It's good to be with you.

Well, I was taught by the Jesuits, and I actually had an uncle who was a Jesuit, but I didn't really get to know him until I became one. I think in the early days I would say hilarious and prophetic. Part of that was they were just so fun to be with, and this was during the days of the Vietnam War, so they were on the front lines of protest, which appealed to me. Later on, the authenticity of one's life is measured by joy and fearlessness, which is a fuller expression of prophetic and hilarious. Joy and fearlessness is really kind of the mark and measure. That's what drew me there, because I found that undeniably attractive, and so, I wanted to have what they're having. That was the whole reason.

Then as things deepened, I've been a Jesuit for 51 years and you kind of deepen your sense of what our charism is and what are the things that Jesuits believe in and what aligns us with each other. It's always been a sense of aligning the compass of my heart really to that kind of way of being, the way of proceeding that appeals to me still to this day.

I think that the whole goal is to try to find your true self in loving, then you end up loving 'being loving it.' It's kind of where the joy is and you kind of land on that, which is not the ground of your being, it's really more oceanic than it is actually land. Then you get to a place where you're kind of floating in this sense of love. Rumi used to say "Love is God's Religion", and so you find yourself there. That's when you discover and that's where the joy is. Once you land in this place of joy and you're grounded in that, then you can be an anchor for other people because you're grounded and you know your true self in the loving.

The Tibetans have an expression about wherever you have felt the most love, that's your home. But the problem with that thinking is then you leave that place and then you lament that you're not there because that's home. I think the real trick in finding joy and fearlessness is discovering that loving is your home, and once you know that, then you're never homesick. And it's never about the return on your investment. It's never about "will people love me back?" Whether they do or not, that doesn't impact your joy, because you're loving being loving and love never fails. The road to love never ends. That's where you want to be.

You learn this over a lifetime, and we all wish we had learned it earlier but then it's freeing. You're not waiting for people to send affectionate love in your direction because loving is enough.

I don't know how much of it is particularly Jesuit, like today, it's noon here and we start at 9 in the morning, basically. I've had four moments where I've had big, huge old gang members who are covered in tattoos, just sobbing in my office. Part of the thing is that they were feeling so much shame. They were kind of colored outside the lines. One guy had gotten in a fight, another guy had relapsed, another guy just kind of disappeared on us. Anyway, so I found myself saying the same thing to all four of them. I said, "Do you think there's any way that I would ever cut you loose? Is there any way that I will change my opinion about you?" They're just sobbing. I go, "No, I love you no matter what. So it doesn't matter what's happened or what you have done", I said, "You're my song. You're my blood. We are connected forever and so there's no room for shame. Shame doesn't make any sense because I'll never think less of you."

It was odd that I had four of those this morning, where they were all kind of coming from different places and they were reacting to different kinds of violent outbursts or moments where they just felt the most profound sense of shame and disgrace. You want to say there's no need for that, let's gather, let's pick each other up, dust each other off and let's just put one more foot in front of the next. But that's all we can do. But, none of this alters a relationship. I always talk about "No Matter What-ness". That it is yes, unconditional, it's inconceivable that there could ever be anything that would rupture this and that's a total commitment but it's also unshakably true. It's just not going to happen, but we spend so much time fretting, worrying and really being highly anxious about severed belonging. I spent this entire morning trying to convince people, and I think they left convinced, frankly, that the vulnerability, the tears and the embrace was an opportunity to kind of reclaim something that is utterly reliable.

Yeah. I think part of the thing is that going to the margins is not to reach people or to save or fix people, certainly. You go there because that's where the joy is, but it's also how we inhabit our own nobility and our own dignity is with each other. I'm not transforming anybody's life. I've never done it, but I know that transformation happens here and it happens in that kind of nexus of exquisitely mutual connection, where we're both returning each other to ourselves.

Yeah well so I was ordained in 1984 as a priest and my first assignment really after some further study and a year in Bolivia was pastor at Dolores Mission, which was in Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, nestled in the middle of two public housing projects that were really poor. It was the largest grouping of public housing in the West of the Mississippi. We had eight gangs at war with each other and the Los Angeles Police Department, called my parish the place of the highest concentration of gang activity in the whole city. I buried my first young person killed because of the sadness in 1988, and two months ago, I buried my 261st. Not all from that community but I run a large gang intervention program, so I get asked to do this. So, it just was one of those things. I never set out to do anything, but I was responding as a pastor to what the people in my parish were suffering, and it was just extraordinary. 88 to 98 was just the decade of death. There were shootings all the time, morning, noon and night and we just started to respond. We started a school, we started a jobs program. Then we couldn't find enough employers willing to hire folks. So we started our own businesses, basically. Now 35 years later, we are the largest gang intervention, rehab and reentry program on the planet. But I never set out to do that. We just evolved and backed our way into doing that. So 10,000 folks a year walk through our doors wanting to reimagine their lives and all of them are barricaded behind a wall of shame and disgrace, which is the principal suffering of the poor.

The only thing that can scale that wall is tenderness. So we want to stay dedicated to tenderness. For my money, it's the only thing that really heals and where you can really receive people and allow your heart to be altered by them. We're kind of the opposite of the Department of Motor Vehicles, it's not "come in and go to window five if you have anger issues." No. Come to the community, where you are safe, seen and then cherished. That's transformative. But it happens in a culture, in a place, in a community. Everybody is involved in the dosing of affection and tenderness.

I was on a panel in a big auditorium with a rabbi and a columnist from the LA Times and myself. I can't remember why it came up, but I said, "There are two controlling principles at Homeboy that we really embrace. One is, every single human being is unshakably good and there are no exceptions. We belong to each other and there are no exceptions." Then I kind of asked, "Now do I think all our complex social vexing dilemma would disappear if we embraced those two principles?" I said, "Yes, I do", and the entire auditorium burst into laughter and it kind of startled me. When the laughter subsided, I looked out at them and I said, "Yes I do and yes, I do. I think that demonizing strikes the high moral distance and that's always untrue. Demonizing is always untruth. So the minute we've taken sides, and the minute we think there is a them, in here, one of the mottos is 'no us and them, just us,' which begins principally because this is filled with 500 human beings who have to work alongside people they used to shoot at. Everybody had enemies, whatever that means. It's not even about loving enemies. In the end, it's about not having any, which is really different. It's the difference between mercy and forgiveness. Why settle for forgiveness when you can have mercy, which is really more fulsome.

Anyway, I really do believe that. I think every kind of dilemma that faces us, you can draw a straight line between. The fact that we don't believe those things. We don't believe that we belong to each other, and we don't believe that everybody is unshakably good. Until we do that it's going to be hard to make progress, because that's the starting point and that really works here. But then you start to go, "Yeah, but that guy just did a very bad thing", and you go, "Well, the homies here always say find the thorn underneath," which is a way of kind of moving to a place of understanding that really has depth. Then suddenly everybody is standing in awe at what folks have to carry, rather than in judgment at how they carry it.

I'm kind of writing a book right now that I am calling, "Cherished Belonging - Love in Divided Times", and it is kind of a way to address what we're going through in this country in terms of division and the great gulf and distance that separates us and how do we get to a place where we can actually make progress.

Well, we get stuck at denunciation and because I've worked with folks who have killed other human beings, what was that about? Or why did you join a gang? The truth is no hopeful kid has ever joined a gang in the history of the world and no kid is seeking anything. When he joins the gang, he's always fleeing something. So as a society, we start to look at, what is that kid fleeing? How can we bring a sense of healing and repair? Every gang member who walks through the door comes with what psychologists would call a disorganized detachment. Mom was either frightened or frightening, and you can't calm yourself down if you've never been soothed.

I mean, I'm 70 years old. I was born and raised in Los Angeles. I've never had to carry anything that these men and women have had to carry, just horrific things. Very little of it was of their own choosing. It chose them. So again, I really do stand in awe and I look at their pain and their wounds. When their stories are so filled with such heartache. And again, if their stories had been flames you'd have to keep your distance, otherwise you would get scorched. I know that I would never have survived a single day of any of their childhoods.

I've been thinking lately that judgment is kind of where we always go. That's our default setting. Judgment is always trying to get in the room, but what keeps it in the hallway is curiosity. Because curiosity and judgment can't really coexist, you really do have to choose. Are you going to be curious? Are you going to be judgmental? The homies have taught me how to be curious. There was that fight that just happened and what was that about? What language was that violence speaking? And then, suddenly you're curious about it. You're asking questions. As long as you stay curious, you can find the thorn underneath. As long as you stay curious, then judgment stays out in the hallway and it actually never gets into the room, as long as you can stay curious. Curiosity is basically asking the question and then asking the next question. It's not like you piece it all together and then finally you understand something, but you're constantly being curious, and it really keeps you from judgment, and it requires something of you, which is you have to welcome your own wound. Otherwise, you're tempted to despise the wounded, and despising the wounded is kind of the result of our denunciation, our demonizing, our dehumanizing and other-ising. These are all things you want to steer clear of, because these are the things that really keep us from each other. How odd that our quest for morality has always kept us from each other and it has never brought us to a sense of morality. It has just brought us to division and how odd that is, because we think it's a quest. It just abandoned the moral quest, because it never kept us moral. It has only kept us from each other. I think that's sort of important because it's about naming things better.

I mean, it's like when we talk of morality or he's a moral person or a decent person or she has real character, what are you really describing? Are you describing some kind of moral achievement? What you're really describing is, you're describing somebody who's healthy, who's nearly and relatively whole. You're describing somebody who's well. You're describing somebody who has, I'm sure, excavated their wounds and have surrendered to their own healing. That's what you've described. You're not describing a good person. You're just describing somebody who is well. Once you put it in terms like that, because you and I, our task is not to become good people. Because if there's the baseline which says everybody is unshakably good, that's where you begin. Then you don't kind of become bad. There are moments of blindness where you get stuck, where you can't see things. Homies always come in here and just help me become a better man. I said "No, because you couldn't be even one bit better. The problem is that you don't know the truth of who you are. If you're a stranger to yourself, you won't know your own goodness." Here at Homeboy, we're allergic to holding the bar up and asking folks to measure up. We hold the mirror up and we say, here's who you are. Oh my God, how did I get so lucky to know you and you feel that genuinely. It never feels to me like pretense. It never feels like that.

I'm a Jesuit and every once in a while, somebody Jesuits will say, "oh, you know that guy? He's a good Jesuit." I always wince, because I think there cannot be such a thing as a good Jesuit unless there's such a thing as a bad Jesuit. There is no such thing. I mean, there are wounded people, there are broken people, there are people who are in extraordinary pain, but I've never met a bad one. But, because it's so unsophisticated, it's a place where we get stuck. When we designate people as good or bad, it's just the end of discussion. You no longer can be curious because you've already arrived at who's good and who's bad and I think it's precisely what keeps us from making progress.

That's an excellent point. Part of the thing is, our program doesn't exist for those who need it. It's only for those who want it, and so, you have to walk through the door. That's the only thing we ask of people. Over the 35 years of our existence, people will say, "How do you get gang members to show up there?" I would say, "I don't know, but we don't recruit them. We don't cajole them, and we don't try to convince them. We don't go to street corners and say, 'come to Homeboy.'" Now we serve the whole county of Los Angeles, and there are 120,000 gang members, 1,100 gangs and my guess is there isn't a single gang member in Los Angeles who doesn't know who we are, where we are or what we do. But, you have to walk through the door, otherwise it's not going to work.

That's like most rehabs, drug and alcohol, for example and we're no different. I mean, you just have to walk through the door, but we're kind of like an AA group, like who's at a meeting. Somebody who's 20 years sober, somebody who's 20 minutes sober and somebody who's drunk, but they're at the meeting. That's kind of how we are at Homeboy.

Now, sometimes it comes to a point where we have an expression here. We say, "We love you, we think you're great. Come back when you're ready," because people will demonstrate that they're not quite ready yet to dive in. In fact, the gang members who run this place took them 3 or 4 tries. They'd come in and then they'd relapse or they'd come in and then they'd get arrested again. They had kind of one foot in and one foot out. It's a testament to the growth of this place. In the early days we always would fret when that happened. We don't anymore, because we used to say, "Well, maybe they'll be back". Now we say, "They'll be back." There's a kind of utter confidence knowing that every single person will come back here because once you've had a dose of tenderness, it's just simply the most compelling thing there is. But our place is always packed as it is right now. I look out there every two minutes because there's a note on my door that says on a zoom, and so everybody's shushing.

I think so. They all want their moms to be proud of them and their kids not to be ashamed. That's just how human beings are. I think like mental illness, for example, because that's the specific thing where you can, I'm looking out at the crowd here and I see a homegirl named Jessica, who is bipolar. Right now she's doing well and she's taking her meds. She's not using meth and so she's good. We've brought her back to work here. But, she's gone off on these rages where she has kicked in our front door and shattered the glass and lots of things. But that malady was something she never chose. It chose her, and she never woke up one morning and said, "I think I will be saddled with this mental anguish." It chose her.

Then you can say that about everything, about the complex trauma that everybody in that reception area has suffered. They didn't choose any of it. It chose them. It's why I have so much admiration for them because they are capable of such nobility, tenderness and affection. I look at them and I go, "How are they able to pull that gracious thing off?" It's just kind of a remarkable thing. So I've never once looked at them and felt that they were in any way deficient. I've always felt quite the opposite. I always thought, "Wow, the day won't ever come when I have more courage, or I am more noble, or I'm closer to God than all the people who are filling those chairs out there."

I think that's true. I don't think that's some romantic notion I have, that's born of 40 years of really knowing these folks and being privileged to know them.

That is so beautiful. Thank you for that. Part of the thing that is challenging for people who are in ministry or who are at the margins or however you want to say it, is that, you just simply don't go to the margins to make a difference. You go to the margins so that the folks at the margins make you different and that feels backwards. But it's, in fact, how it's supposed to work.

I remember I was in Houston and I had a young man who was a gang member who was working with gang members now. He pleaded with me very earnestly, and he said, "How do you reach gang members?" I found myself saying to him, "For starters, stop trying to reach them. Can you be reached by them? Can you allow your heart to be altered?" Because, that's eternally replenishing to go to the margins and be affected, to go to the margins and to lighten the people you encounter. To go to the margins and allow your heart to be altered. I think that kind of willingness is eternally replenishing. But the problem comes when you know the work is so hard and I guess I'm just too compassionate, those are things I always hear. They're surprised that it has suddenly become depleting. That's because people allow it to become about them and it can't be. That's where the joy is. Beyond self-absorption and self-assertion is the beginnings of being other centered that eventually leads to being loving centered.

Cherishing people is not hard, but remembering to cherish is really difficult. The practice is constant. Here, because there are also a lot of gang members who are in recovery from drugs and alcohol, they'll say one day at a time and I always say, "No, that's way too long. You can't wait for one day at a time. It has to be one breath at a time. You choose to cherish with every breath you take". That's why we have practice, so that you can cherish all the time. Hard to do. I mean, hard to remember anyway.

There's the tyranny of success which is always beating us down. Mother Teresa also used to say that we're not called to be successful. We're called to be faithful. You try to find the larger love that you are going to give your heart to. That's kind of an essential thing, because it begins by the other as you quoted Bob Dylan. Part of the thing is, the source of our sadness is self-absorption. It's not that people are selfish. It's just that they're self-absorbed and they don't, you don't mean to do it or it's not an intentionality. It's kind of our default setting. I'm worried about "me." Will there be enough for me? Because I fly a lot. It's like will there be room in the overhead compartment for my bag? It's all about me, and of course, the antidote to that sadness is to say, "Well, how can I be focused on the other?" Then, all of a sudden you're being propelled out of your absorption. The source of all our sadness is self-absorption, and exacerbation of that sadness is self-assertion, where you're trying to kind of not just worry about, 'Will there be enough for me?' But you're trying to assert yourself into situations and into life, which is the kind of the opposite of humility.

The antidote is kind of right there. The minute, you can say, because of my practice, I'm going to begin by being other centered, it doesn't even have to be service centered. It's just I'm going to take this worry that I have directed towards me and I'm going to direct it to another person. That's a start. Where it ends up is really being loving centered, and then you love being loving. Then nothing can stop you.

