The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness

by Gregory Boyle

Eight-year-old Dorothy Day was in San Francisco when the 1906 earthquake struck. What she remembered most was the unifying and generous response of everyone in this time of crisis. She asked herself, Why can’t we live this way all the time? It’s a good question that we’ve posed to ourselves during these months.

And yet, maybe we have also been given a new way of seeing more clearly, seeing that scarcity is a myth and abundance our newfound truth.

Our current times have reinforced the notion that we don’t change people by arguing with them. The invitation should not enfeeble with guilt but rather enable folks to high purpose. Once we abandon “winning the argument,” we can begin to make the argument with our lives.

This curiosity will always lead to savoring. It will blossom into what Saint Ignatius calls “relishing.” Before you know it, next stop: joy. If we’re lucky, grief never leaves us where it found us.

I was interviewed on a podcast recently and the woman asked what I wanted my legacy to be, “you know, now that you’re sliding into home plate?” I said that I didn’t “do legacies” and that I mainly felt I was still at bat. But surrender is the order of the day, and you relinquish things all the time. Eventually, life itself.

Arguments don’t change minds, stories do. Jesus seemed to understand this. Parables don’t tell you what to do and they have no didactic endings. After all, what’s the conclusion of the Prodigal Son? The “moral of that story” is what we put on it… our response to it. Parables were how Jesus tricked people into things.

Mario meant fluency when he said the “whole language.” I wish to suggest the same here. We are on the lookout for a fuller expression and a wider frame within which to view things. Allow the extravagant tenderness of God to wash over us. Permit the lavishing of such love to surround and fill us, then go into the world and speak the “whole language.”

The longing of the mystic is to be at home with yourself and then put the welcome mat out so that others find a home in you.

If we’re honest, the world kind of yawns at “religion,” but snaps to attention when offered the authenticity and authority of the fluent, mystical, nondualist view. We want to both hear and speak this whole language, because, mostly, we only know the half of it. We get stuck in a partial view.

The poet Rumi writes: “Where am I going on this glorious journey? To your house, of course.”

We are mindful that the power of the tender heart needs to be activated always. A homie Sergio told me once, “We need to fan the flames of tenderness in each other.” Once we are reached by tenderness, we become tenderness.

Homeboy Industries, along with providing concrete help and a culture of healing and transformation to gang members, also wants to be what the world is ultimately called to become: a community of kinship and a sangha of beloved belonging.

Homeboy doesn’t want to simply point something out. We want to point the way. Not just a solution, but a sign. It points the way to the power of transformation; the holiness of second chances; a commitment to demonize no one; and the power and possibility of redemption.

Saint Francis writes, “No obstacles in my heart—everything a frail-boned kindness.” We find rest in this.

Arturo bellows: “THIS IS FATHER GREG… THE FOUNDER OF HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES. HE… IS A JUJITSU PRIEST.” From behind my desk, I display some of my best karate moves.

The Whole Language acknowledges that we are all born into the world wanting the same things, and we are all naked under our clothes. We start from this place, then, of our own unshakable goodness, so we jettison blame and embrace understanding.

We see God’s light in everything and thereby choose mysticism over morality. We choose connection, not perfection. We explore the things that help us feel beloved rather than on probation. We want to know the God of love, which is more than knowing the love of God. We long to see the wholeness of things and find our wholeness in Christ.

We are all called to be practitioners. Otherwise… we’re audience.

A Southwest Airlines flight attendant, after finishing her takeoff instructions, signed off, “Now sit back and relax and enjoy the flight… OR… sit up and be tense all the way… Up to you.” It is up to us. Let’s all depart by a different route. But where are we going? “To your house, of course.”

Nothing is more consequential in our lives than the notion of God we hold. Not God. The notion of God. This is what steers the ship. Our idea of God will always call the shots. Meister Eckhart, the mystic and theologian who died in 1328, said, “It is a lie, any talk of God that doesn’t comfort you.”

During those last weeks, one or two or six of her kids would be keeping vigil around her bed, and she’d be in and out of consciousness. When she came to, she’d lock onto one of us and say with breathless delight, “You’re here. You’re here.” After we buried her, I recalled this and grew convinced that this may well be the singular agenda item of our God. To look at us with breathless delight and say, “You’re here. You’re here.”

Notice the notice of God, and with any luck, we start to notice each other.

Often when we think God is silent, this Tender One is just nearly speechless. God is monosyllabic. Love. I’m afraid that’s it. Never stopping. It is, as the Hindu poet Meera writes, a “love so strong a force it broke the cage.”

often use the concept of being “held” at Homeboy, reflective of the God who will not drop us. Hafiz, a twelfth-century Muslim mystic, puts it this way: “Pulling out the chair beneath your mind and watching you fall upon God. There is nothing else to do that is any fun in the world.”

God roots for us more than calls shots. With tenderness as the scaffolding, we cease trying to change God’s mind, and allow God to marinate ours. This God says, “You got this” more than “Do that.”

God no more has a plan than holds a grudge. There is, of course, a short hop between “God has a plan for me to become an orthopedic surgeon” to “My four-year-old son just died of a brain tumor.” Short hop. You can’t have this both ways. If God “plans” you getting your medical license, God also has orchestrated your son’s demise. I don’t believe it, so I wouldn’t have said it.

Our grown-up notion of God finds us sustained by the Tender One to be this in the world, but not to expect blueprints, paths, or plans along the way. God just hopes we choose love.

We ask ourselves, what can move the dial on God’s love for us? Nothing. It is always at its highest setting. After all, God’s love for me is zero dependent on my love for God.

“That you’re not embarrassed by us.” The words now move through me, with some bright energy, and my eyes glisten with a start. The God we’ve settled for is red in the face and pretends he doesn’t know us at parties. But the God we actually have is never embarrassed by us.

My friend Mirabai Starr, a mystic, who writes about mystics, says, “Once you know the God of Love, you fire all the other gods.”

We get to choose: the god who judges and is embarrassed, or the One who notices and delights in us.

Here is the Good News: The God we most deeply want IS the God we actually have, and the god we fear is, in fact, the partial god we’ve settled for. God looks at us and is ecstatic. This God loves the sound of our voices and thinks that all of us are a magnificent work of art. “You’re here.” God’s cheek resting on ours. God’s singular agenda item.

Julian of Norwich knows that she’s been told constantly of this angry Divine One but just can’t “find this God” in her experience. We still can’t shake the narrative of the God who seeks our measuring up and demands some high level of performance. We don’t measure up to this God; we just show up. We allow this Tender One to fill us extravagantly, then we go into the world and speak the whole language of it, unrestricted, openhearted, and loyally dedicated to its entirety. Tender glance meets tender glance. Behold the One beholding you and smiling.

It’s a fool’s errand to assert the existence of God, when God just hopes we’ll act on God’s behalf. God’s hope as well is that we won’t continually project onto God how we would run things if we were in charge.

God doesn’t want us to be good. We already are. God only longs for us to be joyful. God has little interest in our behavior, only in our abundant happiness. I always need to move beyond my spiritual sleepwalking so I can recognize God as the Tender One.

Our brilliant therapists at Homeboy don’t so much try to alter the behavior of our trainees. Their controlling statement invites to joy: “You know, you might feel better if…” Equally, for God, it’s simply not about “Good or Evil” or “Right or Wrong.” It’s about Sorrow or Joy.

Homies in their recovery are constantly trying to shift the energy field. They want to move from a sense of scarcity that there isn’t enough to go around (so I will delineate every ingredient and piece of this roasted lamb dish) to a pervasive sense of abundance.

At Starbucks, they never say, “May I help you?” but rather, “What can I get started for you?” God asks the same. We want to be curious about our distress rather than terrified. We want an awakened heart. We want more than happiness, but nothing short of the vitality of joy.

We play hide-and-seek from our true selves and Jesus waves us over to the wedding feast… none of that fasting stuff or grim duty. Take your shoes off and dance till the cows come home. This has always been what God wants to get started for us.

Sammy pauses for emphasis and says, “And the gates of heaven were opened. Tears rolled down our cheeks. We looked at each other… crying. APPLESAUCE… APPLE… SAUCE!!” Come… let us adore him.

The Hebrew word for praise is tehilla, which primarily means “to radiate” or “to reflect.” God’s invitation, then, is to be radiant in reflecting God’s own tenderness in the world. It’s never about telling God how great he is. We enter as fully as we can into the open-handed thrill of God’s abundance.

The homie Garry says, “God is the intake of breath and we are the exhaling of it. So… we need to take every breath personally.” Prayer is as sustaining as a breath and not a plea to God to keep us safe from dangers and temptations or begging for favors.

Jesus did not come to start a religion but to present the most expansive understanding of his God. I saw a billboard in Indiana once: “Jesus: Your Only Way to God.” Fortunately for all of us, both God and Jesus disagree with this billboard. These are false images we ought not to have before us.

There are many cages that hold us still. The “will of God,” for example, is never different from what we most deeply want. Ensuring, then, that we never are strangers to ourselves will give us access to our deepest longing. This is God’s will. Not sure God puts stuff on our heart, but rather opens our hearts so we know what we most deeply desire.

Meister Eckhart saw God’s identity in laughter and affection. Essentially, “God laughs to us. We laugh back.”

Saint Ignatius called this “devotion,” which he defined as “an ease in finding God.” It is a self-deprecating God who is never saying, “Look at ME,” but rather, “Would ya look at YOU!”

And THAT is the God I believe in: the one who beats us to the punch and thanks US. Like many Hindus who visit temple after temple not to see God, but to let God gaze upon them.

I was at an international conference in Rome, and every morning a different global continent was responsible for the prayer service to begin each day. Africa had the last morning. And they danced. They spoke of a God who dances. They suggested that in the Prodigal Son story, the father runs to his kid. The man leading the service said it’s the only time “God runs.” But he thought God was really dancing.

There’s an old Native American saying: “He who cannot dance claims the floor is uneven.” Our God dances toward us. Don’t blame an uneven floor; agree to dance. Feel this God beating us to the punch.

Then Joel began to speak other lines from the song and the boys grew quiet. “ ‘Don’t ya know what I’m dreamin’ of? Don’t ya know how sweet and wonderful life can be?’ ” He paused and communicated with certainty that the story was downshifting to a slower, deeper velocity. “I realized… it was God… dropping me a hint.” Tears fell down his cheeks as they did at dinner the night before. This was not lost on his audience and they were completely still. “ ‘Ain’t goin’ ta worry… won’t push ya, baby. If you believe in love,’ ” Joel continued, “ ‘then… let’s get it on.’ ”