“Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion” by Father Gregory Boyle

A friend mailed this book to me a few weeks after I got to California. I’d had a hard time reading anything other than recipes and creative substitutes for ingredients, but I was immediately taken by Father Boyle’s writing style and the humor and insight he brings to his stories about the people he’s worked with for decades as a Jesuit priest at Delores Mission Church in Los Angeles, the gang capital of the world.

If a book can be inhaled, I inhaled this one. Father Boyle’s compassion for the gang members he works with, his enthusiasm and heartfelt care as he established and built Homeboy Industries, an organization of gang members who take on what they most want and sometimes fear–“regular” jobs using skills they’ve never realized nor developed before–moved me over and over. I loved the homeboys and ached for their struggles and rejoiced in their victories and knew for sure that if I were a gang member, I’d trust and love Father Boyle as his homeboys do. 

I left the book in California, thinking it might be helpful to the other set of grandparents who swap off family care with us, so I don’t remember specific instances. I do remember how true Father Boyle’s voice is, how real he is about still struggling sometimes with being compassionate, but how far he’s come in approaching unconditional love. The people he works with believe him when he tells and shows them they’re worthy, and they do their best to rise to his view of them. And then they mess up. And then, with understanding and no bullshit, Father Boyle shows them their best selves again.

And, as I read story after story about formerly destructive and self-destructive people young people coming to believe in themselves, and about how truly unconditional God’s love is, I cut everyone in my living situation a little more slack and felt more compassion for them, and then (Hallelujah!), some compassion for myself, and I was able to stay mostly kind and almost centered instead of going ballistic. 

Tattoos on the Heart came just at the right time and gave me just the right messages. I needed to feel and show boundless compassion, and I made some headway. Father Boyle is on my “wish I could meet him” list. He and this book are treasures.

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