By Gregory Boyle
Simon & Schuster
2017
210 pages Spiritual
Father Gregory Boyle is a Jesuit priest and the founder of
Homeboy Industries, a nonprofit organization in Los Angeles that works with
gang members. It is the largest gang-intervention program in the world. His
first book, Tattoos on the Heart,
described the development of the organization, and this book, Barking
to the Choir, fervently describes what Boyle has learned about faith,
compassion, and the enduring power of radical kinship.
The key word to the entire book is “Kinship.” We learn early
in the book that we are all kin; that even though our life experiences can be very
different, at our core, we are very much the same. He says, “The moment one
says, ‘This is what it was like for me’, a rebirth occurs. Locating our wounds
leads us to the gracious place of fragility; the contact point with another
human being. When we share these shards of excavation with each other, we move
into the intimacy of mutual healing. Awe softens us for the tender glance of
God, then enables us to glance in just the same way.”
Another important word is humor. Boyle tells story after
story of people collapsing in laughter—sharing something silly, something
stupid, or something ironic—while at the same time building community, building
kinship. I was really struck by the glorious good humor by which Boyle faces
the challenges of Homeboy Industries and the people who come to him wanting to
make changes in their lives. He helps them facilitate change, but at the same
time, he has to manage a very large operation with myriad numbers of volunteers
as well as hundreds of participants. He has also had to bury over 200
participants who have died because of gang violence.
One thing he cannot tolerate is judgment. He says, “We must
try and learn to drop the burden of our own judgment, reconciling that what the
mind wants to separate, the heart should bring together. . . judgment, after
all, takes up the room you need for loving.” He has been known to ask
volunteers to leave if he sees them being too judgmental or exhibiting too much
moral indignation.
Barking to the Choir is a great book for a church book club. It
is easy to read, and full of relatable stories, quotable thoughts, and meaningful
summaries to keep everyone talking. Additionally, I found that it followed very
nicely two other books I have recently read, The
Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and The
Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton.
Here is the website for Homeboy Industries and a link to a
delightful article about a speaking engagement of Father Gregory Boyle’s in the
Los
Angeles Times when Barking to the Choir was released.
