Barking to the ChoirThe Power of Radical Kinship
Reviewed September 2, 2018.
Simon & Schuster, 2017. 210 pages.
Starred Review
2018 Sonderbooks Standout: #4 Christian Nonfiction
Here’s a second book by Fr. Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who works with gang members in Los Angeles and founded Homeboy Industries, which gives jobs to former gang members.
This book continues the inspiring stories from his first book, Tattoos on the Heart. What’s so amazing about these books is that Father Boyle honestly sees the gang members he works with as wonderful people – people he can learn from himself. And with his stories, he enables the reader, also, to see them as valuable people, loved by God – even delighted in by God.
Father Boyle genuinely learns from the homies he lives among. I liked this quote:
We always seem to be faced with this choice: to save the world or savor it. I want to propose that savoring is better, and that when we seek to "save" and "contribute" and "give back" and "rescue" folks and EVEN "make a difference," then it is all about you . . . and the world stays stuck. The homies are not waiting to be saved. They already are. The same is true for service providers and those in any ministry. The good news, of course, is that when we choose to "savor" the world, it gets saved. Don't set out to change the world. Set out to wonder how people are doing.
He’s here divulged something of the secret of his ministry. He’s not trying to save gang members – he’s savoring them, genuinely feeling privileged that he gets to know them.
And that kind of love changes lives.
This book is about kinship. About community. About enemies becoming friends. And the astonishing love of Jesus that enables that.
Human beings are settlers, but not in the pioneer sense. It is our human occupational hazard to settle for little. We settle for purity and piety when we are being invited to an exquisite holiness. We settle for the fear-driven when love longs to be our engine. We settle for a puny, vindictive God when we are being nudged always closer to this wildly inclusive, larger-than-any-life God. We allow our sense of God to atrophy. We settle for the illusion of separation when we are endlessly asked to enter into kinship with all.
There are a whole lot more inspiring quotes in this book, and they’ll gradually show up on Sonderquotes.
Read this book! You will be challenged. And you will be blessed.