Since the 1980s, Father Greg Boyle has embraced his parish community with the radical approach of love, compassion, and humanity. He founded Homeboy Industries' gang rehabilitation and re-entry programs to engage former gang members and others in need, in their own healing through building kinship and connection.

At Mt. SAC, the Rising Scholar's program fosters the potential and promise of formerly incarcerated or system-impacted students by providing wrap-around support through pathways at Mt. SAC. In today's episode we are featuring a talk by Fr. Greg Boyle that was sponsored by Mt. SAC Equity Center and Rising Scholars.

Our host, Chisa Uyeki, also had the opportunity to sit down with Father Boyle before he spoke to the campus audience while he was signing posters and copies of his book, The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness.

As you listen, consider where you see applications for Father Boyle's approach to our work at Mt. SAC - Enjoy.

(Please note: You may also notice some distortion and feedback from the mic Father Boyle was using that we were not able to fix in the production of this episode - but we felt that the conversation was valuable to share with you.)

Resources:

The Rising Scholars Program at Mt. San Antonio College seeks to assist students directly impacted by the criminal justice system through education. Students can choose between four educational pathways that would best fit their strengths, desires, & educational/ career goals: High School Diploma/GED Completion Pathway, Career & Technology Pathway, Associates Degrees Pathway, and Four-Year College Transfer Pathway.

Homeboy Industries is the largest gang rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world. For over 30 years, we have stood as a beacon of hope in Los Angeles to provide training and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated people, allowing them to redirect their lives and become contributing members of our community. You also can learn more about Father Greg.

At Mt. SAC Library:

Boyle, Gregory. The Whole Language : The Power of Extravagant Tenderness. Avid Reader Press, 2021. Print. General Collection; 259.5 B6971w

Fremon, Celeste. G-Dog and the Homeboys: Father Greg Boyle and the Gangs of East Los Angeles. University of New Mexico Press, 2004. Print. General Collection; 259.5 F886f 2004

Lester, Terence, and Gregory Boyle. When We Stand : The Power of Seeking Justice Together. InterVarsity Press, 2021. Ebook. [requires Mt. SAC sign-in]

Boyle, Gregory J. "The Voice of those Who Sing." Spiritus, vol. 5, no. 1, 2005, pp. 79-87. ProQuest [requires Mt. SAC sign-in]

https://login.mtsac.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/abidateline?accountid=12611

Run Time: 42 min, 12 sec

To Find the full transcript for this episode click HERE

We get to stand with the easily despised and the readily left out, with the demonized so that the demonizing will stop, and with the disposable so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away and we go from here so that God's dream can come true, that we build a community of cherished belonging.

Welcome to the Mount San Antonio College Podcast. I'm Chisa Uyeki, a Mount Sac professor and librarian and I'm pleased to be your host for this season. Our goal is to keep you connected to our campus by bringing you the activities and events you may not have time to attend to share the interesting things our colleagues are creating and innovative ways they are supporting and connecting with Mount Sac students. Join me as we explore Mount Sac since the 1980s, Father Greg Boyle has embraced his parish community with the radical approach to of love, compassion and humanity. He founded Homeboy Industries, Gang Rehabilitation and Reentry programs to engage former gang members and others in need in their own healing through building kinship and connection. At Mount Sac. The Rising Scholars Program fosters the potential and promise of formerly incarcerated or system impacted students by providing wraparound support through through pathways at Mount Sac. In today's episode we are featuring a talk by Father Greg Boyle that was sponsored by the Mt. SAC Equity Center and Rising Scholars.

You may notice some distortion and feedback from the mic Father Boyle was using that we were not able to fix in the production of this episode, but we felt the conversation was still valuable to share with you. I also had the opportunity to sit down with Father Boyle before he spoke to the campus audience. He was signing posters and copies of his book the Whole the Power of Extravagant Tenderness while answering a few questions about lessons from his work that can be applied to our work at Mount SAC. Our few minutes together were thought provoking and I continue to contemplate his answers. As you listen, consider where you see applications for Father Boyle's approach in our work. Enjoy.

