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.
Kinship is what God presses us on to, always hopeful that its time has come.
I don’t recognize Lencho when he steps into my office. Though that is the first question he asked. “’Member me?” Truth is, I don’t. He is two days fresh out of Corcoran State Prison. He has been locked up for ten years – a juvenile tried as an adult. He was fourteen years old when I met him at Central Juvenile Hall. Now at twenty-four, his arms are all “sleaved out” – every inch covered in tattoos. His neck is blackened by the name of his gang – stretching from jawbone to collarbone. His head is shaved and covered with alarming tattoos. Most startling of all (though impressive) are two exquisitely etched devil’s horns planted on his forehead.
He says, “You know…I’m having a hard time finding a job.”
I think, Well, maybe we can put our heads together on this one.
I’m about to nudge him in the direction of our tattoo-removal clinic, when he says, “I’ve never had job in my life – been locked up since I was a kid.”
I suggest that we change this. I tell him to begin work tomorrow, Tuesday, at Homeboy Silkscreen. In operation for more than ten years, nearly five hundred rival gang members have worked there, screen printing and embroidering apparel for more than 2,500 customers. On Wednesday, I call the Homeboy Silkscreen factory to check on Chamuco (the affectionate way of addressing Satan), our newest worker. Lencho is brought to the phone.
“So,” I ask, “How’s it feel to be a workin’ man?”
“It feels proper,” he says, “In fact, I’m like that vato in the commercial – you know the guy – the one who keeps walkin’ up to total strangers and says, ‘I just lowered my cholesterol.’ Yea. That’s me right there.”
I admit to him that this whole cholesterol thing has flown right over my head.
“I mean, yesterday, after work, I’m sittin’ at the back a’ the bus, dirty and tired, and, I mean, I just couldn’t help myself. I kept turning to total strangers – ‘Just comin’ back, first day on the job.’ (He turns to another.) ‘Just gettin’ off – my first day at work.’”
He tells me this, and I can’t help but imagine the people on the bus – half wondering if mothers are clutching their kids more closely. Surely someone is overhearing Lencho and thinking: “Bien hecho – nice goin’.” I suspect it’s equally certain that someone catching Lencho’s outburst reflects inwardly, What a waste of a perfectly good job. …
Lencho’s voice matters. To that end, we choose to become what child psychiatrist Alice Miller calls “enlightened witnesses” – people who through their kindness, tenderness, and focused, attentive love return folks to themselves. It is a returning – not a measuring up. …
At Homeboy Industries, we seek to tell each person this truth: they are exactly what God had in mind when God made them – and then we watch, from this privileged place, as people inhabit this truth. Nothing is the same again. No bullet can pierce this, no prison walls can keep this out. And death can’t touch it – it is just that huge.
Fifteen years ago, Bandit came to see me. He had been well named by his homies, being at home in all things illegal. He was “down for his varrio” and put in time running up to cars and selling crack in Aliso Village. He spent a lot of time locked up and always seemed impervious to help. But then that day, fifteen years ago, his resistance broke. He sat in my office and said he was “tired of being tired.” I escorted him to one of our four job developers and, as luck would have it, they located an entry-level job in a warehouse. Unskilled, low-paying, a first job.
Cut to fifteen years later, Bandit calls me near closing time on Friday. He now runs the warehouse, owns his own home, is married with three kids. I hadn’t heard from him in some time. No news is usually good news with homies. He speaks in something like a breathless panic.
“G, ya gotta bless my daughter.”
“Is she okay?” I ask. “I mean, is she sick – or in the hospital?”
“No, no,” he says, “on Sunday, she’s goin’ to Humboldt College. Imagine, my oldest, my Carolina, goin’ to college. But she’s a little chaparrita, and I’m scared for her. So do ya think you could give her a little send-off benedición?
I schedule them to come the next day to Dolores Mission, where I have baptisms at one o’clock. Bandit, his wife, and three kids, including the college-bound Carolina, arrive at 12:30. I situate them all in front of the altar, Carolina planted in the middle. We encircle her, and I guide them to place their hands on her head or shoulder, to touch her as we close our eyes and bow our heads. Then, as the homies would say, I do a “long-ass prayer,” and before we know it, we all become chillones, sniffling our way through this thing.
I’m not entirely sure why we’re all crying, except, I suppose, for the fact that Bandit and his wife don’t know anybody who’s gone off to college – except, I guess, me. So we end the prayer, and we laugh at how mushy we all just god. Wiping our tears, I turn to Carolina and ask, “So, what are ya gonna study at Humboldt?”
She says without missing a beat,
“Forensic psychology.”
“Daaamn, forensic psychology?”
Bandit chimes in, “Yeah, she wants to study the criminal mind.”
Silence.
Carolina turns slowly to Bandit, holds up one hand, and points to her dad, her pointing finger blocked by her other hand, so he won’t notice. We all notice and howl and Bandit says, “Yeah, I’m gonna be her first subject!”
We laugh and walk to the car. Everyone piles in, but Bandit hangs back. “Can I tell you something, dog?” I ask, standing in the parking lot. “I give you credit for the man you’ve chosen to become. I’m proud of you.”
“Sabes qué?” he says, eyes watering. “I’m proud of myself. All my life, people called me a lowlife, a bueno para nada. I guess I showed ‘em.”
I guess he did.
And the soul feels its worth.
Gregory Boyle, S.J. is the founder and director of Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention program located in Los Angeles and author of the best-selling book Tattoos of the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, from which this selection is taken.
GREGORY BOYLE, S.J. is the founder and director of Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention program located in Los Angeles and author of the best-selling book Tattoos of the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, from which this selection is taken.