Rebecca

“To embrace the strategy of Jesus is to be engaged in what Dean Brackley calls "downward mobility." Our locating ourselves with those who have been endlessly excluded becomes an act of visible protest. For no amount of our screaming at the people in charge to change things can change them. The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them. The trickle-down theory doesn't really work here. The powers bent on waging war against the poor and the young and the "other" will only be moved to kinship when they observe it. Only when we can see a community where the outcast is valued and appreciated will we abandon the values that seek to exclude.”
― Greg 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.”
― Greg Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion

“Success and failure, ultimately, have little to do with living the gospel. Jesus just stood with the outcasts until they were welcomed or until he was crucified — whichever came first.”
― Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion

“Pema Chodron, an ordained Buddhist nun, writes of compassion and suggests that its truest measure lies not in our service of those on the margins, but in our willingness to see ourselves in kinship with them.”
― Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion