Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Compassion Can Transform The World | Father Greg Boyle

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

Jesuit priest and founder of Homeboy Industries, Father Greg Boyle, guides us through the Homeboy Way - a life full of love, clarity, and unshakable goodness.More on Father Greg:Father Greg Boyle is an American Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and reentry program in the world.Each year over 10,000 former gang members and previously incarcerated people come through Homeboy Industries’ doors where they are given hope, training, and support to redirect their lives and become contributing members of our community.Father Boyle is a recipient of the California Peace Prize, has been inducted into the California Hall of Fame, and was named a “Champion of Change” by President Obama in 2014. He is also the author of three acclaimed books, including his 2010 New York Times bestseller, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion.Father Boyle is a rare example of someone who embodies altruism in its purest form – he is an emblem for hope, compassion, kinship, and the power of second chances. I hope this conversation leaves you feeling more connected to the humanity in each of us, and inspired to lift others up in your community as well._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. I've learned to stand in awe at what people have to carry rather than in judgment Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. Today's conversation is with a very special human, Father Greg Boyle. Father Greg is an American Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, which is the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world.

Each year, over 10,000 former gang members and previously incarcerated people come through Homeboy Industries doors where they are given hope, training, and support to redirect their lives and become contributing members of our community. Father Greg is a recipient of the California Peace Prize and has been inducted into the California Hall of Fame and was named a Champion of Change by President Obama in 2014. Father Greg is a rare example of someone who fully embodies altruism in its purest form. He is an emblem for hope, for compassion, for kinship, and the power of second chances. I hope this conversation leaves you feeling more connected to the humanity in each of us and inspired to lift others up in your community as well. So with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Father Greg Boyle.

Greg, I've watched what you've done from a distance for a long time, and I'm honored to sit down with you. And so thank you for spending the time to come in to the Mastery Lab and share your life's work and the perspectives that have been guiding your life's work. So for folks that are not familiar with Homeboy Industries, can we start there with just giving a quick flyover about what Homeboy Industries is and maybe the origin story as well. It's great to be with you as well. So Homeboy Industries is the largest gang intervention rehab re-entry program on the planet. So about 10,000 folks a year walk through our doors trying to reimagine their lives. So we've started in 1988 when I was pastor of the poorest parish in the city that had eight gangs at war with each other, largest grouping of public housing west

of the Mississippi, and the highest concentration of gang activity in the city, according to the LAPD. So we started a school and then a jobs program and then social enterprises, and that was 35 years ago or almost 35. So as a Jesuit priest, why did you decide to move into gang rehabilitation? Well, I was pastor first of this very poor parish, Dolores Mission. And I spoke Spanish, so that was kind of how I ended up there and then that was during the decade of death which was 88 to 98 when 92 was when we had a thousand gang-related homicides in the in this county so I lived here hard to know if it was exponentially worse than other places in the world that had lots of murder, but it just felt like it was every weekend.

Yeah, no, it was bad, and it was worse than other places, but every place had experienced a worsening during that time. And part of that had to do with the crack cocaine epidemic and lots of other things. Oddly, it also coincided with a get-tough embrace that was kind of pervasive across the country, especially in L.A. as well. And so, oddly, that kind of issued in only exacerbating the problem rather than- What is the get tough? Get tough, you know, wipe them out, lock them up, throw away the key, that kind of thing.

Oh, like the message from police or government. And the, you know, citizens in general, you know. I see. So in those days, everybody thought the choice was, are you tough on crime or are you soft? If that's your choice, nobody chooses soft. But then I think as Homeboy helped actually in this county, then the question became, are you tough or are you smart? And then given that choice, people started to say, well, I'd rather be smart. So then that's how the hostility towards an effort like Homeboy, which was really deep, you know, for the first 10 years, death threats, bomb threats, hate mail.

To you or to? To me and to the organization. So it wasn't from gang members, but it was from law enforcement or people who felt that, who demonized, you know, who felt that this was the enemy. So how do we... Well, blown away. So you're trying to make a difference in the community that you're serving. One of the differences that you, or the key difference that you say is, okay, let's give, let's figure out how to help folks that want to change their ways, and specifically people that were involved in gangs or gang involved. How could that be something that the police would not want to partner with you? Well, because this is the kind of the net result of demonizing. Demonizing is always

an untruth. It's always, and I would say, opposite of how God sees. So it's kind of anchored in untruth. But that was completely embraced by law enforcement. So the friend of our enemy is our enemy. And so it was only a short hop to demonize me for helping the demonized, helping gang members. Because you're keeping them on the street. You should be locking them up. Well, yeah. You're trying to do something.

