2022-12-19
53 分钟Homies will always say they're used to being watched.
They're not used to being seen.
It's a hard thing to do, you know, because it's like mindfulness, you know, it's not hard to do.
It's hard to remember to do it, and, you know, kindness is not hard to do.
It's hard to remember to be that.
So when you're in your darkest hour, dealing with tough circumstances that don't seem to have an end in sight, it can be easy to lose hope and have those around you even lose hope as well.
Give up on you, maybe even abandon you.
But in today's powerful conversation, you'll discover how two people from profoundly different walks of life found each other and not only transformed their own lives, but also the lives of so many around them.
Father Greg Boyle has become known to millions as the jesuit priest who asked to be placed in a neighborhood in LA deeply affected by poverty, surrounded by gangs, and unbearable violence, where he would eventually create a completely different approach to helping the community around him, founding Homeboy industries and growing it into a complex of companies that helped provide a safe space, education, community, and a livelihood for former gang members, many of whom had also been in and out of prison their entire lives.
And homeboy has since become the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation and reentry program in the world and employs and trains gang members and felons in a range of social enterprises, as well as providing critical services to thousands of men and women each year who walk through its doors seeking a better life.
Father Boyle is also the author of the New York Times bestsellers tattoos on the heart, the power of boundless compassion, and barking at the choir, the power of radical kinship.
Now, this is an unusual conversation.
Father Greg Boyle is here with us.
But he's not the only one.
Along the way, Fabian Deborah found his way to homeboy, a gang member.
Addicted, formerly incarcerated, he lived a brutal life, at one point becoming so despondent, he came close to taking his own life.
And he shares this moment in conversation, by the way.
So if you have any sensitivity to the topic, please take care while listening.
And all the while, Fabian also had this soul, this impulse, this wisdom of an artist that he kept trying to express, but found himself often stifled.
At one point, he was even punished for expressing this impulse in school, until he found his way to homeboy Industries and became part of the Homeboy industries community, where he finally felt seen and given the space to not only let art take center stage and renew his sense of purpose and identity, he started creating stunning large scale, small scale paintings that reflected everything he'd experienced and would eventually come to partner with Father Greg to become the executive director of Homeboy Art Academy.