Catching up to do

As I'm sure you've heard, earlier this month someone shot and killed six people and wounded several others at a Safeway in Tucson. This event was particularly eye-catching because one of those wounded, and (it seems clear) the target of the attack, was US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. I'll spare you most of the details of what happened, because I assume you would have heard about it on the news, just like my housemates and I did. Needless to say, I was shocked to hear the news. It was one of those "no way, is this really happening" almost-sick-to-the-stomach kind of moments. I was also angry, and I was sad. It was so incredibly unfair.

With all that said, it was amazing how quickly for me those emotions passed and life was once again normal: working, grocery shopping, house discussions, etc. However, I continued to check the news, and to see signs of the tragedy around the city. At work, my supervisors talked about how friendly and accessible Giffords was (some of them had met with her multiple times). At a church service I went to, the pastor and the congregation mourned the loss of an energetic and humorous church-member, one of the six casualties. I rode over to Giffords's Tucson office and was moved by the amount of signs, flowers, and people there. Some pictures of that below.

Contrast that tragic story with the uplifting one of Father Greg Boyle, who my housemates and I went to hear speak last night at Most Holy Trinity, our local church. He is a Jesuit priest who came to the parish of Dolores Mission in Los Angeles at the time when it had the highest per capital gang population of anywhere in the city. Over time, Greg and his parishioners decided that what would be best for their community would be more job opportunities. Not finding any "felony-friendly" employers (as he puts it), they decided to start one, Homeboy Bakery. Soon followed Homegirl Café and voilà, Homeboy Industries was born. Today, it has become the largest gang intervention rehab center in the US.

This is great, but what really touched my heart during his talk was how apparent it was that Father Greg loves his homies (his term, not mine), something that really seems to be missing from today's nonprofits and social service agencies. He talks about how "there will never come a day when I am more courageous than" so-and-so or how he learned everything important in life from these former gang-members. His attitude toward them is obviously genuine and not patronizing in any way. He started off his talk in a way that I loved, and it went something like this: "I imagine you're not here tonight to hear me talk, really, but because you want a kind of world where we have kinship with those people that right now seem so divided from us." Father Greg Boyle talked about how many divisions we have in today's world, because of race, because of class, because of fear. He said that Jesus was trying to get people to see that there's not an "us" and a "them," just us. It was amazing to hear these words from someone who seemed, by example, to really understand what they mean.

Anyway, he's a great storyteller (think Garrison Keillor), and I would highly recommend getting your hands on his book, Tattos on the Heart. Luckily, my housemates and I will have the chance to hear him speak again this weekend at our Re-Orientation retreat in California.