How are you cosigning on bad behavior? As if you are. So part of the issue was if your take is bad people doing bad things, then wipe them out and lock them up and throw away the key. But if this is about a lethal absence of hope, then you go, oh, okay, what if we infused hope to folks for whom hope is foreign? You know, what if we helped heal trauma? What if we delivered mental health services in a timely and culturally appropriate way. Oh, so now you're actually addressing what this is about. So gang violence, I learned pretty early on, even in my naive days,

that it was about something else. So the trick was find the something else. Very cool. Let's go back to the neighborhood that the parish is in and kind of your origin story there. Can you describe what that was like during the 80s or during the 90s? Let's go back to the neighborhood that the parish is in and kind of your origin story there. Can you describe what that was like during the 80s or during the 90s? Well, so I arrived, first got there in 84 after I was ordained, but then I was pastor in 86 to 92. So 86, 87, you know, the issues in the parish were mainly about immigration, and that was during a time of, you know, amnesty and immigration control

and Reform and Control Act and family separation. Some folks were being granted amnesty, and then their partners, their husbands and wives weren't, that kind of thing. So that was the issue. And then in 88, I buried my very first young person killed in the parish because of gang violence. Now, I've buried 256 since then, but not all from that community, of course. So, you know, we were having, I was having eight funerals in a three week period. So there, it was intense.

And so what are we going to do? And that was the kind of the context. So we had two public housing projects that were contiguous and, and we had eight gangs, which is unheard of. And in just a couple of square miles. In the tiny area, but two public housing projects. Normally you would have one public housing development with one gang that controls it.

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You know, you're a parish priest, so you have stuff happening on Sunday and you have stuff happening during the week. And then it's like your choice is do you bury your head in the sand or do you roll up your sleeves? And you go, wow, this is a thing that's actually happening. And so what do we do? How do we address it? What is it about? And then that became a kind of a concrete extension of ourselves as a parish, not just me, but where people said, well, these are our sons and daughters, whether we brought them into the world or not. So people became quite generous, you know, with them. And so we started things, you know. The school was the first one because there were so many middle school age gang members who had been given boot from their home school.

They didn't, you know, nobody wanted them. So they were wreaking havoc in the middle of the day. So it was kind of a concrete dilemma we were trying to address. And so I tried to find a school that would take them, and it didn't happen. So we started a school. Was that homeboy schools? Well, it was, we called it Dolores Mission Alternative. And it was, I asked the nuns if they wouldn't mind like moving out. And so we turned the convent into a school for gang members.

All right. So I thought it started with a bakery. No. And then they said, if only we had jobs, so we try to find felony-friendly employers. And that wasn't so forthcoming. And then the unrest happened in 92. That's right. After the Rodney King verdict. And so the whole city exploded except the poorest pocket, my parish. So the L.A. Times wanted to know why that was. And I said, well, because we had maybe, you know, we had 60 strategically hired gang members who were enemies

who were hired by this. You know, we had a maintenance crew, a landscaping crew, that kind of thing, made up of rivals. And so they had a reason to get up in the morning and not to gangbang the night before. So the article appeared. And then Ray Stark, who was a movie producer who happened to have $500 million, summoned me after he read the article. And he said, how should I help? How should I use my money was what he said. And I said, well, there's an abandoned bakery across the street from our school. You could buy

it. We could put hairnets on rival gang members, that kind of thing. And Homeboy Bakery was born. And then we added other social enterprises and we changed our name to Homeboy Industries. Okay. So let's go back to what I want to understand from you is change. I want to understand hope. And I want to understand forgiveness. And I want to understand forgiveness. So those are kind of the three things.

And underneath it, I do want to understand the mechanism that you've used to have sustainable change. And there's a business plan that you have put together where, I shouldn't say a business plan, but you figured out that you can't just be putting your hand out and saying, please help my cause, please help my cause. Please help our cause. That Homeboy Industries actually feels to me, from a distance at least, self-sustaining. And so I want to understand, I could be way off, but I want to understand like what's kept you for the duration here. But so let's start with the change so if on the change bit the part that changed you if i could be bold here for

a minute is that you felt something from the people that were deeply affected lives being lost from young kids from families is that fair yeah i mean it was a concrete dilemma you know yeah i'm bearing kids and they're and they're shootings morning noon and night and and little kids are having to hunker down behind cars in the middle of the day so yeah that's like a dilemma and then you said so you felt something and that you felt that i should say and then you had a decision to make and you could bury your head in the sand or you could take action and so that's like maybe step two and then when you took action was there a nucleus of people or were you having to fly the flagpole yourself and i think you said that there was other people involved but i'm

trying to just get the origins for anybody that wants to create change in their life feel something make a decision and then what, and I certainly wasn't alone, but there was a great deal of hostility, even among my parishioners. There was a notion that said, aren't churches supposed to be hermetically sealed, good people in and bad people out? Wow, really? Yeah, I mean, I think that's... That's not how Jesus did it, though. No, but that's how churches do it, you know, which is kind of... Yeah. Yeah, so, and then, so you had to, it was good.

I mean, it came to a head. You know, the parishioners wanted to throw me out, and then they had a huge meeting, and I sat in the back of the room, and I didn't say a word, and who knows where this will go. And then the women, the profile in the parish was mainly women with children. There weren't a lot of men, which is typical public housing. And so it was like, you know, we do this because this is lo que haría Jesus. This is what Jesus would do. So I just had to sit you know, sit back and they

embraced this with a fullness, you know. What was that like for you? It was, you know, it was, I was kind of, as much as I can retrieve of it, you know, because it was a lot of years ago, was, you know, who knows where this will go. But I also sensed that people had come around where there was no us and them, there was just us. And then even if there was hostility towards what we were doing outside our community, from outside, it couldn't happen inside, that people couldn't be hostile inside. So then that was a switch. That's where they owned what we were doing, and it wasn't my thing.

It became our thing. And so that was at the point, that meeting. I want to say the Come to Jesus meeting, but we'll leave that for a minute. No, it was literally that, yeah. Yeah. Was that once you had already established the school? Well, that was probably because of the school. Because what are we doing, right?

Why are we putting people, why are we getting the nuns, pushing the nuns out? Why are we allowing this hostility? Because it probably wasn't smooth. Yeah, so keep in mind the physicality of it so the the elementary school our parochial school was in this big huge concrete building and the first two floors were the the school grades k to eight but the entire third floor was the convent yeah where the nuns lived and so I sat them down in the living room and I said, hey, you know, what do you think about maybe moving out?

And they said, sure, just like that. So we found them a house in the neighborhood. And then so picture the scene. You know, you have in those days gang members looked, it was like out of central casting, you know, size 85 waist dickies and the whole thing. You know, I mean, it was just, these are cholos, these are gang members. And they were climbing up the stairs to get building, you had to pass all these, you know, uniformed parochial school little kiddos, you know.

So that was kind of the thing that most. Oh, now I totally get it. Yeah. Coupled with the fact that the church became kind of a safe place, you know, and I remember there was a garage, and homies had weights, and it became a place that was kind of a non-violent zone. And all sorts of conversations happened there. And suddenly, you have a lot of gang members at this church, in the parking lot, in the garage, walking up the stairs, passing their kids in parochial school uniforms as they get to their school. And it was a violent school. I mean, we had fights all the time, especially initially, because there were enemies

going to school with each other oh it was uh intense at what point did you say to yourself what am i doing no i i never really said that you didn't no okay i didn't you just put one foot in front of the next you know okay so help me understand that just put one foot in front of yeah i. Yeah, I don't think I, I'm not a big, you know, what will this look like in five years? You know, master plan, business plan. That's not how I operate. What do we have to do today?

And so that was very immediate. And, you know, I remember with the school, you know, I'd have teachers who would last exactly a minute and a half and once I had a principal lasted a day and I called him the next day, say, where was he? He had changed his phone number and apparently had checked into a witness protection program or something. I don't know what, but it was intense. They just couldn't be there. How were you able to be there? Well, I mean, from early on, I think there was, I found them all very kind of eternally

interesting and funny and warm and readily affectionate and all these things that I found really quite disarming gang members. And so I just found them like that pretty early. And then the other thing was, of course, I would, as soon as I heard somebody was in a hospital or in juvenile hall, I would go visit them. And of course, keep in mind, this was them at their most vulnerable. And when they got out, they would all say, hey, that priest visited me. And it was, you know, you accumulated what the homies would call a juice card. You know, suddenly you had influence you didn't even know that you had. Suddenly you could ask for things. You could say, hey, I'm going to ask you not to do this.

And then they would say, okay, out of respect, we won't do this. So little pyrrhic victories, but still victories. Okay, let's go back to to i think this is probably your superhero you know your superpower is that you would see something in people that was what made them special on the tender side so you were able to see that the heart of the person and not the exterior. How do you do that? Well, I remember a probation officer had said to me, a very good woman and has since deceased, but she was a friend and she was a confidant. She would say, you know, she understood what I was doing. But occasionally,

she would say, don't even try with that guy because he's just pure evil. I remember she said that once. He's pure evil. And I knew that wasn't true when she said it, you know. And then years and years and years later of knowing this one guy in particular, it's totally not true. You know, he's the father of two boys happily married. He's an honorable guy. Both sons are really highly autistic, and he's trying to figure out what that means and how does he love them and teach them. I mean, it's just, he's my hero and yet she he was somebody who she had said don't even bother you know so I knew early on that that was not truthful

and discovering that demonizing always is false okay so let's do that let's pull on this thread a little bit further is that this is maybe philosophical I know we're talking about the intimate, your intimate ability to see something special in a person, which I think we all want that. We all want to be seen in that way. And all is a big word, I understand. So you were able to do that. I do want to understand the practices that led you to be able to see that when 99 or 98% of the world see something that they should fear because that's what the image that they're conjured up so i do want to understand the practices that led to that but for just a moment if we pull out our people is there evil and this is now speaking to

you know the pastor and you is in the philosopher the jesuit tab Jesuit, tabula rasa, born evil or inherently good as three ways that we can come into this world. Yeah, I think it's easy, frankly, you know, that everybody is unshakably good and we belong to each other. So I believe in horrible because I have eyes, you know. But I don't believe in evil. I believe that, and homies have taught me that. I mean, and I can't unlearn it, you know. What have they taught you? They've taught me that I've learned to stand in awe at what people have to carry rather than in judgment at how they carry it.

And so you go, oh, this is about despair. A horrible act came as a result of that despair, but it's about despair. Well, this is about trauma and damage and wounded people. A horrible thing happened as a result of that wounded person, person but it's about trauma and then this is about you know acute mental illness you know where people which is the clearest of all because it's like nobody nobody chooses to be you know a sociopath it chooses them so that's that's where i was going to take the the next part of it is sociopathology um is kind of the the psychopathology is what it you know we're talking about but the anti-social sociopath the person who feels what's considered from an american psychologicalological Association definition,

no remorse. So is your experience that people actually do feel remorse, but they continue to re-traumatize other people to heal their own trauma? It's about health. You know, nobody healthy shoots up a classroom of kids. Nobody healthy invades Ukraine. Nobody healthy slaps Chris Rock at the Oscars. None of those things touch anybody's goodness. It's all about health. And we're on a spectrum, a continuum of health. And all we're meant to do is love each other into wholeness.

How do we walk each other home, as Ram Dass would say? How do we walk each other into health? So I don't want gang members at Homeboy Industries to become better people. I don't even know what that means. Homies will say that to me, and I'll say, you could not be even one bit better. Who you are is exactly right. You're exactly what God had in mind. Now, if you can recognize your goodness, then you can inhabit the truth of who you are. You can live from that place. And then you're joyful. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance,

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even though you just shot up a home last night and there was kids in the living room. So be dramatic for a moment. How is that exactly what God wanted you to be, and how is that something that you can be okay with? So at Homeboy, nobody's okay with violence or horrible things happening. But you want to kind of talk about it. You want to be able to, you don't want to just point things out. You want to point the way. And so you try to get underneath these things. Or the homies always say, find the thorn underneath, which I like. I think

that makes sense to me. You know, find the thorn. So there's a thorn somewhere. So the homies now know who run the place at Homeboy Industries. They don't get tripped up by bad behavior. The goal is not how do we create a behaving community, but how do we create a community of beloved belonging where people know the truth of who they are. So at Homeboy, we're really allergic to the idea of holding the bar up and asking folks to measure up. So instead, you hold the mirror up and you say, here's who you are. So the other day, just last week, a homie named Joseph said, he got up and we were having a conversation. He was leaving my office. He goes, you know what

I think life is? I think life is removing the blindfold. And I said, I think you're right. But what is it that we see when the blindfold falls? Do we see the error of our ways? Do we say, oh, I am a disappointment. I had no idea. You know, what do you see? You see unshakable goodness and we belong to each other. That's what you see. Now, once you see that, the issue is really the blindfold, not the goodness. The goodness is there, always been there. It's unshakable. Nothing will touch it. Your illness won't touch that goodness. Your despair won't touch it. The damage done to you won't touch it. It's always there. So you separate the essence of the person,

the spirit of the person potentially, from the behaviors and the thinking patterns that they co-create. Well, like for example, there's a really fine book out called The Cruelty is the Point. And it's a commentary on the Trumpian years and racist and stuff and Charlottesville, a whole list of things. And it's very good journalism. But it says, its thesis is the cruelty is the point. But I would say that the cruelty points, and that's different. It points beyond itself to something. It's telling you, oh, we're not well. Oh, so racism is an indicator of unhealth, that people aren't well

Especially if you believe as I do that people are unshakable good Then these things point beyond themselves to something that needs our attention so The part of seeing yourself the way Where you see unshakable goodness is my contention anyway, that that's how God sees you. God isn't kind of saying, you know, you're not there yet. No, there's none of that stuff. We do that. But God doesn't do that. That's kind of, you know, it's the father running to the son who's still a long way off on the road, and he runs to him.

He doesn't wait for him at home. He doesn't fold his arms and say, what do you have to say? You know, apology. No, he's running to him, and he kisses him, and he cries, and the son wants to give a fake-ass apology, and the father says, no, I don't want to hear it. I thought you were dead, and now you're alive. That captures, you know, we settle for forgiveness, but we need to hold out for mercy. That's mercy. That's not forgiveness. That's not, you know, forgiveness waits for the apology.

