Transcription
[Applause] Good evening. My name is Erica Chavez. I'm here to tell you guys a little about my story.
I was born in Los Angeles, California, raised in West LA and Boyle Heights. My mother's name is Marlene Castro and my dad, Javier Chavez. I have four other siblings; my mom's side of the family, and I was an only child with my father. I lived with my mother till I was 13 because I got removed from her custody due to her losing herself in drug addiction.
As far back as I can remember, my mom used drugs since I was little. That is why she and my father separated before I was born. She was very abusive to me and my brothers. She was bipolar, and we didn't know what side of her we were getting every day. I believe she was like this because of drugs. I remember as a child grabbing a pillow and screaming as loud as I can into it because of the frustration I had with the lifestyle I lived as a little girl.
I would go with my father to Boyle Heights Wednesdays and every other weekend, which I loved because it was my escape from the reality I had to come back to once my visits were over. I would tell my father the things my mother would do, and he would call DCFS on my mom to try to get custody of me. But I was too scared to say the truth once they came to the house because my mother would threaten to punish me and my brothers. I was scared because my mom would hit us often with TV cords or anything she could get her hands on. I often would try to avoid this, but it seemed inevitable.
So eventually, she lost herself in drugs to the point where she was no longer feeding us. No lights in the apartment, no hot water, and she was talking to herself, saying things. We lived like this for a while until my third oldest brother called DCFS so we could get taken away. He called because he was tired of the abuse. My mom treated him the worst because she knew he was homosexual, and she thought she could change him. My other two oldest brothers would leave the house and escape my mom's abuse. That's how they got into a gang, fleeing my mom and her craziness.
When we got taken away, I was separated from my siblings and placed with my father. I wanted to be happy, but I missed my siblings. I never knew how to talk about how I felt or what I went through. I always suppressed my emotions, but my dad did his best for me to have a better life. I would play basketball because that was my escape. I would take everything out on the court, but I could never focus in school, so it was hard for me. Um, sorry. It was hard for me. So, I couldn't play basketball for my school. I started hanging out with people from my neighborhood, and my dad started to notice it. Notice it. He would always keep me locked inside the house. I couldn't go anywhere. So, I would run away from home, and I ended up joining a gang, and he then sent me to placement. It was called Phoenix House. I ran away from the placement. I was 16 and didn't speak to my dad. He knew nothing of me. I was six months pregnant when I decided to go back to him, and my dad told me he was sick and he had kidney failure.
So, I moved back to help him and my grandmother out at the house. None of my dad's side of the family liked me. So, once my aunt moved into my grandmother's house, she told me I had to move out and not to say anything to my father, just tell him I decided to move on my own. She was kicking me out. So, I told my father; he was angry. He confronted her, and it started a war between them two. She got my dad removed from my grandmother's house, but he moved to the back apartments on my grandmother's property, which I went with him as well, but I would leave occasionally. One time I left for two weeks, and I got a call from his dialysis center to go check on him because he had missed his treatment. I went to check on him at his apartment, and the door was slightly open. I felt something was wrong. I could hear the TV was on, and as soon as I walked in, I saw blood on the floor and the faucet running. I followed some bloody footsteps and saw my father dead on the floor.
When he passed, I was left to live on the street, couch surfing, trying to keep a roof over my daughter's head. But to escape, but to escape, sorry. To cope with my father's passing, I ended up falling into drug addiction to suppress my emotions. I would often leave my daughter with my second oldest brother when I was getting high. If not, she would go with her grandmother eventually. Eventually, they noticed I was getting high. So, her grandmother called DCFS on me. I was lying to them and myself about where I was staying to keep my daughter. Eventually, they found out and removed her from my custody. I then fell deeper into drugs. I didn't try to get her back because I felt I had nothing to give her, no family, nothing to offer. So I decided to step back. So her grandmother got full custody of her. I then proceeded to live in my neighborhood homeless for quite some time until someone took me to Homeboy Industries, and I started the program and I got the help I needed. They sent me to rehab and opened the doors for me that others closed. They helped me see that I can be someone; I just needed to give myself a chance. I now see my first daughter every weekend. I have a six-month-old baby and another on the way. I am married to [Applause] Anthony. I have stable living. I have expunged my record and have been clean for three years now. It's been thanks to Homeboy Industries. It's been thanks to Homeboy Industries who showed me kinship and kindness. Thank you.
Good evening. I go by the name Anthony. Okay. I go by the name Anthony Salazar Bolanos. I was born October 16, 1997. I grew up with my younger brother and my single mother on the west side of Los Angeles.
As far as I can remember, my brother and I would look after one another. My mother would be at work most of the time trying to make ends meet. We didn't have much, but we never went hungry either. My mother did what she could to keep us off the streets. Usually, my mother's brother would be in charge of looking after my brother and me, but he would self-medicate a lot with alcohol and other substances, making it easier for me to start hanging out in the streets.