So as a commuinity college, I'm sure you know career and techinical education is our core mission. So I just wanted to ask you about the training and the work that you do and that homeboy industry does about training and why the sort of career path training has been so key to the work.

Well we it's kind of that's also kind of a misnomer cause we call them trainees but we don't ever see ourselves training them in anything cause then we have community clients. Those are people who aren't in the 18 month program who come in to get a tattoo removed or do community service hours or domestic violence classes. But a trainee is really. Because the work of the trainee is really healing and doing the interior work. So it's kind of a misnomer. Obviously, there are parts of training in culinary, and then sometimes they're in solar panel training or lots of things. We're kind of not that happy with the word because it doesn't feel entirely what it is. Well, it doesn't capture the central thing, which is healing.

So, like, an employed gang member may or may not go back to prison, and an educated gang member may or may not go back to prison. But we discovered maybe 15 years ago that a healed gang member won't ever reoffend. So that's how that kind of shifted. So we went from employment centered to healing centered.

That's something we've been trying to work on on campus, is healing centered engagement with students. And what does, you know, kind of thinking about, what does that look like?

See, that's an excellent point, because, like, especially with rising scholars, and apparently there are 400 of them here in the program, the essential piece really is the healing, whether you're employed or whether you're back at school.

I felt like the transition from trauma informed to healing centered was also really important, rather than just not just knowing and not just it being a deficit component, but the importance of going through the healing.

So sometimes we have this notion that healing happens in that therapist's office with that therapist. And we go, no, it's happening all the time. It's not stopping. Because the culture and the community, so flourishing happens in community. And so from the security guard who remembers your name and says, you know, how's that newborn? Have you got any sleep yet?

Yeah.

And so he's not a therapist.

So I love that. I especially love that as a librarian, where a lot of times we're not seeing the students in the classroom, but we feel like so much learning happens in the library, and it's those connective kind of tissues that we're trying to help build in there. One of my big areas of interest in research is about burnout resiliency, particularly for folks who are involved in racial and social justice work. You've been doing this work for a while, and it's kind of work that is really never done. So I'm wondering if you have strategies or things that you do that help you avoid burnout.

Well, you know, I think if people get close to burnout, it's because they've allowed the thing to be about them, because you 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.

Yeah.

And then it's about us, you know, so I'm very particular on it. I don't really believe in burnout. You know, I just think staff would come. Oh, I just think I need a month off, because I guess I'm just too compassionate. I go, no, you've allowed this to become about you. And how do you know that? Because then it's fixing, saving, rescuing success. They burn out. Because if there's not enough success, you just go, this is too hard.

And you go, yeah, that's the problem. So because it's depleting, it feels like it's about compassion, but it really isn't. But then if it's about you having your heart altered by the people, then it's eternally replenishing and you don't burn out anyway. That was the lesson I learned in my youth, doing this.

Well, I appreciate that perspective. So I have one final question, which is, what would your words of advice be to someone who's struggling to stay in college?

Probably to identify what is the. What's the struggle about? Part of it is naming things correctly. You know, is it financial? Is it emotional? Because once you can diagnose something, then you know the treatment plan will be forthcoming.

But.

But sometimes it depends on what the difficulty is.

Good evening. Buenas tardes, and welcome to all of you. Bienvenidos. It is truly an honor to gather with you for an evening of hope. A space grounded in purpose, compassion, and the belief that every human can is worthy of dignity, belonging, and a second, third, and fourth tense in life. Without further ado, please help me welcome Father Greg Boyle.

It's a privledge to be with you. I think this gathering here is what Martin Luther King used to say about Church. Could well be said about our time here this evening, that it's not the place you've come to, it's the place you go from. And you go from here to imagine something radically different than the world in which we currently live. You imagine a community of kinship such that God might recognize it. You go from here and you imagine a circle of compassion, and then you imagine nobody standing outside that circle. You go from here and you dismantle the barriers that exclude. This is what rising scholars does here at this institution. It announces a message. What if we were to invest in people rather than incarcerate our way out of things? And to that end, we go from here to stand at the margins because that's the only way they'll ever get erased is if we stand out at them.