Forgiveness waits for a mutual agreement between actors. But mercy doesn't wait. Mercy runs. What is mercy? Mercy is God. You know, mercy is sort of how things are seen. You know, the God who's too busy loving you to have any time left to be disappointed. We're disappointed with each other. And then so we

project that onto the God we have. But once you know the God of love, you fire all the other gods, the gods that are puny and exacting and is is god active or passive in our lives god is neither active or passive god is loving you know so it's this kind of uh i mean i believe god protects me from nothing, but sustains me in everything. And I think this is, from my own point of view, is kind of what mature spirituality looks like. Yeah, because I hear people talk about, and the reason I ask that question is I don't relate to God has a plan for me. I don't either. You don't either? Mm-mm.

Yeah, okay. So when I hear that, I say, ow, no free will. What does that mean? My experience is different than that. So there are plenty of very smart people that are authoring and defending both sides of this argument that we don't have free will or we do have free will and God is either an active agent in it or not. And that seems really confusing to me. So that's why I asked that question. Yeah, I also don't, I don't know, I have kind of a hairy eyeball on the free will thing because a lot of times, especially people have this notion of like with kids joining gangs, you know, they had a choice, you know, I go, well, not all choices are created equal. You know, I grew up in the gang capital of the world, Los Angeles. And because I won all

these white privilege lotteries, you know, parents, zip code, high school neighborhood you know family really freed of trauma and i didn't join a gang big whoop you know but you know if you grew up in the projects you know in boyle heights you know in the 80s good luck you know not all the 80s, good luck. You know, not all choices are created equal. Okay. So I want to get to the forgiveness piece because we're there, but I also don't want to lose this thought, which is you said something that I don't understand, which is you don't think about people getting better.

And I feel like that's a big part of my personal journey is for me to keep growing, to keep getting better at being the person that I imagine myself that I could be. And so there is a becoming and a being that I have a tension between even articulating it. And I feel like my job is to be here now, be as close to or perfectly in tune with my very best, which is not a performative nature. It's an actual, there's a stillness to that. And then I have a tension between the becoming. Being that person more often is actually the way that I think about my becoming.

It has nothing to do with the external world. It has to do with the consistency of being still and present and fully engaged and an alignment between thoughts, words, and actions on a consistent basis, independent of the external world around me. So I think about that. I have to work for that. And I think what I hear you saying is, and that's me getting better, me growing. And I have that same idea for other people too. And so I hear you say, no, no, no, it's not that.

It's something completely different, which is it's not about growing and getting better. And so I just want to open that up. Well, I don't think it's about becoming or being. I think it's about seeing so that sometimes the blindfold falls and sometimes it's kind of half-cocked. It's like one eye is open. It's about seeing the truth. Once you see the truth of who you are,

then you will, you know, live from that truth. You will discover your true self and loving. And then, but it's not once and for all. So it's like in recovery, you know, where they say just one day at a time. I go, oh, no, that's way too long. You know, it's like one breath at a time. You know, it's with every breath you have to, you know, inhale some kind of intentionality to be attentive in the present moment to the person right in front of you. Doing that is not hard. Remembering to do that is very difficult.

So that's why we have a practice. That's why we work at it. That's why you, you know, try to stay attentive and kind and you try to become the notice of the notice of God. You try to see. So otherwise, it becomes... I remember once, this is kind of a little inside baseball, but it's like I'm a Jesuit for 50 years, and I was at a big gathering of Jesuits, and the provincial got up and he called, asked one guy to stand and he said, you know, he's agreed to go to some whatever, Siberia, you know, basically some awful assignment. And he points at him and he goes, now that's a good Jesuit. And I thought, no, there's no such thing as a good Jesuit. Because there can only be a good Jesuit if there's such a thing as a bad Jesuit. And there's no such thing.

There are people who are not well, are not healthy, who are despondent, who are traumatized, who are mentally ill, who can't see clearly, who are crippled by one thing or another. But it has nothing to do with good or bad. And that's the problem with the good, better, best, never let it rest until the good is better and the better is best, which is what the nuns taught me at St. Brendan's Elementary School. So that's a problem because that's how we are. So it doesn't mean I'm not anti-growth. I'm just, I want, what can you see today that you couldn't see yesterday? How's your vision?

Do you need stronger glasses? What are you seeing? Can you see the truth of who you are? Can you see that in the other person? Are you being toppled by bad behavior in yourself or in others? What's it mean? What's it point to? So that non-duality is a principle that's complicated, I think, for many folks.

And it still can boggle my mind a bit. But the way that you just described it is eloquent well i was just listening right now on a podcast going over about you know about um the locker b they just got somebody you know after 35 years who downed the plane you know and then it was some fbi agent was talking about how the bad guys are ahead of us in terms of what they know or whatever it was. As soon as I hear the word bad guys, I go, okay, this is why we don't make progress. It's too simple.

