Michelle

“baseball field, and one by one, the homies come over to talk briefly. This day, there’s quite a lineup. The next kid approaching, I can tell, is all swagger and pose. His walk is chingon in its highest gear. His head bobs, side-to-side, to make sure all eyes are riveted. He sits down, we shake hands, but he seems unable to shake the scowl etched across his face. “What’s your name? I ask him. “SNIPER,” he sneers. “Okay, look (I had been down this block before), I have a feeling you didn’t pop outta your mom and she took one look at your ass and said, ‘Sniper.’ So, come on, dog, what’s your name?” “Gonzalez,” he relents a little. “Okay now, son, I know the staff here will call you by your last name. I’m not down with that. Tell me, mijo, what’s your mom call you?” “Cabrón.” There is even the slightest flicker of innocence in his answer.”
― Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion

“Teilhard de Chardin wrote that we must “trust in the slow work of God.” Ours is a God who waits. Who are we not to? It takes what it takes for the great turnaround. Wait for it. *”
― Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion

“There was one kid in particular everyone knew as Cricket. To say that he would “give me the cold shoulder” would impugn shoulders. Cricket, fifteen years old, would walk away when I approached and would return to the bola (I noticed) once I left. I investigated and discovered his name was William. One day I walk up to this group of gang members, with Cricket among them, and he doesn’t disappear on me. I shake hands with all of them, and when I get to Cricket, he actually lets me shake his hand. “William,” I say to him, “How you doin’? It’s good to see ya.” William says nothing. But as I walk away (I always made a point of not staying very long), I can hear William in a very breathy, age-appropriate voice, say to the others, “Hey, the priest knows my name.” “I have called you by your name. You are mine,” is how Isaiah gets God to articulate this truth. Who doesn’t want to be called by name, known? The “knowing” and the “naming” seem to get at what Anne Lamott calls our “inner sense of disfigurement”
― Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion

“syndrome, homies identify with, and grow attached to, their weaknesses and difficulties and burdens. You hope, in the light of this, to shift their attention and allegiance to their own basic goodness. You show them the bright blue sky of their sacredness, and they are transfixed only by the ominous clouds. You stand there with them and encourage them to stare above and wait twenty minutes. “You are the sky,” as Pema Chödrön would insist. “Everything else, it’s just weather.”
― Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion