Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship

by Gregory Boyle

And the “barking” is directed at the “Choir”—those folks who “repent” and truly long for a different construct, a radically altered way of proceeding and who seek “a better God than the one we have.”

God is too good to be true. And whenever human beings bump into something too good to be true, we decide it’s not true.

believe that God protects me from nothing but sustains me in everything.

Nothing is outside the realm of sanctity, for the world is infused with God’s presence.

Kinship asks us to move from blame to understanding.

Homeboy receives people; it doesn’t rescue them.

The ground beneath our feet is the Kingdom of God, the Pure Land.

This is a chapter on humility.

Rather, it is the humility that can lead to a peaceful surrender and a pervasive sense of gratitude.

Jesus, after all, just sought to create relationships with the marginalized. How else, except through connection, can people be reminded of their goodness?

Moral outrage is the opposite of God; it only divides and separates what God wants for us, which is to be united in kinship.

People know that the “original program” is about living the gospel with joy and always being mindful of the poor. They know it is an invitation to the margins, knowing that if we stand there, the margins get erased. It’s not about taking the right stand on issues but about standing in the right place, with the excluded and the demonized.

what Jesus took seriously: inclusion, nonviolence, unconditionally compassionate loving-kindness, and acceptance.

I asked Maria to put her hand on the glass. She repeated after me, “I, Maria, take you Luis.” She could barely speak, the words were so soaked with emotion and tears. Then it came to the man’s part. This was going to be a challenge. I don’t know exactly how to describe what happened next. It was this side of Charlie McCarthy. I didn’t exactly throw my voice, but lowered it to a whispering register as I stood as proxy for Luis. “I, Luis, take you Maria . . .” I placed my hand gently on the glass window, as if the ritual instructed me to do so. Soon it was over and they were hitched (or I had inadvertently married myself to Maria). However it had happened, she was liberated, as surely as any character in the gospel. Show of hands: Does anyone here think God and/or Jesus would have had a problem with this ventriloquist’s exchange of vows? Exactly. Original program.

the measure of our compassion with what Martin Luther King calls “the last, the least, and the lost” lies less in our service of those on the margins, and more in our willingness to see ourselves in kinship with them.

Walking with the poor, who are our friends, is mutually transforming and announces to the world something radically new.

to myself. They have indeed been trustworthy guides. Together, we have discovered that we all

When I need patience, the homies save me from my impatience. When I lack courage, they rescue me from my cowardice. And when I am completely convinced of the rightness of my position, the homies douse me with a big ol’ bucket of humility.

I want to propose that savoring is better, and that when we seek to “save” and “contribute” and “give back” and “rescue” folks and EVEN “make a difference,” then it is all about you . . . and the world stays stuck.

Community is the singular place where patience and steadiness can be practiced, compassion can be expanded, and gratitude can be nurtured.

Homeboy wants to provide a sanctuary for homies until they become the sanctuary they sought here.

Listening and receiving is the great equalizer.

We all want to get into heaven, but Jesus wants heaven to get into us.

Rivals who work at Homeboy settle for solidarity before they arrive at kinship. One says to another: “I know we’re not friends, but let’s not be enemies.”

Jesus has high hopes that we will move from separation to solidarity to kinship.

early Christians believed that “one Christian is no Christian.”

Jesus does not say in the gospel, “Worship me,” but simply “Follow me.”

We think the praise required of us is the maintenance of a constant state of astonishment at Jesus. Personally, I don’t think he wants so much for us to wave palm fronds at his authority, but rather to locate our own—to be not so astonished at Jesus’s authority but to live astonishingly, inhabiting our own power to live as he would.

It is never about how many people we help. It’s only about the hope we give, and hold out for them. None of it is wasted, or untrue.

“Serio pedo,

“No kinship, no peace. No kinship, no justice. No kinship, no equality.”

So no matter how singularly focused we may be on our worthy goals of peace, justice, and equality, they actually can’t happen without an undergirding sense that we belong to each other. Seek first the kinship of God, then watch what happens.

“It’s not the place you come to, it’s the place you go from.”