Well, we think it's about bad guys. There are no bad guys. There are people who are wounded and people who are despondent and people who are ill. Mother Teresa says, you know, the problem in the world is that we've forgotten that we belong to each other. Of course that's the problem. And so the solution is to remember that we belong to each other. What does that mean to you, that we belong to each other?

You know, for me, you know, so you want to take seriously what Jesus took seriously. He took four things seriously, inclusion, nonviolence, unconditional loving kindness, and compassionate acceptance. I've never heard this, actually. I've never heard it outlined in those four ways. And that's what I believe, and that's what I want to take seriously. So inclusion is imagining always a circle of compassion and then imagining nobody standing outside that circle. And so that's the goal. So the goal is kinship. You know, God's dream come true is kinship, connection, know us and them, just us.

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It's about choosing better, and when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the codeTERY at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's CalderaLab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash FINDINGMASTERY. Let's pause here for a minute on these four, okay? The easy answer is that person that hurt me, that person that wronged me, that person that

thinks differently than me. And let's use the more emotional one of the inclusion bit, the us versus them or me versus you, is that I'm thinking of a person right now who was molested at a young age, innocent, by a family practitioner. Innocent, innocent kid. And I don't, I'm not sure how much healing has taken place for this person because the scars are deep, right? The lack of, or the mistrust that

took place. So, and I want to get to the forgiveness piece in a minute, but we'll just hold this person in our consciousness for a minute. It's very easy to say, I don't trust people. At a young age, the people I was supposed to trust were not trustworthy. And then you understand the psychological trauma that I'm working through here. So how do you help that person see inclusion when their psychological safety is built on identifying people that are not safe? Yeah, again, it's how do you get underneath anything, you know? I mean, again, this is why I believe in horrible but not evil, you know? That's a horrible scenario.

Correct. But what's it about? I'll give you an example. A homie, I was speaking to a bunch of judges. It's funny to hear you say homie. Yeah, in Florida. And so a homie texted me, where are you? I'm about to speak to a bunch of judges. And I said, just kind of making conversation textually. And I said, so what should I say to them? And so he writes me back, a guy who's been to prison, who's, you know, doing well now, was in our program. And he goes, well, tell them, you know, don't blame homies for shit that didn't have anything to do with, you know, so it's kind of the notion of I was in the car, but that guy was the one who shot. I didn't even know he had a gun, that kind of thing. Then he texts me again, and he says,

and tell him to throw the book at anyone who is a child predator or molests kids. And I said, I texted him back. I said, does anybody well ever do that? Has anybody well in the history of the world ever done such a thing? Well, you know, they need to be. So we went back and forth. Finally, he kind of said, yeah, I guess not. You know, nobody chooses to be. Again, this gets back to the free will thing, I guess, but nobody wakes up one day and says, this is what I think I'm going to do.

That you know this better than I do, that there's something happening there. I mean, I had two adult nephews who five years years apart from each other, took their own lives. And they had voices telling them to do it. And they inherited it, as nearly as anybody can tell, from their father who died long ago, who inherited it from his father long ago. And not for a single moment did they ever choose, wake up in the morning and say, I think I might try, you know, schizophrenia.

It chose them. And so, and it's helpful in my mind to use them as an example, because find me something, anything, where somebody would choose that kind of illness i don't know how to explain how it chose them or the guy who molests a child yeah so that and they are responsible for their behaviors. Yeah. Right? Yes. And explanation is never an excusing of something. But I don't know how we solve anything if we don't explain it. Yeah. And your explanation is that people are inherently good working together.

Not inherently. I always say unshakable. Unshakable. Because it's a way of kind of saying. Unshakably good. Unshakably good. Not inherently. I always say unshakably. Unshakably. Because it's a way of kind of saying. Unshakably good. Unshakably good. Buddhists sometimes will say there's essential goodness. And even that feels like we're kind of hedging our bets.

That's why I say unshakably. Because it's so wildly full. So unshakably good and can still do atrocious acts. Yeah. Yeah, that's where it gets complicated. It gets complicated in terms of the free will and they're responsible and they're accountable. And so a woman not taking her meds,

homegirl who I've known forever, is smoking meth and she kicks in our front glass door. So the homies there who work there are going, oh, my God, what a lack of respect. And after all you've done for her. And it didn't even wasn't even a blip on my screen in terms of my feeling towards her because she's not taking her meds. She's smoking meth. I know one might say, well, she's responsible to take her meds and not smoke meth.

Okay. But, you know, I didn't take this personally, you know. So is she responsible? Should she be responsible? Should she be responsible? Should she be held accountable? I'm okay with the police driving up and saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, you can't do that, get in the car. I'm okay with that.

I see it more as a timeout for a woman who's not taking her meds and smoking meth. So I don't know. It's kind of a parable for me. It's like, why am I getting upset at this again? Yeah, I think that I can relate to what you just described, you know, and then I have a hard time thinking about people that have been deeply victimized as an innocent person, like the children. It's just like your friend that was telling you, throw the book at him.

I have a hard time getting on with that. And I see that where there's a concern for forgive and forgetting. Like the tension between those two seems, isn't interesting. So let's move into, gosh, let's do the four from Jesus, or the four principles from Jesus one more time to remind me. And then.

Inclusion, nonviolence, unconditional loving kindness, compassionate acceptance. Unconditional loving kindness and compassionate acceptance seem similar to me. They are similar. Yeah. But it's a way of kind of, because it's a lot, Unconditional loving kindness and compassion acceptance seem similar to me. They are similar. Yeah. But it's a way of kind of, because it's a lot, I sort of break it up.

I see. Okay. So what is the difference? Unconditional loving kindness is kind of your stance. And compassionate acceptance is kind of a response. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the unconditional love and kindness

is one of the principles of Buddhism as well. And you're saying, yeah, you know, Buddha and Jesus probably had a lot. Yeah, yeah. Buddha nature is also the unshakable goodness. You know, it's kind of, you're trying to see it. You're trying to find it. Yeah.

Thich Nhat Hanh, one the my mentors that i never got to meet me too oh he was oh yeah yeah yeah oh that's cool yeah yeah that's really cool so and he's got the uh some of the greatest meditations on loving kindness yeah you know for sure and so yeah okay so okay so those four and then let's move into the forgiveness bit here about can we just use that tension between forgive and forget and use that model of the child who was victimized by an adult and the trauma that ensues for both, but certainly for the child in this storyline. You're suggesting that we should forgive forgive and then i'm wondering about the forgetting piss i don't really do the forgetting thing i mean i don't even know what that means you know i have a book that just came out which compilation of stuff from my other books and a showcase for art of this homie who runs our art academy and the title of the book is forgive everyone everything everything

yeah so but but forgive and forget is like i don't even get what forget means why would why would you forget something how could you forget something because that's a protection mechanism to remember that somebody that looked like that smelt like that did this little behavior or this contextual environment. PTSD is not a great name because it's not the post-traumatic experience. It's the reorganization to avoid trauma is what's happening. So there's a reorganization of somebody that says, I'm not going to get traumatized again, so I need to be on high alert. And that high alert nature is looking for the signals of danger always, all the time. So the forgetting piece, I'm glad we're talking about this,

the forgetting piece can be dangerous. But people, I haven't read your manuscript here, forgive, you're saying, no, it's not about forgetting. But forgiving is the act of? Well, see, I don't even... The forgiveness for me is not enough. So, you know, and that comes from this publisher who wanted to put these things together,

and I was giving what we call a thought for the day every morning we have this morning meeting. And then they're online, so he looked at them, and he went, oh, my God, perfect. Let's do this and have a compilation. Anyway, the title of this book comes from a bumper sticker, for God's sakes. And I had pulled up behind this car and it just said, forgive everyone, everything. So then I walked in and it was my turn to do the thought for the day. And I said, well, I just pulled up behind this bumper sticker. So it's like, I kind of don't even believe in it. And people are always saying, well, I just pulled up behind this sticker. So it's like, I kind of don't even

believe in it, and people are always saying, well, talk to us about forgiveness. Here's this book that just came out. Because I always say, don't settle for forgiveness. Hold out for mercy. Mercy is way better. Mercy is God. Mercy is spacious, expansive. It's in a whole other league. And homies who can come to terms with what was done to them. The homie who had, his mom used to put cigarettes out on him and held his head in the toilet and flushed until he nearly drowned. One entire summer, chained him in the backyard like a dog for three months. He was nine, and then he ran away from home. And I remember he joined a gang, and I knew him at 19

when I first met him. He's quite a bit older now, but he was doing well. He had a car. He lived in our shelter, another shelter we had, and had a job. And he said, you know, I want to talk to my mom. I want to call her. I said, are you sure? She's the only mom I got, he says. And this is 10 years. He had never talked to her. He goes into my office. He comes out minutes later, white as a ghost. And this is what the woman who brought him into the world chose to say to him after 10 years of not having spoken to him. She says only this, tu eres basura, you are garbage. And I looked at him and I said, you didn't believe her, did you? He had big tears in his eyes. He said, no, I forgave her. Well, this is about his ability to see, you know, who she was.

He was able to forgive her for having been clearly mentally ill. And he forgave himself for having once been a nine-year-old boy. And we've entered into this world of mercy, which was way bigger than waiting for this woman to apologize, or I don't even know what that means. So that's what people see. And I see the homies do that a lot in their own, you know, growth in seeing and healing that they can say, oh, I can see. Yeah, he did horrible things to me, my father.

But his father did horrible things to him and he was doing the best he could and you know how that goes is it forgiveness i don't know i think it's mercy and it's wholeness and whatever you were clinging to you're now freed from i think there's a a bit of danger in the proposition, which is explaining away behavior, in and of itself could be dangerous. So imagine the typical scenario from an abusive relationship where more often than not it's the man perpetrating on the women, but not always the case. And so the woman says, it's okay, he had a bad day. Yeah, but you have two black eyes. I know, but, you know, he just, it was a really bad day for him. And he said he's not going to do it again.

And I forgive him. And I'm okay with it because he's a good man. He's a good man here. And so I hear that and I go, that's really dangerous. I agree with you. And I think what you're suggesting is I'm hearing is right. But if you're coming from a deep sense of power, just I don't know the better word right now, but there's a power that you are able to work from that you could at the same time say,

I see goodness in him. This behavior is not okay, and I'm leaving the relationship, and I wish you well, right? So there's a different, I think you're suggesting, or what I'm hearing is that when somebody's working from, I call it the inside out, and I think what you're saying is when they see the goodness in themselves and others, and they are the channel, the spirit of the animation of the Holy Spirit. They're able to see God. That you're saying, no, they're going to be fine, because they're going to make choices to take the right steps in the right direction. Yeah, the phrase you used was explaining away, so I don't believe in that. I believe in getting underneath something. And so, but love is as loving when it's clear than when it is affectionate.

So there's a clarity that's saying, I don't see some goodness in you. I see your goodness. You know, otherwise, if it's some goodness in you, then it's, you only have this much. I wish you had that much. You know, it's, I that much. I see your goodness, which is how God sees. God sees goodness. But tell me if I have this wrong. But then there's a clarity to things that says, yeah, you don't get to give me two black eyes, and I'm going to be clear about this. So there's Jessica, you know, OfferMeds, using meth.

I love you so much, kiddo. I can't have you in this building. So we won't banish you. I can't let you in the building because love at this moment is clear. You trigger everybody. You take people to that place. You're violent. Can't let you in. And then, oh, you're going to kick in the door. We are going to call the cops because you don't get to do that. If this doesn't touch your goodness, I see your goodness. I know who you are.

I've never had to carry what you've had to carry. I'm not explaining away anything. I'm clear-eyed about who you are, and I feel so heartbroken that you have to carry this. I stand in awe at what you have to carry and what you've endured throughout your life. And you can't hurt people here. We're going to kind of not let you do that. That's a love. So it's like loving parents who say, we love you so much, but you're not taking your meds and you're scaring your siblings

and I can't have you stay in the house or you're smoking meth or whatever it is. People call it tough love, which I think is, I don't agree with. I call it clear. Clear is good. Clear is loving. And we hope you'll walk through that door marked recovery and we'll do anything to help you walk through it. But only you can walk through it.

And here's the clarity of this moment. You can't live here while you're doing that. I see why you're successful at building a sanctuary within people and a physical sanctuary where people can come to. I see why you have been able to make a tremendous impact. Any complex social dilemma requires a safe place. That's right. And then people need to be seen and then they need to be cherished. And so if it's true that a traumatized person is going to probably cause trauma, it has to be true that a cherished person is going to find their way to the joy there is in

cherishing themselves and other people. Does that always happen? Always. Any exceptions? No. But it's hard work because there's the temptation to banish when people are coloring outside the lines. So you're clear, but you're also, you know, you have a wide berth, you know, where you can say, it's okay. You colored outside the lines. But I'm in your corner till the wheels fall off. Amazing. It all comes down to, how do you finish that thought? It all comes down to, you know, loving as we are loved, you know, so you try to be in the world who God is, and the God who loves us without measure and without regret. And so that's the goal. But you have to see as God does. So the minute you draw lines, then you forget that God is only about erasing them. And so it's hard. It's, again,

it's not hard to do. It's hard to remember to do. So you, you know, that's why you practice. That's why you cherish with every breath you take, which is exceedingly hard, not because that act is hard, but because to not getting caught up in the things that, the rabbit holes that take us every which way. But it's about seeing. It's not about I want to be a better person tomorrow than I was yesterday because then it's measuring. And I think our God wonders what's all the measurement about. I want to be a better person tomorrow than I was yesterday. Because then it's measuring. And I think our God wonders what's all the measurement about.

I love this conversation. Well, me too. I like being with you. This is good. Yeah. Thank you for the wisdom that you present with and the way that you share your ideas. And thank you for being a Los Angeles citizen and the work you've done here to make our communities better. Thank you.

Yeah. Appreciate you. Sure. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of finding mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're

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