyond the dumbest or worst thing someone has done.
We ought not to demonize a single gang member, and we ought not to romanticize a single gang.
Gangs are bastions of conditional love, and one of the ways to counteract it is to offer community, which will always trump gang, and that's what happens at Homeboy Industries.
Homeboy Industries has chosen to stand with the 'demonized' so that the demonizing will stop; it stands with the 'disposable' so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away.
Ours is a God who waits. So who are we not to?
I don't save people. God saves people. I can point them in the right direction. I can say, 'There's that door. I think if you walked through it, you'd be happier than you are.'
The arms of God reach to embrace, and somehow you feel yourself just outside God's fingertips.
My church is in the detention facilities where I preside and celebrate the Eucharist. To me that's the church. That's the people of God.
Don't forget, you are the hero of your own story.
The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them.
Does God feel like that same-sex marriage could happen? I don't think anybody who has a connection to God and God's understanding and depth of compassion who's gonna say 'no.'
You are exactly what God had in mind when he made you.
Homeboy Bakery is an alternative to kids who have found themselves, regrettably, in gangs and want to redirect their lives.
I'm not going to be here forever. I don't plan on going anywhere, but I don't know anybody for whom death is an exception.
My job isn't to fix or rescue or to save. It's to accompany, see people, listen to them.
I do believe in lessons learned. I have learned that you work with gang members and not with gangs; otherwise, you enforce the cohesion of gangs and supply them oxygen.
We lose our right to be surprised that California has the highest recidivism rate in the country if we refuse to hire folks who have taken responsibility for their crimes and have done their time.
I think not everything that works helps, and not everything that helps works.
If you are paying attention, then the day is going to be pretty joyful, and a lot of delight will fill it.
I work with gang members, and I feel a kind of affinity and gift, even. But who would've thunk it, you know? I mean, I didn't anticipate it.
I know two L.A.s. Half my life was around the house my folks had for 46 years at 3rd and Norton. The other half was in Boyle Heights on the Eastside, working with gang members.
The poor evangelize you about what's important and what is the Gospel, and that that's where the joy is.
God seems to be an unwilling participant in our efforts to pigeonhole Him.
God can get tiny if we're not careful.
All politics are local, and so in church.
We need the disruption of categories that lead us to abandon the difficult, the disagreeable, and the least likely to go very far.
I'm not opposed to success.
I always have a funny story at communion time that underscores that no one is perfect, and that communion is not for perfect people but for hungry people.
I want to be prophetic and take stands and stand with those on the margins, and I want to laugh as much as I can.
Redemption is possible, and it is the measure of a civilized society.
The idea that any law enforcement agency or person would ever know these gang members better than Homeboy Industries is impossible.
Me wanting a gang member to have a different life would never be the same as that gang member wanting to have one.
I don't believe in mistakes. Everything belongs, and, as the homies say, 'It's all good.'
The business of second chances is everybody's business.
I think that any program that's born from below rather than on high is going to survive.
You don't really get Jesus saying very often there'll be pie in the sky when you die. He's really talking about now and today, and it's supposed to be like that. You're supposed to delight in what's right in front of you.
Even gang members imagine a future that doesn't include gangs.
I love movies.
Businesses have come and gone at Homeboy Industries. We have had starts and stops, but anything worth doing is worth failing at. We started Homeboy Plumbing. That didn't go so well. Who knew? People didn't want gang members in their homes. I just didn't see that coming.
The desire of God's heart is immeasurably larger than our imaginations can conjure.
At its best, an injunction creates a kind of vigilant heat that moves kids toward the light.
There is no 'them' and 'us.' There is only us.
When the vastness of God meets the restriction of our own humanity, words can't hold it. The best we can do is find the moments that rhyme with this expansive heart of God.
The Church should say, 'I'm frightened that women will be ordained;' that's honest, say that. But don't say, 'It's a grave sin,' because that's nonsense.
I wouldn't trade my life for anybody's.
The wrong idea has taken root in the world. And the idea is this: there just might be lives out there that matter less than other lives.