I remember getting kicked out of the 10th grade due to fighting and not having the grades to graduate on time. So, around this time is when I made it official and got put onto the gang in my neighborhood. I guess you can say I was having identity issues, trying to find myself, and becoming a part of something made me feel good at the time, you know. Um, I thought it was all fun and games until it wasn't. Knowing but not really knowing what I was getting myself into. I remember witnessing my best friend Brandon take a bullet to the head, and this event was an extremely traumatic experience. This caused me to heavily self-medicate with nitrous oxide, Xanax, cocaine, etc. I was angry, sad, depressed, and all I could think of at the moment was to get revenge. Someone had to pay. I ended up catching a charge for a firearm and taking the police on a high-speed pursuit and colliding with several other vehicles. Luckily, no one was seriously hurt, but I had earned myself a six-month stay at the LA County Jail and 18 months in a rehab facility. This should have been a wake-up call, but unfortunately, it wasn't. I ended up catching a robbery case after this, and the judge was not having it. He was mandatorily sending me to prison this time and giving me my first strike. This was a scary experience, and I would not wish incarceration upon anyone, not even my worst enemy. It was like a gladiator school; only the strong survive. You get with the program, or the program gets with you, as they say. I ended up doing my time. I remember not being able to get a job anywhere. Not even McDonald's would hire me. Trying to re-adapt to society seemed impossible at the time with all the PTSD and heavy paranoia. While all the doors were being closed on me, Homeboy Industries opened theirs. I joined their 18-month program and started working with my case manager. They helped me get my driver's license back. They helped me get my high school diploma, but most importantly, they helped me get off parole and expunge my record. Homeboy Industries gave me the tools to become a productive member of society. I am a full-time cook now for Whole Foods Market and am now able to provide for my daughter. I am ever grateful for Homeboy Industries believing in me and never giving up. Without them, none of this would have been possible. Thank you.
Well, thank you for coming. That ends our program. Uh, as far as I'm concerned, it's been such a joy to be with these two. So, I've never been on a plane, and um, and uh, I don't know. We planned this a long time ago, you know, and uh, I don't know. Yeah. Never you never think that day is going to even come. I don't know why I think that way, but then all of a sudden we're on a plane, you know. Erica, as we pulled into LAX, she goes, "This is finally settling on me." You know, which I thought was an interesting way to put it. So, anyway, the day won't ever come when I have more courage or I am more noble or closer to God than these two characters. I told him to say, "You didn't say that you were married to each other. This was this morning, you know." You know, so thank you for adding that one editorial correction. Thank you, Lars, for eloquently introducing us. Thank you for mentioning that Presidential Medal of Freedom. Uh, when it happened, a homie texted me and said, "Hey, I heard you got a presidential pardon or some shit." I go, "Yep, that's what it was." Um, I was talking about Lewis Bettz, who uh, uh, where are you, teacher? There you are. Yeah. And uh, and I whenever I'm in front of a microphone, I always think of this character Lewis Bettis who worked for us for like 10 years. He was a force of nature; a heroin addict in recovery, a shot caller, a gang member. Uh, he kind of ran the place for like 10 years. And uh, and when I couldn't give a talk, I would send him, and then he would uh, um, he loved it. He just he loved talking in front of people. He really was gifted. And we went out to dinner, and he was one night he was giving me tips on how to speak publicly, and and he said, "You know, you got to pepper your talk with self-defeating humor." and I said, "Yeah, no, that is some good advice there, you know." Uh, so brace yourselves. That's kind of basically what I'm trying to say to you. Uh, so as I told your sons this morning, uh, you know, whenever you speak at a group, you know, it always recalls for me what Martin Luther King used to say about church; it's not the place you've come to, it's the place you go from. And I always think that's important to always acknowledge, no matter when we gather, we're always being sent after the gathering. So, it's important to know that and uh, and that we're sent to roll up our sleeves and to do something very concrete, which is to create a community of kinship such that God might recognize it. And that's the whole point. It's not supposed to be like this: Oh, now I found I know exactly what to do is to wave my hands at God. No, we're supposed to go from here. And and and of course, Jesus says at the end of his life, you know, that you may be one. That's the only thing I want. And wow, what a good timely message in our current moment, in our current country, that you may be one. And so we're invited to create a community of cherished belonging where there is no us and them; there's just us. And how do we obliterate once and for all the illusion that we are separate? And how do we bridge any distance? And and to begin to do that, I think we go from this place to stand at the margins because it's the only way they'll ever get erased is if we stand out at them. And we stand with particularity. We stand with the poor and the powerless and the voiceless. And we stand with those whose dignity has been denied and those whose burdens are more than they can bear. And how fortunate we are when that moment comes when we get to stand with the easily despised and the readily left out, with the disposable, so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away, and with the demonized so that the demonizing will stop. And so this intimate gathering tonight is not the place we've come to; it's the place we go from. And we brace ourselves in our world because, of course, people will accuse you of wasting your time at the margins. But the prophet Jeremiah writes, "For in this place of which you say it is a waste, there will be heard again the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voices of those who sing." And we go from here, and remarkably people's voices suddenly are heard because you chose to go there. Well, I think probably none of that makes any sense unless we're anchored in a notion of God that's spacious and expansive. We've settled for a partial God. And so it it keeps us partial people. It keeps us puny when our God is huge. St. Ignatius of Loyola always talks about the God who's always greater. How do we align ourselves with the energies of that God? And and that's essential. Richard Rohr says that uh certainly we're created in the image and likeness of God, but it's equally true that our image of God creates us. And so there we have to be careful because if the image is too tiny, like wrathful and judgmental and quick to be disappointed, is there any surprise when we are all those things? Because our image of God creates us, and and so we want to be careful about that. Uh, Annie Lamont says, you know, you've created God in your own image when God hates the same people you do, you know, so you want to be careful about that, you know, and uh, Meister Eckhart, who is a mystic and a theologian who died a lot of years ago, um, used to say it is a lie, any talk of God that doesn't comfort you. Well, we kind of only half believe that. We think that God is mainly wildly disappointed in us. If only you did more. You know, I I remember a little homie named BBE, we called him BB, and a little tiny guy, 13, and he was in my office, and he said, "Hey, G, have you ever won the Nobel Peace Prize?" I said, I laughed. I said, "No." And he said, "Haven't you done enough?" And I said, "Yes, I'm certain that's what it was," you know, but that's kind of our image of God. A God who kind of says, "Yeah, you know, you really haven't done enough." And you go, "Wow, where how did that happen?" You know, that we came to believe that. Um, many years ago, I had a spiritual director who who said, you know, we need a better God than the God we have. He was a Jesuit. So, but everyone in this room knows that that's correct. You know, you you you've settled, and we don't want to settle. We want to hold out for something that's just spacious and huge. Um, many years ago, uh, I was saying Mass at San Fernando Juvenile Hall. I'll be there again on Easter Sunday. And uh, in those days, we were in a big old gym and like 300 gang members. And I remember I was vested in my alb I stole, and and they have these uh, like sheets, you know, little pamphlets that have the readings in English and Spanish so you can follow along in the language you're comfortable with. And and I thought, well, I'm going to close my eyes. I'm not going to consult the sheet. And I rested it on my lap on a folded chair as the homies came up to the podium to uh read, you know, from, you know, for the liturgy of the word. And the first kid got up and did the Old Testament reading. And the second kid got up to do the responsorial psalm. And I don't know, there was like an overabundance of confidence in his voice. And he gets up and he says, "The Lord is exhausted." And I said, "What the hell?" And it was, "The Lord is exalted." And I remember thinking at the time, "Wow, that's way better because the exalted God is is our own projection." You know, it's, you know, because let's face it, everyone in this room, if you were God, you would want to be exalted. Of course, we would. But the exhausted God is closer to what this is. So, any of you grandparent age, and somebody says to you, "How was your weekend?" You go, "Oh my god, I'm pooped. I had the grandkids over," and it's kind of like that, you know, it's there's an exhausted generous giving that doesn't care about yourself is so anchored in being loving centered on your grandkids, for example. So, we get the exhausted God because it it inches us closer to the God who's always greater than our own notion, you know. Um, one of the great benefits of COVID was Zoom, of course, and and I have five sisters and and uh two brothers, and we would endlessly Zoom, and and we still do now once a month, and uh, and they're all over the country, and they're all married, so it's you know, it's eight kids times two except for me, but uh, you know, and it's and we just fill the screen, you know, and and we met uh, the last time we met, it was at the anniversary of my mom's death, and uh, she was 92 when she died. My father had died 30 years before, uh, or some 25 years maybe; he was uh uh 70 when he died. And so um, and my mom, she died, you know, the way you want to die, in your own bed, in your own home, surrounded by your kids. And and she died like uh in the, you know, the beginning of the second year of the first Trump presidency. That's this was a weird marker. I'll admit it, but but it's how I remember. And uh, and she was smart as a tack even till the end, you know. She uh she was so sharp, and and she was uh in fact, in that last year of her life, she watched so much MSNBC, she was becoming Rachel Maddow. And uh, she wasn't a lick afraid of dying. In fact, at like a month before she died, uh, she was just positively giddy and very excited, and and she said to me, "I've never done this before." You know, it's like something you say just before skydiving, you know, and in fact, the day before she died, I was sitting at the foot of her bed, and um, you know, and no one was around, which didn't happen, you know, at least in her room. Usually, had eight people in her room at any given time, and she was asleep, and I was just sitting at the foot of her bed, and she opened her eyes and she saw me there, and she said, "Oh, for crying out loud." And she went back to sleep. Well, she was pissed that she hadn't died. You know what I mean? Sorry. Well, the next day, um, again, as luck would have it, it was so odd. Uh, at exactly noon, I was sitting at the foot of her bed, and, uh, nobody was around. It was just me. My sisters went out to get lunch or something, and and at exactly noon, she uh lifted her head from the pillow. She opened her eyes and she let out this wondrous, glorious gasp, skydiving, and she left us. And nobody in earshot of that sound could ever be afraid of death again. But I remember in those last days there would be two or three or all eight of her kids and a bunch of grandkids around her bed, and she'd be in and out of consciousness. When she came to, she would lock on to just one of us and uh laser-beam focused and uh and she would say to this person with breathless delight, "You're here. You're here." And I remembered that when uh we buried her.
