Michelle

“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

“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

“Jesus was not a man for others. He was one with others. There is a world of difference in that. Jesus didn’t seek the rights of lepers. He touched the leper even before he got around to curing him. He didn’t champion the cause of the outcast. He was the outcast. He didn’t fight for improved conditions for the prisoner. He simply said, “I was in prison.” The strategy of Jesus is not centered in taking the right stand on issues, but rather in standing in the right place—with the outcast and those relegated to the margins.”
― Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion

“Oye, no cabe duda. But, son, I’m looking for birth certificate here.” The kid softens. I can tell it’s happening. But there is embarrassment and a newfound vulnerability. “Napoleón,” he manages to squeak out, pronouncing it in Spanish. “Wow,” I say, “That’s a fine, noble, historic name. But I’m almost positive that when your jefita calls you, she doesn’t use the whole nine yardas. Come on, mijito, do you have an apodo? What’s your mom call you?” Then I watch him go to some far, distant place—a location he has not visited in some time. His voice, body language, and whole being are taking on a new shape—right before my eyes. “Sometimes,”—his voice so quiet, I lean in—“sometimes . . . when my mom’s not mad at me . . . she calls me . . . Napito.” I watched this kid move, transformed, from Sniper to Gonzalez to Cabrón to Napoleón to Napito. We all just want to be called by the name our mom uses when she’s not pissed off at us.”
― Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion