Father Greg Boyle visited Creighton’s campus on Tuesday, Oct. 25to give a stirring talk on the necessity of kinship. He is the author of “Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion.”
He began his talk with a call to go out to the borders of society, to the marginalized, to reach out and stand with them until the boundaries disappear. This call to inclusion was one of the themes of the presentation, and one that became abundantly clear as he told stories of the beginnings of Homeboy Industries.
Homeboy Industries began with the Dolores Mission, the poorest and most gang-ridden parish in Los Angeles, Cali.
Fr. Boyle was a pastor there starting in 1986, and by 1988, after burying too many young gang members, he worked alongside those in his parish to create what was then known as “Jobs for a Future.”
As Fr. Boyle recounts, Homeboy Industries has grown to be more than an employment provider for gang members, it is a bakery, café, grocer, diner and merchandiser. Alongside these opportunities for employment, it also provides legal, educational, mental health programs and a tattoo removal option. Homeboy Industries currently handles over eighteen million dollars per year in services and goods provided.
Homeboy Industries stands out in a number of ways, but so does Fr. Boyle. He was completely at ease as he spoke, and entirely unapologetic as he recounted jokes and facts about his vocation.
He slips into Spanish with ease as he tells stories and comfortably refers to the gang members as “homies.” He was equally at ease telling stories of unspeakable violence done unto gang members, just as he could follow it up with tales of visually frightening gang members being petrified as they fly or retelling jokes from rival gang members.
Throughout all the anecdotes, there were common themes: mutuality, inclusion and kinship. He never failed to relate everything back to how we should all seek to include those who are demonized at the edges of society. He spoke about the falsity that “there’s us and there’s them,”saying there are no true boundaries, just differences created by a lack of hope.
At several points throughout the speech, he seemed to turn the focus to the audience, saying, “Creighton is not the place you go to, it is the place you come from.”
He used this call to remind the audience of the value of Jesuit education, of the opportunities to go out to the boundaries, to stand with the marginalized and learn and grow with them.
Even though this was a call to the Creighton community, the audience that night was more than Creighton students, faculty and staff. Families and individuals from the Omaha community came to hear him speak. In total, over five hundred people attended this presentation.
MJ Kirk, the Creighton In Common coordinator for Program Board, worked closely with Jake Wiesenthal, the Vice President for Programming in order to facilitate Father Boyle’s time at Creighton.
Kirk spoke to the enthusiasm that the coordinators had, saying, “When we bring speakers like this to campus we want everyone to get the benefit of whoever the speaker is, so being able to see that…was awesome.”