I thought I think that may be the singular agenda item for our exhausted God: is to look at you with breathless delight and simply say, “You’re here. You’re here.”
And I know we make so much of, uh, you know, Jesus in the desert, 40 days and 40 nights, and and uh, and of course that’s the precursor of our current moment of Lent, you know. And I can never say the word Lent without telling you about Michelle Nunes, who was a home girl, a tough cookie, who worked in, uh, our office. And she came into my office one day and she goes, “Well, it’s official. I just found out my man’s been cheating on me.” I said, “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry.” Nah, I don’t sweat it. I went to church, got me them ashes, gave his ass up for Lent. That has nothing to do with what I’m talking about tonight. But I’m like Pavlov’s dog; I can’t say the word Lent and not tell you about Michelle Nunes, but I digress.
So there we have this image of Jesus for 40 days and 40 nights, and we think dark night of the soul and grumbling stomach and agony and and doubt. And I suspect it probably was 40 days and 40 nights of of God just staring at this guy and saying with breathless delight, “You’re here. You’re here,” and Jesus not knowing entirely what to say back except, “You’re here.” And I think that’s pretty much it. We receive the tender glance, and then we choose to be the tender glance in the world. We notice the notice of God, and then we choose to be that notice of God in the world.
I had a homie who, uh, ended an email just a couple weeks ago. Uh, he says, “Early morning, we email every morning, we read the readings and we reflect on them, and then we re—we send whatever we’re thinking.” And he ended his email by saying, “Today I surrender into the arms of God and I will choose to be those arms.” Pretty great. But that’s what it is. You receive it. You choose to be it in the world. You surrender into the arms and you decide to be those arms. You choose to be in the world who God is: compassionate, loving, and kind.
And so this evening, this event is not the place you’ve come to; it’s going to be the place you go from. And that’s kind of the task in the world: to align our hearts to the energies of God. So, oh, I feel like I need to do always the Cliff Notes version of what the hell is Homeboy Industries, but so bear with me if you’ve heard this 93 times today. Um, but uh, Homeboy, uh, was born when I was, uh, had been assigned as a newly ordained priest to be the pastor at Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights and Porrest Parish in the city, nestled in the middle of two public housing projects, Pico Gardens and Alisa Village, largest grouping of public housing west of the Mississippi. Uh, eight gangs at war with each other in that parish, in tiny little parish, which is not customary in public housing to have that many gangs, and uh, LAPD called my parish the place of the highest concentration of gang activity in the whole city. Uh, in LA County we have 120,000 gang members and 1100 gangs. I buried my first young person killed because of this sadness in 1988. And two weeks ago, I buried a kid named Manny; he was my 263rd. Not all from that community, of course, but I know a lot of gang members.
So, we we just decided to do things. First thing was a school. We started a school because there were so many junior high, middle school age gang members who had been given the boot from their home school. Nobody wanted them. So they were wreaking havoc, uh, in the projects during the day, writing on the walls, selling drugs; they were violent. So I walked out to them, and and I would try to kind of isolate them a little bit, one at a time, and say, “Hey, you know, if I found a school that would take you, would you go?” And uh, truly to my surprise, every single one said, “Yeah, I would.” And then I couldn’t find a school that would take them. So that that forced my hand. So across the street from our church is our elementary parochial school, uh, grades K to 8, occupying the first two floors of, uh, the school, and the third floor was the convent. And so one evening I gathered all the nuns, uh, in the living room. There, about eight of them. And I said, “Hey, you know, would you guys mind, you know, moving out?” and uh, and we could turn the convent into a school for gang members. And they they looked at each other and they went, “Sure.” I mean, literally like that, you know, that was the extent of their entire discernment process. And uh, so we were off and running. So gang members came in large numbers from these eight gangs, and making it a very, uh, a volatile place. We would have three big old brawls every day; it was intense. And then, uh, uh, teachers didn’t last long. I had a principal who lasted exactly one day. I I called him, uh, and he had, uh, uh, apparently changed his phone number and had checked into a witness protection program, you know, and but they came. That was the thing; they they still came. They wanted an education; they wanted something. And in short order, they said, uh, you know, “If only we had jobs.”
So myself and the women in the parish—the profile of those who lived in public housing were women with children primarily—and so we marched around the factories that surrounded, uh, the, uh, housing projects and trying to find felony-friendly employers, you know, which wasn’t so forthcoming. So, so we we couldn’t find many. So, we started stuff: maintenance crew, landscaping crew, a crew to build our child care center. Uh, it took us a couple years to do it; it would have taken eight months with professionals, but and uh, all these crews were made up of rivals from the eight gangs. And then in 1992, last day of April, uh, was the, uh, a quiddle of the four police officers who beat down Rodney King. And uh, every pocket of poverty just ignited in Los Angeles except the poorest pocket, my parish. And so um, LA Times came snooping around a couple days later. Why? Why didn’t this place ignite? Everybody thought it would, of course. And I said, well, I don’t know. You know, maybe part of the reason was, uh, that we had 60 strategically hired rival gang members who had a reason to get up in the morning and a reason not to gang bang the night before, and more to the point of your question, a reason not to, uh, torch their own community. So, the article appeared the next day, and then the following day I’m summoned to the Beverly Hills office of a movie producer, Ray Stark, who happened to have a $500 million. And, uh, he says, “How should I spend my money?” That was his first question to me. And as I look back on it now, I can see that I woefully under-shot my request. You know, I I was young; I had hair. Um, I said, “Well, there’s an abandoned bakery across the street from the school. You could buy it. Uh, it has ovens; they don’t work, but you could fix them.” I don’t know. Uh, we could put hairnets on rival enemy gang members and they could bake bread, and we could call it the the home—call it Homeboy Bakery. That was the extent of my business plan. And he said, “Sure.” And so we were off and running. And uh, then a month later we started Homeboy Tortillas in the Grand Central Market. Once we had plural, we changed our name, uh, to Homeboy Industries, as if there was any industry involved in this venture. And not everything worked. I mean, Homeboy Plumbing really was not hugely successful. Who knew? People didn’t want gang members in their homes. I I did not see that coming. And we never intended to do anything, of course, ever, but we just kind of evolved or backed our way into becoming, uh, the largest gang intervention, rehab, re-entry program on the planet.
So, 10,000 folks a year walk through our doors wanting to reimagine their lives. All of them come barricaded behind a wall of shame and disgrace. And the only thing that can scale that wall is tenderness. All of them come with what psychologists would call a disorganized attachment. Mom is either frightened or frightening. And you can’t calm yourself down if you’ve never been soothed. Every single one walks through those doors hoping to be greeted by somebody who looks them in the eye and says, “You’re here. You’re here.” A lot of the homies who, you know, been in prison for a long time will say, you know, “We’re used to being watched; we’re not used to being seen.” And so we want to create a place where people feel safe and then seen so that they can be cherished. So if it’s true that a traumatized person is likely to cause trauma, then it has to be equally true that a cherished person is going to be able to find their way to the joy there is in cherishing themselves and others.
And so we have an 18-month program that, uh, both of them have mentioned. Um, you know, we kind of changed course. It used to be job, job. Nothing stops a bullet like a job. But then we realized, uh, that it was really about healing. That an educated gang member may or may not go back to prison, or an employed one may or may not. But then it became our contention that a healed gang member will not ever re-offend. Period. And we still believe that’s the case. So the 18 months, uh, it’s funny, we were trying to decide, you know, two month, two years is too long, one year is too short. How about 18 months? Oh, yeah. Put that down. 18 months. But then later on, somebody said, “Oh, that’s interesting because it takes 18 months for an infant to attach to the caregiver.” And we thought, yeah, that’s the reason why we picked 18 months, you know, but it is kind of that it’s about attachment repair. And so, and so we we have this kind of sense that cherishing is love with its sleeves rolled up. It’s that people will inhabit the truth of who they are; they will find their true selves in loving if they are cherished. And cherishing is kind of a, it can’t stay in the ether; it can’t stay in your head; it has to work its way to its to your feet. And then there’s connective tissue involved where people connect. And everybody does it at at Homeboy, you know, today. And I really, uh, urge you to support an amazing program here, uh, called Homebridge. And it’s just remarkable. Uh, we went there today, and they all talked about walking through those doors, you know, which is what we always talk about at Homeboy, the swinging of the doors. And it’s it’s similar, you know, they’re part of our our global Homeboy network. So we have 300 programs in the United States kind of loosely modeled on Homeboy, 50 outside the country. We gather every year for three days; we’re going to see all those Homebridge people in July. And but there’s the key to it is that everybody’s giving a dose. It’s not one person who will be doing the cherishing around here. No, everybody’s doing it. At Homeboy that we always, you know, the security guards who are homies who’ve gone through the program, you know, everybody’s kind of holding folks in high regard and and uh, lifting them up.
At home, we were allergic to the notion of of holding the bar up and asking people to measure up, mainly because our exhausted God doesn’t do that. Why would we do it? Instead, we hold the the mirror up and we tell people the truth that they’re exactly what God had in mind when God made them. And then you watch them become that truth. They inhabit that truth, and no bullet can pierce it, and no four prison walls can keep it out, and death can’t touch it because it’s huge. But it’s all brought to you by way of cherishing. You receive the tender glance, and then you become that tender glance.
So, uh, we know at Homeboy you have to reach in and you have to dismantle messages of shame and disgrace. Uh, (I was talking to the group, uh, who went in February from, uh, from the prep to on an immersion trip to um, Homeboy. And so I was in I I I waved, apparently, but I was in my office and there was a meeting of some kind. And so my office is glass enclosed, and I can see out onto the floor of, uh, the office and I can see every seat and every, you know, and it’s always that every seat is filled, and I can see who walks through the door, and we have like eight tour groups a day from all over the world, and so homies are dispatched to give tours to kids from Fairfield Prep, you know, or wherever. And I was sitting there one day. I had two homies in front of my desk, and uh, this big huge group came, like 20 people, and they just plant themselves in front of my glass enclosed office, and I wave faintly, and and it’s one of those “observe our founder in his natural habitat” kinds of moments. And and the guy giving the tour is Ozaldo. You remember Ozaldo? and and the homies would say he has a loud ass voice. And so he’s giving this tour and he goes, “This is Father Greg Boyle. He is the founder of Homeboy Industries. He is a jujitsu priest. And so from my office, I kind of do some of my more impressive moves.”) Homies don’t really know what a Jesuit is. I I, you know, myself and two other Jesuits who work there. But uh, but anyway, I told you that to tell you this. On on February 28th, uh, 1540, St. Ignatius of Loyola, uh, enters this one word in his spiritual diary and proceeds to use it, uh, many times thereafter until he died, uh, 12 years later. Before he died, he went back and he circled the word to kind of highlight for all the many times he used it. And I know Spanish, but I didn’t know this word. And the word is atamiento, and it comes from aatar, which means to look at something with attention. And no doubt it was born of a mystical singular moment between Ignatius and the God of love. But I’d like to think that he didn’t want it to settle for this singular singular moment in his life; he wanted it to maybe perhaps be a stance at the margins. So if this talk tonight is not the place we’ve come to but the place we go from, what is to be our disposition out at the margins, what is our stance thereat? And it’s translated as affectionate awe, affectionate awe, which reminds me of the Acts of the Apostles where it has this one odd line that says, “And awe came upon on everyone.” And it suggests that the measure of health in any community at all may well reside in our ability to stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.
Uh, so um, many years ago I was invited to speak to, uh, 600 social workers in Richmond, Virginia, and it was what we call in the biz a gang in-service, and so they gather, uh, all these, uh, social workers and they sign in and they commandeer a hotel ballroom, and it’s from 9 to 5, and there are workshops and breakout sessions and there’s, uh, keynotes. I’ve done a lot of them over the years where you try to emphasize that gang violence is about a lethal absence of hope, that no hopeful kid has ever joined a gang in the history of the world, and that no kid is seeking anything. When he joins a gang, he’s fleeing something. Those kinds of things that you talk about at a gang in-service. So, I said yes, figuring I’d do a keynote as is customary in my life. Uh, a week—I buy the ticket well in advance, but a week before I am to fly, I I pull out the letter that originally invites me. And to my horror, I discover that I am to be the only speaker all damn day from 9 to 5, you know, and and I said, “Oh, hell no. I’m not going to be the only speaker.” So, I got two trainees, you know, in the 18-month program, uh, Andre, an African-American gang member, and somebody from a rival enemy gang, uh, Jose. And I sit them down in my office, and I said, “Look, at the end of the week, you’re flying with me to Richmond, Virginia. I’d like you to get up in front of 600 social workers and tell your stories. Take your time, because we got a long ass day to fill.” Well, I had never heard their stories. And Jose gets up first, and I suppose he was like 25 at the time. Shot caller from his gang, um, in prison, tattooed during his—they were like the two of them were in like their ninth month there. So, and we everybody moves around in one of our 14 social enterprises, restaurants, silk screening, um, lots of different businesses or internally in our headquarters. So, he he ended up, uh, attaching, uh, as a very beneficial presence to the substance use disorder team, a man solid in his own recovery. And now he was helping younger homies and home girls with their addiction issues. Uh, so not only was he a shot caller and big old gang member, he also had a long stretch as a a homeless man, even longer stretch as a heroin addict. And and so he gets up in front of 600 social workers. And and he says, “I guess you could say my mom and me, we didn’t get along so good. I think I was six when she looked at me and she said, ‘Why don’t you just kill yourself? You’re such a burden to me.’” Well, 600 social workers audibly gasp. And then he says, “It sounds way worser in Spanish.” And we got whiplash going from gasp to laugh. But he continued, “I think I was nine when my mom drove me down to the deepest part of Baja California, and she walks me up to an orphanage and she knocks on the door and the guy comes to the door and she says, ‘I found this kid.’ And she left me there for 90 days till my grandmother could get out of her where she had dumped me. And my grandmother came and rescued me. My mom beat me every single day of my elementary school years with things you could imagine and a lot of things you couldn’t. Every day my back was bloodied and scarred. In fact, I had to wear three t-shirts to school each day: first t-shirt because the blood would seep through, and second t-shirt you could still see it. Finally, the third t-shirt you couldn’t see any blood. Kids at school, they make fun of me: ‘Hey fool, it’s 100°. Why are you wearing three t-shirts?’” And then he stopped speaking, so overwhelmed with emotion, and he seemed to be staring at a piece of his story that only he could see. And when he could regain his speech, he said through his tears, “I wore three t-shirts well into my adult years because I was ashamed of my wounds; I didn’t want anybody to see them. But now I welcome my wounds; I run my fingers over my scars. My wounds are my friends. After all, how can I help heal the wounded if I don’t welcome my own wounds?” And awe came upon everyone. Atamiento, affectionate awe. A measure of our compassion lies not in our service of those on the margins but only in our willingness to see ourselves in kinship with them. For the truth of the matter is this: If we don’t welcome our own wounds, we may well be tempted to despise the wounded.
Finish with one last story and then our our, uh, our question and answer session will happen over there in the kind of the reception, and you can talk to Erica and to Anthony and myself. Um, so you know, it it occurs, uh, mainly to jiu-jitsu organizations that to to force their students to read my books against their will. I’m I’m not I’m not complaining, but I know that that’s been done at this institution. Uh, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. So, um, it happens. So, uh, so many years ago, I was invited to, uh, Spokane, Washington, to Gonzaga University, my alma mater and who ruins my bracket every year. And, uh, to force the incoming freshman to read Tattoos on the Heart. So, they said, “Would you come and could you bring two homies with you?” And um, I said, “Sure,” you know, and normally I I I pick homies, uh, in two ways. I didn’t this time, of course, but except for partially. I always pick homies who are enemies, rivals, um, just to force them to share a hotel room, just to mess with them. And and I almost always pick homies who have never flown before. I did this this time just for the thrill of watching.
Gang members panicked in the sky, you know. So, I picked Larry, an African-American gang member, and his rival, his enemy, Mario. You know, I’ve done a lot of trips lately, Baltimore and Philadelphia and and uh Twin Cities and all first-time flyers and uh and they were, you know, nervous somewhat. Oh, nothing compares to this guy Mario. He was just Biki. He was just beside himself, uh freaking out, and and it was starting to uh freak me out, you know, and he was he was hyperventilating, which I’d never witnessed in a human being before. You you know, and we hadn’t even, you know, boarded the plane yet. And we were at Burbank airport, which is a smalish airport, and but big planes Southwest Airlines, and we were, you know, going to fly to Spokane and um and there I haven’t flown there in a lot of years, but in those days anyway there was no hermetically sealed chute to board the plane. You have to walk out onto the tarmac like you’re the president and you climb up the steps to board the front of the plane. Big feature at Burbank are the steps to board the back of the plane.
And so I’m sitting there with Mario and Larry’s exploring the airport and uh it’s first flight of the day and uh and here our our flight crew arrives and and they’re starting to uh you know walk up the steps and there are two female flight attendants. Both of them have very large cups of Starbucks coffee and they’re shleing up the steps to board the plane. And just then Mario goes, “When are we going to board the plane?” I said, ‘Well, as soon as they sober up the pilots,’ there they go. Now, perhaps I I shouldn’t actually have said that, but um I should tell you, and and you will bear me out on this. Uh I think he’s the most tattooed individual who’s ever worked there pretty much. Yeah. And that sang a lot at Homeboy. And he’s all sleeved out to his fingertips. Uh neck blackened with the name of his gang. Head shaved, covered in tattoos, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyelids, ears, earlobes, and eyelids that say the end so that you know when he’s laying in his coffin there will be no doubt for anybody.
And I had never been in public with him. And so I thought, well, let me walk him through the airport. Maybe this will calm him down a little bit. And and nothing prepared me for it. People are like, “Oh my god.” And mothers are clutching kids more closely. And I’m going, “Oh wow.” Because if you were to go to Homeboy tomorrow, walk up to anybody who works there and just say, “Quick, who’s the kindest, most gentle soul who works here?” They would think for one beat and they’d say, “Mario.” Yeah, Mario. Mario is proof that only the soul that ventilates the world with tenderness has any chance of changing the world. He is proof that the only nondelusional response to everything is kindness.
So, we get to Gonzega and it’s a Tuesday night, big venue, a thousand people and uh what they don’t tell you, this happens often in universities, not in these two facilities, these two institutions, but they’ll say, “Would you mind visiting like 92 classes?” I go, “Invite them to the talk.” But anyway, so uh so we got there and I said, “You guys get up and talk, you know, I’m gonna sit in the back of the classroom. Well, they did. They told their stories powerfully like these two people did. And uh stories of terror and torture and violence and abuse of every imaginable kind. And honest to God, if their stories had been flames, you’d have to keep your distance. Otherwise, you’d get scorched. I would not have survived a single day of either of their childhoods.
So, we get to the big venue that night and uh this was in the early days of this. So, I coaxed them to get up just as you bravely did and they did a good job even Mario although he was terrified. And then I got up and I did my thing and and then um they wanted to have a Q&A with everybody. So, um I brought them up and they stood on either side. Yeah. Question. Yes, ma’am. And a woman stands and she goes, “Yeah, I got a question. It’s for Mario.” First question out the gate and Mario steps up to the microphone. He’s a tall, skinny drink of water and he’s clutching the microphone. Yes. And she goes, “Well, Mario, you say you’re a father and you have a son and a daughter. They’re about to enter their teenage years. What wisdom do you impart to them? You know, what advice do you give them?” And Mario closes his eyes and he clutches the microphone with great intensity. And I’m sensing that he’s starting to tremble and he’s getting a freaking hernia trying to come up with whatever the hell he’s going to say when when suddenly he blurts out, “I just” As soon as he says those two words, he rushes back to his microphone clutching closed refuge. And now I know he’s losing the battle with his tears, but he wants to get the whole sentence out. I just don’t want my kids to turn out to be like me.
And there’s silence until the woman who asked the question stands and now it’s her turn to cry. Why wouldn’t you want your kids to turn out to be like you? You are loving. You are kind. You are gentle. You are wise. I hope your kids turn out to be like you. And a thousand total perfect strangers stand. And they will not stop clapping. And all Mario can do is hold his face in his hand so overwhelmed that this room full of strangers had returned him to himself. And let there be no doubt but that everybody’s standing had been returned to themselves. And I think that’s the only praise our exhausted God has any interest in. And so our brief time together tonight is not the place you’ve come to, it’s the place you go from. You go from here to take seriously what Jesus took seriously. And fortunately for all of us, there are only four things: Inclusion, nonviolence, unconditional loving kindness, and compassionate acceptance. And you go from here to imagine a circle of compassion. And then imagine nobody standing outside that circle. And you go from here to dismantle the barriers that exclude. And you go from here finally to create a community of cherished belonging where there is no us and them. There’s just us. And you go from here ceasing to care whether anybody accuses you of wasting your time at the margins. For in this place of which you say it is a waste, there will be heard again the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voices of those who sing. Thank you very much. [Applause] All right. Thank you, Father Bole, Erica, Anthony. Let’s hear it one last time for them.
Tonight, it’s my pleasure to introduce Mr. Christian Kman, our school president. Mr. Kman returned to Fairfield Prep in 2020 as our 17th head of school and first lay president. Previously, he served on the faculty from 2010 to 2017 when he taught theology and was actively involved in our campus ministry, faculty mentoring, and our music program. Mr. Cashman has dedicated over 20 years to Catholic education, including serving as president of Northwest Catholic High School before coming back to prep. He is a proud product of Jesuit education, having received both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Xavier University. Mr. Cashman and his wife Janet, Fairfield University alumni and current principal of Assumption School in Fairfield, have four sons, including two prep graduates, Paul from the class of 2015 and Joey from the class of 2023. Please join me in welcoming Mr. Cashman. [Applause] Well, thank you, Lars. I didn’t know my bio was going to get read tonight, so that was uh embarrassing but kind. I I I I almost dare not speak after the eloquence shared by our dear friends uh from Homeboy tonight, but I I will say a few words of thanks.
So, good evening certainly to our parents, our past parents, alumni, and friends in this room. It’s just so good that we can gather this evening as community, as Fairfield Prep’s common home, and we’re so thrilled to have invited Father Greg Bole and Eric and Anthony to be with us. I want to express my deepest ignation gratitude to Dr. Dr. Deon McCormack and our dean Elliot Gualier for making this night possible. Thank you so so much. And certainly to our team on the ground, to Jen Royal, Dave Hton, our staff who set up our servers, our theology department who prepared this great day for our boys. I thank you all for your meaningful help. But greatest thanks goes to Father G and Erica and Anthony. You’ve inspired us tonight with your witness, with your faith. You’ve challenged us to be examples of radical kinship and cherished belonging here in our common home at Prep. As I told the boys today when we gathered, I have to admit for me and most of us uh having Father G is like having a Jesuit rock star at Prep. You know, I mean, we’re a little we’re a little fan girl tonight. So, um uh along with my colleagues for 20 years, we’ve been using Father G’s books and YouTube videos. I myself taught junior theology and showed kinship and brotherhood through Father G’s work from afar. Our boys have visited Homeboy in LA. Uh they’ve come to know uh that community. They admire the work. But to have Father G in the flesh tonight in our sacred presence is a great gift. And I know that God, as you often remind us, delights in every one of us here tonight. And no doubt rejoices that we’re here together. So thank you for sharing yourselves with us. You know, we use that famous phrase that Father Rupes is here all the time at Prep to become men and women for others. And we declared today in front of the boys and God and everyone that Father G and Erica and Anthony are honorary Fairfield Prep men and women for others, aren’t they? Thank you.
As I also shared with the boys this morning, uh, as a prep thank you, our April might box after spring vacation and t-shirt drive will be for the benefit of Homeboy Industries. So, I’d invite all of you to support us in that effort uh for Father G’s ministries or directly via the Homeboy Industry web page where you can donate. And I want to give the disclaimer that Father G did not ask me to make this pitch. Uh but as one who is constantly cultivating support here at Prep for Mission, I know that every gift counts. So please uh let’s support Homeboy. So dear Prep community, as we draw this academic year to a close, may our theme, our common home, remind us to always be on the lookout for opportunities to build a community of cherished belonging at Fairfield Prep, such that God’s dream may indeed come true. May the witness shared with us by Father G and by Erica and Anthony give us courage to strive always to be more loving brothers and sisters in service of a needy world. Never just for ourselves but ad majorem Dei gloriam. Hail Fairfield and God bless Homeboy Industries. Thank you so much.