But, would that any of these things were a once and for all decision? My God, can you imagine? But they aren't there. They're constant. You have to decide it with every breath you take. Because of that, the old Zen masters would name the three things that are important in the teachings and they would say, "attention, attention and then attention." How do you pay attention to the person in front of you, and how do you delight in the spirit that delights in your being? How do you delight in the person who's in front of you? It's a tricky, challenging thing because you can slip into, I will fix this person or I even will help this person, but the key is to just love this person.

I have a picture right here of me with the Pope, and that was absolutely my experience, you just think it's utterly remarkable for that brief time that you're shaking his hand and your eyes are connecting. Then you have this very odd feeling, like he thinks you're the only person who exists. It's just remarkable. I wish I could do it. I wish I could be as attentive to that. Again, that must be part of his practice, too. It was like 200 Jesuits and coworkers, and we were all at a justice conference for about five days. Then one day they just said, "Hey, we're all going over to the Vatican." So, 200 of us marched over there. Then he spoke to us one by one. It's fascinating that you would say that you would focus on and to see if he would waver. I can just tell you, boy, he just doesn't waver. Then after you get a certain age, you start thinking, I don't know, he's kind of remarkable that way.

There's a lesson in that, which is that all people are longing for is attention. The minute you direct it to them, it's so powerful.

I think part of the problem is that we think that any of these decisions or commitments really is one and done. It's like once and for all. But I think that it's very freeing to know that this is a constant deciding, and you're always choosing to be attentive. I don't know, that feels kind of liberating a little bit to know that you get to choose this all over again with every moment. Because we are human beings and again, it's not that people are bad, they are distracted. It's not that people are selfish. They're just self-absorbed. They're worried about what happens next. The more that we can be anchored in the present moment. You want to be able to be there when it happens.

That's why it's more about inhabiting rather than gaining. It's not about achievement. With the homies here, you say, "You are the achievement". It's not outside of you. We always have these kinds of moments, where we celebrate graduations and that kind of thing. We always say that to them. We say, "You are the achievement," and the more they can inhabit that truth, the more they become and become more fully that truth. But otherwise, it's kind of aspirational. They're wanting to become something that's outside themselves. There are accomplishments, but you are the achievement.

Part of the thing is, I'm kind of a mantra person. I'm always kind of trying to stay in the present moment. There's an expression I will use in my head. Now hear this, that's kind of announced on a loudspeaker on a battleship. "Now hear this." Then they give a message. For me, it's about now, because there is no other time and it's here, and it's this moment, this person. I'm trying to kind of in a mantra way, trying to get to a place where I can say, "Now hear this, this is the moment, here is the time, this is the person."

For example, Saint Ignatius of Loyola has a word that he used in his spiritual journal. He first used it 12 years before he died and the word is "Acatamiento." It comes from an Archaic Spanish word that doesn't get used very much, called acatar, which means to look at something with attention and in English it gets translated as affectionate awe, and there's no doubt this was born of some mystical moment with the God of Ignatius' understanding. But he really didn't want it to remain just a private, mystical moment. He wanted it to be a stance in the world and so the stance is acatamiento is affectionate awe.

For me, I don't know how good a translation that is of that concept, but it's the merging of carino, affection and a kind of an admiration for what the poor have to carry. So that has become, for me, kind of a longing. Because its derivation is from a word that means to look at something with attention, it's connected to all the kinds of the traditions that say pay attention.

Mary Oliver, who's an American poet who died at 84, I think, and just before she died, she came to this conclusion; these are the three things I've learned in 84. One, pay attention. Two be astonished and three share your astonishment.

I think that's pretty much it. You want to be in awe of people, because everybody's carrying something extraordinarily heavy and you want to be astonished at how noble people are and at the courage of their own tenderness. You want to share your astonishment, which is really basically wanting to spread and announce a message. What if we were to be in exquisite, mutual kinship with each other rather than endlessly striking a high moral distance that keeps us apart?

My experience of traveling the country and giving talks is that there is such a longing for all our talk of division. There's such a longing for people to what ought we to give our hearts? That's kind of the question. People want to give their hearts, but they don't know how to do it or what direction. Once they find that it's kind of outside themselves and it's an extensive love. The God who loves us without measure and without regret, you want to live in that place.

Pema Chodron would talk about you catching yourself because the temptation is to be defensive in the face of critics. In defense, even though there were three people who voiced some contrary opinion, you had 300 others who loved what you wrote. But then it's kind of like, we're like that. We're drawn to defend ourselves and that's part of our practice too, is where you can catch yourself.

Here, homies will sometimes go to a place of great violence. Then the homies who run the place will say to them, you were taken to that place and you let yourself be taken to that place, and it's not supposed to make them feel bad or guilty about it. Everybody wants to be sturdier and they want a hope that's more muscular that can kind of keep you from being taken to that place.

Then it's a sense of agency and power that people are. There was a homie who wanted to see me, but he was afraid to come here because he had gotten in a fight. I said, "You're okay, you're the boss. You get to decide whether somebody takes you to that place or not." So he came and he was nervous, but it gave me an opportunity to congratulate him for his courage and his bravery in walking into a place where he felt even though he had been the instigator of the fight. But, he also came to terms a little bit with what he had done and it was just beautiful to observe. Then to be caught up in the No Matter What-ness, that it just won't matter and you'd be happier if you didn't get in fights. It's not about behavior. We're not trying to cultivate a behaving community, but a community of cherished belonging. That's way different.

Yeah. I mean, people being patient with the process and the slow work is really essential because, I've been doing this for 40 years and in the early years, the first ten years was really marked by death threats, bomb threats and hate mail. It never directed towards me from gang members, but from people who demonize gang members. Gang members always knew this was about hope for them. But if you demonize gang members, it's a short hop to demonize me for helping them so that it's hard to retrieve now because it's really quite old and it was part of the air we breathe. It was really a daily thing and intense. In fact, now, Homeboy Industries has been sort of hoisted up on the shoulders of the city of Los Angeles, where they kind of get it and they know that this is better than tough on crime. It's smart on crime. Those kinds of notions. But it took 40 years. Once you're committed to the slow work of God in that sense, then you just have a light grasp on the timing of it all. I can look back and I can say, wow policing is different than it was when I started. All sorts of things are different than when I started. So, but if you want this to be fast and over, it's probably you're not that suited for this kind of effort, because it's a long haul kind of effort. But you don't live in that reality, because we're not interested in working with the most likely to succeed here.

All we want to do is love the people who walk through the door, and then you're not worried about success. You're not worried about evidence based outcomes, which is what funders all ask about, but you just say, "I don't know, we're going to love being 'loving' here and that has to be enough for us."

I cannot piece it together because It's not quite there yet, but I've written 135 pages of something that I think I like and what kind of makes sense for me. The departure point is this community here, where people cherish and feel cherished and, I think there is maybe a key that can unlock some door.

Well, I don't know. I mean, I don't really get very future-oriented. Sometimes people force me to be future-oriented. We're trying to kind of expand our campus, but that's kind of tinier than I'm interested in. What we'd like to do is really conceive of some alternative to incarceration. If the largest mental institution in the world is Los Angeles County Jail, well, then maybe we could do something differently in terms of drugs and mental illness and job training. We're doing it but what if we really imagined the day when policing was obsolete and prisons were, in fact, empty? That's a larger love that intrigues me more. We're kind of starting to design what we call Hope Village as a real alternative to incarceration and try it as an experiment in the same way that we're always looking to other countries, where they do prisons in a different, more humane way. Our goal wouldn't be how do we make prisons nicer? But how do we make communities healthier?

That's galvanizing a lot of my kind of interest and passion at the moment. I don't really run this place anymore and 70% of our senior staff are all gang members who've come through the program, which is huge. Now their ownership is so total that I'm just kind of the janitor now. Happy to be. That kind of galvanizes my imagination to think about what if we set up a model, where people in cities could say, what if we did this differently? Rather than futilely trying to incarcerate our way out of all our problems. The basic choice is, what if we decided not to punish wounds anymore, but to heal it?

Well I hope people, when they're in Los Angeles come to Chinatown, that's where our headquarters is. You can go to the front desk and ask for a tour. One of the homies or homegirls will walk you through the place. People are always very moved by it. Plus, we have a Homegirl Cafe and people can order merchandise and food online. That helps pay our bills and keep people working. Our website is www.homeboyIndustries.org. They can find all the information they need there.