Lindy

“No daylight to separate us.

Only kinship. Inching ourselves closer to creating a community of kinship such that God might recognize it. Soon we imagine, with God, this circle of compassion. Then we imagine no one standing outside of that circle, moving ourselves closer to the margins so that the margins themselves will be erased. We stand there with those whose dignity has been denied. We locate ourselves with the poor and the powerless and the voiceless. At the edges, we join the easily despised and the readily left out. We stand with the demonized so that the demonizing will stop. We situate ourselves right next to the disposable so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away.”
― Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion

“The Ancient Desert Fathers, when they were disconsolate and without hope, would repeat one word, over and over, as a kind of soothing mantra. And the word wasn't "Jesus" or "God" or "Love." The word was "Today." It kept them where they needed to be.”
― Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion

“The self cannot survive without love, and the self, starved of love, dies. The absence of self-love is shame, "just as cold is the absence of warmth." Disgrace obscuring the son... Franciscan Richard Rohr writes that "the Lord comes to us disguised as ourselves.”
― Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion

“Compassion isn't just about feeling the pain of others; it's about bringing them in toward yourself. If we love what God loves, then, in compassion, margins get erased. 'Be compassionate as God is compassionate,' means the dismantling of barriers that exclude.”
― Gregory Boyle , Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion