Guest Worship Leader – Rev. Lisa Perry-Wood
In this service we’ll explore the field of love, which is not limited to romantic love, and includes agape, described by C.S. Lewis as “a selfless love that is passionately committed to the well-being of others.”
Agape is healing and transforming love, the “extravagant tenderness,” that Father Greg Boyle talks about in his book, The Whole Language.
It is this love that has transformed the lives of thousands of gang members and formerly incarcerated folks at Homeboy Industries in South Central L.A. over the past 30 years.
It’s the same love that can transform all of us, all those we encounter, our communities, even the world, if we let it.
Since 1992, Homeboy Industries, founded by Father Gregory Boyle, has employed, supported and mentored thousands of gang members and people formerly incarcerated, in South Central L.A.
The “home boys” and “home girls,” or simply, “homies,” as Fa. Greg affectionately calls them, have had their lives torn apart by racism, drugs and violence, with family lives disrupted, or worse, riddled with abuse.
Homeboy offers them this place of hope, right in the middle of it all.
Fa. Greg, aka “Father G” or “G,” is a Jesuit priest, and fierce proponent of a liberation theology of “extravagant tenderness;” and he’s in good company, with Pope Francis, Mother Theresa, and others.
Fr Greg’s life is his message, recognizing the humanness in even the most hardcore gang members, seeing it before they can see it themselves, and offering them hope.
“We can love people into wanting better lives”, he says with confidence; “love them into healing, into community, into loving themselves.
Loving oneself is the change agent.”
I’ve been a huge fan of Fa. Greg’s books for years now: Tattoos on the Heart, Barking at the Choir, and his latest, The Whole Language.
His message of the healing power of love is consistent, heartening, hopeful, and he is also a terrific storyteller.
Fa, Greg travels on speaking tours all over the world, bringing a homie or two with him, and his books are filled with their words and their awakenings.
Here’s one story I really like:
“I have a framed photograph in my office of Victor, a young homie;” Fa. Greg says, “he’s receiving a bouquet of flowers from the queen of Sweden—in Sweden. (Long story.) A very smart kid.
I had met him in a probation camp, and he later told me that he taught himself French in the camp.
“Why’d ya learn that?” I asked. “I was bored,” he said.
Victor flew home from Sweden and came straight to the office, jet-lagged and giddy.
He stopped me three times that day to hug me and say, “THAT was life changing. I’m even gonna remove my tattoos.”
Later he would tell me, “I’m gonna try and dress differently now—less gangster. In fact, I wanna dress more like you.”
“You mean old-fashioned and out of it?”
“Exactly,” he says.
Some months later, having decompressed from the experience, Victor tells me, “Damn, G—I’m in love and it feels proper.”
“Who ya in love with? “I ask him.
“Myself,” he says.
“Victor had been invited into his own gracious heart and RSVP’d,” says Fa. Greg.
“Transformation is not just a destination, but a process.
He saw his own goodness and then could repurpose himself for positivity.”
He saw his own goodness and then could repurpose himself for positivity.
That is the core of Fa. G’s message: when we can see our own goodness we can transform and repurpose ourselves.
Being loved by others can awaken us to our own true nature.
I have long believed that each one of us is born with an essential goodness, what has been called call our ‘’secret beauty.”
Meditation teacher Tara Brach says, “the quest of the mystic is to be on the lookout for the hidden wholeness, the secret beauty, in everyone.
Then we can remind each other that we are made for loving, and that the true measure of our love…is to love without measure.”
I hope you enjoyed our earlier meditation about recognizing the goodness and worth in ourselves and pouring love into our own hearts.
The truth is, we deserve nothing less than to be bathed in that recognition all the time.
We are all fully worth that, if only we could believe it.
Our meditation practice brought to mind a story from another teacher, Jack Kornfield, about the Babemba tribe of South Africa and how they react when a person has broken the tribe’s code or acts irresponsibly or unjustly.
The person is placed in the center of the village, alone and unfettered.
All work ceases, and every man, woman, and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused individual.
Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time, each recalling the good things the person in the center of the circle has done in his lifetime. Every incident, every experience that can be recalled
with any detail and accuracy, is recounted.
All his positive attributes, good deeds, strengths, and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length.
This tribal ceremony often lasts for several days.
At the end, the tribal circle is broken, a joyous celebration takes place, and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe.”
This is restorative justice.
Both the restorative practice of the Babemba tribe and the work of places like Homeboy Industries brings people back to wholeness, health, and the fullness of their own truth:
None of us are whole, until all of us are whole.
If only we could all recognize our own goodness, reflected in the eyes of those around us, what a different world this would be.
Our essential goodness is the “secret beauty” within each of us; and when others hold up a mirror and reflect that beauty, everything begins to change.
It actually doesn’t require a lengthy ritual or an entire organization for this to happen.
Here’s another story:
The first McDonald’s in Moscow opened in 1990.
Many months of training preceded the grand opening.
The workers were taught to “welcome” the customers.
This idea of welcome was a very foreign concept to both the workers and to the customers walking in.
The staff were trained to convey welcome, and the Russian for this is translated as “Your arrival here is pleasing to us.”
There were historic lines of Russians standing in the cold to get in.
And it wasn’t for the fries or the Happy Meals.
The lines were long, because the customers WOULD NOT LEAVE the place once they were in.
They said the reason was the “welcome”: “Your arrival here is pleasing to us.”
In those few words, the patron’s secret beauty, their worth, was reflected back to them.
It can be that simple.
“The hard part,” says Fa. Greg, “is to believe in our own goodness, our nobility. Yet we don’t ‘become’ noble.
We locate our nobility,” he says.
“The hard part is embracing our inner nobility, beauty, and goodness.” Unfortunately, too often for all of us, it’s the frightened, damaged self that takes center stage.
But we can learn to catch ourselves.
“The homies think that this is their truth,” he goes on, “they get caught in the downward spiral and repetitive cycle of unworthiness and shame.
The flip side of this is developing…a different way to define.
To define yourself in donation rather than deficit.
It’s not that they’ve forgotten their original goodness, but that they’ve never been properly introduced to it.”
“It’s not that they’ve forgotten their original goodness, but that they’ve never been properly introduced to it.”
Isn’t that true of most of us to some degree?
Isn’t that why a meditation exercise like the one we did earlier, where we hold up a mirror to our own beauty and worthiness can bring us to tears?
Or for some of us, may feel like an impossibility.
We have just never been properly introduced to our own goodness.
How easy it is for us to believe and invest in our not-good-enough identity, to believe that the damaged self is who we are.
And then we never want to be who we are.
There’s one more story Fa. G tells and this one might be my favorite.
Sam, a Homeboy alum, had arranged for composer and pianist, Eric Genius, who has performed at Carnegie Hall, to give a concert at Pelican Bay Prison, a supermax facility on the CA coast.
Eric plays the piano and has a couple of friends who accompany him on strings.
Sam had secured permission for two hundred inmates, but only sixty showed up, and Sam was a bit disappointed.
Eric had planned to play for forty-five minutes, then engage in a question-and-answer session for fifteen minutes.
He began to play, and something descended on these folks gathered in the gym… There was a reverent stillness thick in the air.
Inmates and guards alike were held in this music’s spell.
It was the most glorious thing Sam had ever witnessed there.
He looked at the prisoners and soon they were all sobbing.
He saw that the guards were discreetly flicking tears.
The magnificent music had detonated some release so welcome and unexpected. Eric finished and turned to his stunned audience and asked if there were any questions.
There was only silence for some time.
Then one inmate rose.
He had something to say but he was still crying so hard, it was momentarily a struggle for him to locate his question.
He could only utter one word: “Why?”
Eric began to cry as well and said,
“Because you are deserving.
You are worthy of beauty and music.
And because… there is no difference between you and me.”
There is no difference between you and me.
“When we are anchored in love,” says Fa. G. “we’re ever mindful of our undeniable goodness. That’s why.”
Poet Derek Walcott tells us:
“The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.”
May you soon greet yourself arriving at your own door with a smile of welcome. May we all, every day, in every moment, or in scattered moments, here and there, be reminded of our own goodness, our secret beauty.
And from that place of remembering our worth, may we shower ourselves and each other with extravagant tenderness, as we learn to speak the whole language of humanity, the whole language of love.
May it be so. Amen and blessed be.