Some Right Words

The Mystery within...

What a delight it was to wake Easter morning to the eloquently witty, and transformational words spoken by Fr. Gregg Boyle, on Krista Tippet’s On Being, The Calling of Delight:  Gangs, Service and Kinship.  He has the words and heart to guide our spiritual work to open our anguished race conversation and lead us to know everything and everyone belongs. 

His walking in the lowly places models how when we interact with the other, both of us are changed.  And he knows that demonizing is always false.  He sees no divisions.  “I am the other you, and you are the other me,” and believes God created otherness so we would seek union.  His stories are of woundedness, and how learning to befriend those wounds brings transformation.  And he knows it is the other that saves us.

Fr. Boyle cautions us to be mindful of things that are fear driven, and the mental walls they create.  He says burn out comes from striving for success.  And he asks that we look for the sacred in the ordinary.  (Jesus took the cup at the last supper, not a chalice.)  And he points out that service is not the end all but rather the hallway to delighting in kinship with the other. 

The Los Angeles gang members Fr. Boyle affectionately calls homies, grow up in some almost unimaginable circumstances.  As a society we need to know those effects and also how to deliver better mental health care.  Knowing another’s story leads you to compassion.  Our job is to learn we are all homies—connected in kinship and belonging to one another.  When asked where his joy and healthy humor come from he responded, “From having a light grasp on life.”

What if we all heard words of belonging from the other that we are dying to hear?