And we stand with a particularity. We stand with the poor and the powerless and the voiceless, and we get to stand with the easily despised and the readily left out. We stand with those whose burdens are more than they can bear and those whose dignity has been denied. We get to stand with the easily despised and the readily left out. With the demonized, so that the demonizing will stop, and with the disposable, so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away and we go from here so that God's dream can come true, that we build a community of cherished belonging. And we brace ourselves, because the world will accuse you of wasting your time if you go to the margins to do that. But the prophet Jeremiah writes, for in this place of which you say it is a waste, there will be heard again the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voices of those who sing. And you will go from here.

And other voices will get heard. Which is exactly as it should be. So for 42 years, it's been the privilege of my life to walk with gang members. And they've taught me everything of value. And the day won't ever come when I have more courage or I am more noble, or I'm closer to God than the many thousands and thousands of men and women I've been privileged to know. I was noticing today because I was on the road a lot and how the homies have taught me how to text. And I find that it sure beats the heck out of actually talking to people. And I'm pretty good at it at LOL and OMG and btw, and the homies that taught me a new one, ohn, which apparently stands for oh, hell no.

I've used that nine times today alone. And, you know, I'm really vexed, as I'm sure you are, occasionally by autocorrect. You know, I remember I had a homegirl named Bertha who texted me on a Sunday and she said, where are you at? I said, well, I'm about to speak to a room full of moncha and monkhas are nuns, sisters, religious women. I'm about to speak to a room full of monkhas, and I pushed send and autocorrect told her that I was about to speak to a room full of ninjas, which she thought was pretty interesting. And the homies just even as I, you know, today, you know, blowing up my phone and texting me about, you know, how they need to pay this or pay that or, you know. And a homie texted me once and he just needed $100 to completato renta, you know, to finish off his rent. And I didn't have it. So I wrote back simply, things are tight.

And I pushed send and autocorrect told him, thongs are T. And he wrote back, sorry to hear that. What about my rent? How do we obliterate once and for all the illusion that we are separate, that there is an us and a them? How do we bridge the distance that separates us, which is God's dream come true? And we won't know that unless we kind of expect, expand and find the spacious God we actually have. Because if our God is too puny, then we don't have much choice except to be puny and judgmental and insist on separating us from them. I've been a priest for 42 years, and so some of you here I've met at juvenile hall or probation camps. And so, you know, for all that time I've been saying masses at detention facilities and probation camps and jails. And once I was saying mass at San Fernando Juvenile hall, and there's like 300 gang members there in a gym. And I'm best that I have my stole and my alb.

And the homies get up and they do the readings. They give you this oja, this sheet that has the readings in English and in Spanish so you can follow along. So I had the sheet, but I kept it on my lap and I closed my eyes so I could hear the word proclaimed and the first psalm. He got up and did the first reading from the Hebrew Bible. And then the second guy got up to read the responsorial psalm. And I don't know, there was like an overabundance of confidence in his voice. And he gets up and he says, the Lord is exhausted. And I said, what the hell? And it was, the Lord is exalted.

And I remember thinking at the time, wow, that's way better. Because the exalted God is kind of the God that we project onto the image. We project onto God because that's what we would want to be if we're God, we'd want to be exalted. But the exhausted God is the God of generosity who is self extensive and always wanting to bring us together. And that's what we want. You know, I was with my siblings recently. I have five sisters and two brothers. And so we gathered not that long ago.

And it was my mom. It would have been her 100th birthday. She died at 92. And my father died 30 years ago, and we were reminiscing, and my mom, when she died at 92, she died the way you want to die. You want to in your own bed, in your own home, surrounded by your kids and grandkids. She had a bunch of them, you know, she was sharp as attack, even till the end. And she wasn't a lick afraid of dying. I remember she was, you know, giddy of a month before she died.

She was giddy, exhilarated. And she goes, I've never done this before. You know, it's like something you say just before you skydive. And in fact, the day before she died, I was sitting at the foot of her bed in her home, and there was nobody else in the room, which never happened. And, you know, she. At one point, she was sleeping and she opens her eyes and she sees me sitting there and she goes, oh, for crying out loud. And she went back to sleep. Well, she was pissed that she hadn't died, you know, and I.

Sorry. And the next day I was again, just happened to be there. And it was noon, and I think my sisters had gone out to get lunch or something, and it was just me and her. And at exactly noon, she opens her eyes, she lifts her head from the pillow, and she lets out this wondrous, glorious gasp. Skydiving. And she left us. And nobody in earshot of that sound could ever be afraid of death again. But I remember towards the end of her life, she'd be in and out of consciousness, and there'd be two or three or all eight of her kids surrounding the bed.

And when she'd come to, she'd lock on to just one of us with a laser beam focus, and she would just stare at this one person and she would say with breathless delight, you're here, you're here. And I remembered that when we buried her, I thought that may be the singular agenda of our exhausted God, is to look at you with breathless delight and say, you're here, you're here. So Homeboy was started a long time ago, 1988, when I was pastor of the poorest parish in Los Angeles, Dolores Mission. It was nestled in the middle of two public housing projects, Pico Gardens and Aliso Village. Largest grouping of public housing west of the Mississippi. We had eight gangs at war with each other in those days, which was unheard of in public housing. They have so many. LACD said my parish was the place of the highest concentration of gang activity in the Whole city.

So I buried my first young person killed because of the sadness of in 1988. A month ago, I buried my 264th. Not all, obviously from that parish, but I know a lot of gang members. I get asked. So the first thing we did was we started a school because we had all these middle school, junior high aged gang members who had gotten the boot from their home school. Nobody wanted them. So in the middle of the day, they were wreaking havoc and selling drugs and they were violent and writing on walls. So I walked out to them and I would kind of isolate them one at a time.

I'd say, hey, if I found a school that would take you, would you go? And to my surprise, every single one said, yeah, I would. And then I couldn't find a school that would take them, you know, so that kind of forced my hand. Well, right across the street from the church is our parochial school, Dolores Mission. And it's a big huge three story block, concrete. First two floors were grades K to 8. But the entire third floor was the convent where the ninjas lived. So one evening, I gathered all the nuns together in their living room. I sat them down, I said, hey, you know, would you guys mind, you know, moving out? And we could turn the convent into a school for gang members.

And they looked at each other and they went, sure. And that was the entirety of their discernment process. And we were off and running. And the school was tough, you know, it created a disconnect with the parishioners. They'd come up to me and sidle up to me and they'd say, hey, you know, aren't churches supposed to be hermetically sealed? You know, good people in and bad people out? Which was a good gospel challenge. But the homies came every day from all eight gangs, which meant we would have three big old brawls every day, big fights. I'd have to run across the street from the rectory. Teachers didn't last very long.

I remember we had a principal who lasted exactly one day. And the next day I called to find out where the hell he was. And he had changed his phone number and apparently had checked himself in into a witness protection program. But the homies came, you know, and then in short order, they started to say, if only we had jobs. And so myself and the women in the parish and the profile in the project were mainly women with children. There weren't a lot of men. So myself and the women, we marched around the factories that surrounded the project trying to find felony friendly employers. And that Wasn't so.

So we had to start stuff. You know, a maintenance crew, a landscaping crew, a crew to build our child care center. All made up of members of the eight rival gangs. And then on the last day of April in 1992, was the acquittal of the four police officers who beat down Rodney King. And after that, every pocket of poverty just ignited in Los Angeles, except the poorest pocket might perish. So the LA Times sent a reporter out who was kind of trying to figure out, you know, why was that. And so they came and talked to me, and I said, well, I'm not entirely sure, but we do have 60 strategically hired rival members of eight rival gangs who have a reason to get up in the morning and a reason not to gang bang the night before. Before, and more to the point of your question, a reason not to torch their own community.

So the next day, the article appeared. The following day, I'm summoned to the Beverly Hills office of a movie producer named Ray Stark, who happened to have $500 million. And his first question to me was, how should I spend my money? As I look back on it now, I can see that I woefully undershot my request. You know, I was young, hair. So I said, well, there's an abandoned bakery across the street from the school. You could buy has ovens, but they don't work. You could fix them and, I don't know, we could put hair nets on rival gang members. They could bake bread.

We could call it Homeboy Bakery. And he said, sure. So we were off and running again. And a month later, we started Homeboy Tortillas in the Grand Central Market. Once we had plural, we changed our name from Jobs for a Future, which is what we called ourselves, to Homeboy industries. And now 10,000 folks a year walk through our doors wanting to reimagine their lives. Every single person who walks in that building in Chinatown, our headquarters, becomes barricaded behind a wall of shame and disgrace. And the only thing that can scare that wall is tenderness.

Every single one comes with what psychologists would call a disorganized attachment. Mom was either frightened or frightening. And you can't calm yourself down if you've never been soothed. Every single one walks in those doors and is greeted by somebody who is exactly like them, who looks them in the eye and says with dreadful to light, you're here. You're here. We're meant to receive the tender glance so that we can be that tender glance. We notice the notice of God so that we can be that Notice in the world, that's what we're meant to do. That's not a religious thing, that's a human thing.

And so we have an 18 month training program which is our centerpiece. And we're about healing more than just anything else. Because if it's true that the traumatized are likely to cause trauma, doesn't it have to be equally true that the cherished will be able to find their way to the joy there is in cherishing themselves and others? So we have therapy, we have groups, we have a lot of curricular things, and we have 16 social enterprises. Homeboy. We're allergic to the idea, the notion of holding the bar up and asking the homies to measure up, mainly because our exhausted God doesn't do this with us. Why would we do it? Instead, we hold the mirror up and we tell folks the truth, that you're exactly what God had in mind when God made you. And then you watch them as they become that truth and they inhabit that truth. And no bullet can pierce it.

No four prison walls can keep it out and death can't touch it because it's huge. But you have to reach in and you have to dismantle the messages of shame and disgrace that keep people from seeing their truth. Parentheses I'm a Jesuit priest, you know, like Pope Francis, I'm just saying. But the homies don't know what a Jesuit is, you know, and. And even though we have three of us working there. So my office is this glass enclosed office. And I can look out, I can see the whole floor of the reception area. I can see who's walking in the front door.

I can see the well, which is where the homies and homegirls sit to receive people and have them sign in and stuff. And we have about eight tour groups a day from all over the world, large and small. So I'm in my office, I have two homies in front of my desk. And then like a whole big group, like 20 people just plant themselves in front of my glass enclosed office. And it's one of those observe our founder in his natural habitat kind of moments that I wave faintly. And the guy giving the tour is Osvaldo, and he has what the homies would call a loud asphalt. And he says, this is Father Greg Boyle. He is the founder of Homeboy Industries.

He is a jiu jitsu priest. So from my desk I do some of my more impressive moves. So I told you that to tell you this. On February 28, 1540, St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits enters this one word in his spiritual diary. And he proceeds to use the word a lot for the remaining 12 years of his life. And before he dies, he goes back and he circles this word for all the times he's used it. Now, I know Spanish, but I didn't know this word.

And the word is acatamienzo. And it comes from kind of an archaic word, akatar, which means to look at something with attention. And it gets translated as affectionate awe. And I suspect, you know, it was born, obviously, of a singular mystical moment between Ignatius and his God. But I think he wanted it to be something more like, when you go from this place and you stand at the margins, what is your stance there? What is your disposition? How are you to greet people with affectionate awe, which made me think, in the Acts of the apostles, it has this one odd line where it says, and awe came upon everyone. And it suggests that the measure of health in any community at all, including this one, may well reside in our ability to stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it. So many years ago, I was invited to speak to 600 social workers in Richmond, Virginia. It was what we called in those days a gang Inservice.

So 600 social workers would commandeer a hotel ballroom room, and, you know, they'd sign in to get credit, and it would be from 9 to 5, and there'd be keynotes and breakout sessions and workshops. And so I'd done a lot of these over the years. And it was during that decade of death when everybody was suffering because of gang violence. And so, you know, it gives people like myself a chance to say that no hopeful kid has ever joined a gang in the history of the world. And to say that no kid is seeking anything when he joins a gang. He's always fleeing something, no exception. And that gangs are the places kids go when they've encountered their life as a misery. And who doesn't know? But that misery loves company.

So I figured I was going to give a keynote. I bought my plane ticket and I was going to go. But a week before I was to fly, I pull out the original letter inviting me. And to my horror, I discover that I am to be the only speaker from 9 to 5 all damn day. And I said, what? The homies often say, oh, hell, no, I'm not going to be the only speaker. So I get in two homies, trainees, Andre, an African American gang member, and his enemy, Jose. And they're like, in their ninth month, in their 18 months with us. And I sit them down in my office, I said, look, you're flying with me to Richmond, Virginia.

I would like you to get up in front of 600 social workers and tell your story. Take your time, because we got a long ass day to fill. Well, I'd never heard their stories before. And Jose gets up first. And he was probably 25 years old at that time. And, you know, shot caller from his gang and into prison. You know, everybody moved around at homeboy. You know, you do three months here and three months in the tattoo removal clinic and three months helping the legal department or that kind of thing or in the curricular building behind us.

But he became a very beneficial presence for the substance youth disorder team. So he was a man solid in his own recovery. And now he was helping younger homies and homegirls with their addiction issues. So not only was he shot caller, gang member, prisoner felon, he also had a long stretch as a homeless man, even longer stretch as a heroin addict. So he gets up in front of 600 social workers to tell his story. I guess you could say that my mom and me, we didn't get along so good. I think I was sick when she looked at me and she said, why don't you just kill yourself? You're such a burden to me. Well, 600 social workers audibly gas.

And then he says, it sounds way worser in Spanish. And we got whiplash. We went from gas to laugh. And then he continued. I think I was 9 when my mom drove me down to the deepest part of Baja California. And she walks me up to an orphanage. And she knocks on the door, and a guy comes to the door, and she says, I found this kid. And she left me there for 90 days until my grandmother could get out of her where she had dumped me.

My grandmother came. Came and rescued me. My mom beat me every single day of my elementary school years with things you could imagine and a lot of things you couldn't. Every day, my back was bloodied and scarred. In fact, I had to wear three T shirts to school each day. First T shirt, because the blood would seep through. The second T shirt, you could still see it. Finally, the third T shirt, you couldn't see any blood.

Kids at school, they'd make fun of me. Hey, fool, it's a hundred degrees. Why are you wearing three T shirts? And then he stopped speaking. So overwhelmed with emotion. And he seemed to be staring at a piece of his story that only he could see. And when he could regain his speech, he said through his tears. I wore three T shirts well into my adult years because I was ashamed of my wounds. I didn't want anybody to see them.

But now I welcome my wounds. I run my fingers over my scars. My wounds are my friends, after all. How can I help heal the wounded if I don't welcome my own wounds? And awe came upon everyone. Affectionate awe. The measure of our compassion lies not in our service of those on the margin, but only in our willingness to see ourselves in kinship with them. For the truth of the matter is, if we don't welcome our own wounds, we may well be tempted to despise the wounded. It occurs sometimes, mainly in jiu jitsu universities.

But for places to force their students to read my books against their will, I'm not complaining. But Gonzaga university in Spokane, my alma alma mater, who ruins my bracket every march anyway, they had forced the incoming freshman to read tattoos on the heart. They said, would you come and speak to all the freshmen? And could you bring two homies with you? And I always do if they ask. I always pick homies, generally speaking, the same way I always pick enemies. Rival gang members who work at homeboys just to force them to share a hotel room just to mess with them. And I always pick homies who have never flown before, just for the thrill of watching gang members panicheado in the sky. I was at lax once with two older vassals, and one guy says to me, hey, gee, are we flying Virgin airlines? Because it's our first time. I said, sorry, it's a requirement.

We'll be coming home on American. So I picked these two homies, Larry, an African American gang member, and his enemy, Mario. So I do this a lot. Mainly what I do these days, I fly with homies and homegirls to far off places. And so I'm used to nervous nellies, but nobody more nervous. This guy Mario, I've never witnessed it in my life. And he was just phonics. And he was starting to freak me out a little bit because he was hyperventilating, which I had never witnessed, you know, like this.

You know, we hadn't even, you know, boarded the plane yet. And so we flew out of Burbank, which is smallish airport, but big planes, you know, Southwest airlines, but they don't have that hermetically sealed chute to board the plane. You have to walk out onto the tarmac like you're the president. You climb up those steps to board the plane. So I'm sitting there with Mario and Larry is floring the airport and it's early morning, it's the first flight of the day and the sun has barely come up. And I see our flight crew arrives and I see two female flight attendants and both of them have very large cups of Starbucks coffee. And they're schlepping up the steps to board the plane. And Mario goes, when are we going to board the plane? I go, as soon as they sober up the pilot.

There they go now. Perhaps I should not have said this to him. So anyway, I should tell you that in our 38 year history as an organization, Mario is the most tattooed individual who has ever worked there, which is saying a lot. He's all sleeved out to his fingertips with tattoos, neck blackened with the name of his gang, from jaw to collarbone, head shaves covered with tattoos, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyelids that save the hand. So that apparently when he's lying in his coffin, there will be no doubt for anybody. So I said, well, maybe let's walk through the airport, it'll calm him down. I'd never been in public with him. And so it was extraordinary.

You know, people were going, oh my God, like this. And women are clutching their kids more closely. I think, wow, isn't that interesting? Because if you were to go to homeboy tomorrow and walk up to anybody there and say, who's the kindest, most gentle soul who works here? They'd think for one beat and then they'd say, Mario. Yeah, Mario. Mario is proof that only the soul that ventilates the world with tenderness has any chance of changing the world. He's proof that what they say is true, that the only non delusional reflection to everything is kindness. He's proof that the highest form of spirituality is tenderness. So we get to Gonzaga and Tuesday is the big talk.

A thousand people. But they don't tell you beforehand that they would very much like you to speak to like 93 classrooms Tuesday in the morning. So I'd say to these two guys, why don't you get up and give your time talks. I'm going to sit in the back of the classroom. Oh, they were terrified, especially Mario. But they did a good job. You know, stories of terror and torture and violence and every imaginable kind of abuse. And honest to God, if their stories had been flames, you'd have to keep your distance, otherwise you'd get scorched.

I would not have survived a single day of either of their childhoods. So we get to the big festival on Tuesday night, you know, 1,000 people, and it's jam packed. And so I asked them to, you know, get up beforehand and share their story a little bit like they had in the classroom. And they get up, but of so many people that Mario was really quite nervous in particular. But again, they did a good job. And then they sat down and I did my thing and then, and then I invited them up again for the Q and A session which we're about to begin. And I said, yes ma'. Am.

And a woman stands, she goes, yeah, I got a question. It's for Mario. First question out the gate. And so Mario is a tall, skinny drink of water and he steps up to the microphone. He's just terrified. Yes. And the woman says, well, Mario, you say you're a father and you have two kids who are about to enter their teenage years. What wisdom do you impart to them? You know, what advice do you give them? And Mario closes his eyes and he clutches the microphone with great intensity.

I can sense he's starting to tremble and he's getting a friggin hernia trying to figure out what the hell he's going to say. And when suddenly he blurts out, I. Just as soon as he says those two words, he rushes back to to his microphone, clutching, closed eyed, refuge. And now I know he's losing the battle with his tears, but he wants to get the whole sentence out. I just don't want my kids to turn out to be like me. And there's silence until the woman who asked the question stands and now it's her turn to cry. Why wouldn't you want your kids to turn out to be like you? You are loving, you are kind, you are gentle, you are wise. I hope your kids turn out to be like you.

And a thousand total perfect strangers stand and they will not stop clapping. And all Mario can do is hold his face in his hand pants, overwhelmed that this room full of strangers had returned him to himself. But let there be no mistaking it, everybody standing and clapping had been returned to themselves. And I think that's the only praise our exhausted God has any interest in. Thank you very much.

Thank you for listening to the Mount San Antonio College Podcast, brought to you by Mount sac's POD Office and created in partnership with Avant Haüs Media. Original music created and edited by Nira Azira. Be sure to check out our growing library of over 230 episodes and let us know your thoughts. You can reach me Chisa Uyeki at C U Y E K I at mountsac dot Edu. Wishing you an amazing year and happy listening.