Barking To The Choir Quotes

What if we ceased to pledge our allegiance to the bottom line and stood, instead, with those who line the bottom?

believe that God protects me from nothing but sustains me in everything.

How can someone take my advantage when I’m giving it?

Homeboy receives people; it doesn’t rescue them. In being received rather than rescued, gang members come to find themselves at home in their own skin.

For unless love becomes tenderness—the connective tissue of love—it never becomes transformational. The tender doesn’t happen tomorrow . . . only now.

Paradise is not a place that awaits our arrival but a present we arrive at.

Living the gospel, then, is less about “thinking outside the box” than about choosing to live in this ever-widening circle of inclusion.

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.

The discovery that awaits us is that paradise is contained in the here and now.

Human beings are settlers, but not in the pioneer sense. It is our human occupational hazard to settle for little. We settle for purity and piety when we are being invited to an exquisite holiness. We settle for the fear-driven when love longs to be our engine. We settle for a puny, vindictive God when we are being nudged always closer to this wildly inclusive, larger-than-any-life God. We allow our sense of God to atrophy. We settle for the illusion of separation when we are endlessly asked to enter into kinship with all.

Our culture is hostile only to the inauthentic living of the gospel. It sniffs out hypocrisy everywhere and knows when Christians aren’t taking seriously, what Jesus took seriously. It is, by and large, hostile to the right things. It actually longs to embrace the gospel of inclusion and nonviolence, of compassionate love and acceptance. Even atheists cherish such a prospect.

Moral outrage is the opposite of God; it only divides and separates what God wants for us, which is to be united in kinship. Moral outrage doesn't lead us to solutions - it keeps us from them. It keeps us from moving forward toward a fuller, more compassionate response to members of our community who belong to us, no matter what they've done.

See how they love one another.” Not a bad gauge of health. “There was no needy person among them.” A better metric would be hard to find. There is one line that stopped me in my tracks: “And awe came upon everyone.” It would seem that, quite possibly, the ultimate measure of health in any community might well reside in our ability to stand in awe at what folks have to carry rather than in judgment at how they carry it.

But I know, with all the certainty of my being, that Jesus has no interest in my doing this. To just say, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, I'm your biggest fan," causes him to stare at his watch, tap his feet, and order a double Glenlivet on the rocks with a twist. Fandom is of no interest to Jesus. What matters to him is the authentic following of a disciple. We all settle for saying, "Jesus," but Jesus wants us to be in the world who he is.

Generosity in Buddhism is to be relieved of the “stain of stinginess.

Our culture is hostile only to the inauthentic living of the gospel.

God was—and is—in the heartbreak and in the insight born of sadness, and in the arms that wrap around our grief.

First, picture the forest. I want you to be its conscience, the eyes in the trees. The trees are columns of slick, brindled bark like muscular animals overgrown beyond all reason. Every space is filled with life: delicate, poisonous frogs war-painted like skeletons, clutched in copulation, secreting their precious eggs onto dripping leaves. Vines strangling their own kin in the everlasting wrestle for sunlight. The breathing of monkeys. A glide of snake belly on branch. A single-file army of ants biting a mammoth tree into uniform grains and hauling it down to the dark for their ravenous queen. And, in reply, a choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. This forest eats itself and lives forever.

Hafez wrote: Slipping on my shoes, boiling water, toasting bread, buttering the sky, That should be enough contact With God in one day To make everyone “crazy.

But the work one does seeks to align our lives with God’s longing for us—that we be happy, joyful, and liberated from all that prevents us from seeing ourselves as God does.

Thomas Wolfe, in You Can’t Go Home Again, writes, “To lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.

Personally, I don’t think he wants so much for us to wave palm fronds at his authority, but rather to locate our own—to be not so astonished at Jesus’s authority but to live astonishingly, inhabiting our own power to live as he would.

Oscar Romero wrote: “A church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed—what gospel is that?

Humility returns the center of gravity to the center. It addresses the ego clinging, which supplies oxygen to our suffering. It calls for a light grasp. For the opposite of clinging is not letting go but cherishing. This is the goal of the practice of humility. That having a “light grasp” on life prepares the way for cherishing what is right in front of us.

After all, nothing depends on how things turn out—only on how you see them when they happen.

Moral outrage is the opposite of God;

Gregory Boyle’s Barking at the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship,

We settle for the look of holiness rather than the likes of it.

Our sense of God always beckons us us to grow, to reimagine something wildly more breathtaking than where our imagination generally takes us.

Now is always vast and new. Like any practice, it’s not about technique or program. It’s a decision.

It’s about all of us wanting to stand where he stands and to include as he does. It is less about what it is we are to do at the margins, and more about what will happen to us if we stand there.

For the opposite of clinging is not letting go but cherishing. This is the goal of the practice of humility. That having a “light grasp” on life prepares the way for cherishing what is right in front of us.

The God who always wants to clean the slate is hard to believe. Yet the truth about God is that God is too good to be true. And whenever human beings bump into something too good to be true, we decide it’s not true.

seek to “save” and “contribute” and “give back” and “rescue” folks and EVEN “make a difference,” then it is all about you . . . and the world stays stuck. The homies are not waiting to be saved. They already are. The

[...] But then he adds quickly, "You know what I do when I'm low on faith?" I shake my head and lean in. My faith's gas tank has been known to hover at "E", so I wanted to know. "I stand right here and I look at them mountains," he says. "I stare at the blue sky and white clouds. I breathe in this clean air." He demonstrates all of this. "Then I say to myself, 'God did this.'" He turns to me, with some emotion and a surfeit of peace. "And I know everything will be all right.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark As human gods aim for their marks Made everything from toy guns that sparks To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark It's easy to see without looking too far That not much Is really sacred. While preachers preach of evil fates Teachers teach that knowledge waits Can lead to hundred-dollar plates Goodness hides behind its gates But even the President of the United States Sometimes must have To stand naked. An' though the rules of the road have been lodged It's only people's games that you got to dodge And it's alright, Ma, I can make it. Advertising signs that con you Into thinking you're the one That can do what's never been done That can win what's never been won Meantime life outside goes on All around you. Although the masters make the rules For the wise men and the fools I got nothing, Ma, to live up to. For them that must obey authority That they do not respect in any degree Who despite their jobs, their destinies Speak jealously of them that are free Cultivate their flowers to be Nothing more than something They invest in. While some on principles baptized To strict party platforms ties Social clubs in drag disguise Outsiders they can freely criticize Tell nothing except who to idolize And then say God Bless him. While one who sings with his tongue on fire Gargles in the rat race choir Bent out of shape from society's pliers Cares not to come up any higher But rather get you down in the hole That he's in. Old lady judges, watch people in pairs Limited in sex, they dare To push fake morals, insult and stare While money doesn't talk, it swears Obscenity, who really cares Propaganda, all is phony. While them that defend what they cannot see With a killer's pride, security It blows the minds most bitterly For them that think death's honesty Won't fall upon them naturally Life sometimes Must get lonely. And if my thought-dreams could been seen They'd probably put my head in a guillotine But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.

Hafez gives us this image: “God and I have become like two giant fat people living in a tiny boat. We keep bumping into each other and laughing.” This feels like the pulse of God to me—to be loved like a rock, forever, unchanging, and as solid as can be. We need to let ourselves be bumped into and loved by the Fat Man. God hopes that the laughing will be contagious.

It would seem that God created an “otherness” so that we could find our way in mutuality to kinship. Margins manufactured by God, perhaps, so that we’d dedicate our lives to their erasure. We are charged not with obliterating our diversity and difference but instead with heightening our connection to each other. As it says in the Qur’an: “I create diverse tribes, so that you might come to know each other.” And, to come running.

Some people say, “God is good, and God has a plan for you.” I believe that God is good but also that God is too busy loving me to have a plan for me. Like a caring parent, God receives our childlike painting of a tree—usually an unrecognizable mess—and delights in it. God doesn’t hand it back and say, “Come back when it looks more like a tree” or tell us how to improve it. God simply delights in us. Like the kid at probation camp after confession: “You mean you just sealed my record?” The God who always wants to clean the slate is hard to believe. Yet the truth about God is that God is too good to be true. And whenever human beings bump into something too good to be true, we decide it’s not true.

I believe that God protects me from nothing but sustains me in everything.

The opposite of clinging is not letting go but cherishing.

Tattoos on the Heart: The

Another friend has a mantra, “Be fearless for me.” He uses this often as a prayer to fill the empty spaces in the between times. Choosing to be fearless for the other awakens in us a courageous heart and fosters a selflessness where true joy is born.

He was fearless for them. He saw the grip of terror holding these guys, and he reached in and untangled the knot as deftly and selflessly as I’d ever seen. His generosity dissolved all fear and let love fill the void. Let’s build a cathedral on this spot.

As a church, as the Choir, we must stop at nothing to find our joy. Not in a ruthless, cutthroat way but in a way that is genuine and determined. We choose joy in all its constant delighting. After all, there is no group more practiced at fretting and worry than human beings. Delighting is a real

I, for one, never knew arm span equaled height. For our true height in love, it seems, is measured in how expansively we can outstretch our arms, with generosity and love. Sometimes there are lessons learned at the margins that can’t

I will not leave you as orphans” is not just supposed to fill us with consolation but to be received as an invitation. It seems to say, As I won’t leave you an orphan, don’t you leave anyone behind. We are meant to hear in these words a call to seek out the isolated, the rejected, the abandoned. Then we are meant to walk toward them, with open arms, and bring them in to the

There are two hundred references in Scripture that ask us to take special care of the poor. I’m guessing, then, it’s important. It is this preferential care and love for the poor that sets the stage for the original program. It doesn’t draw lines—it erases them. It rises above the polarizing temperature of our times. It doesn’t shake its finger at anybody but instead helps us all put our finger on it.

suppose, if God is conservative or liberal, but I think that’s the wrong question. Instead we should ask: Is God expansive or tiny? Is God spacious or shallow? Is God inclusive or exclusive? What are the chances that God holds the same tiny point of view as I do? Well, zero. The Choir aims to challenge the politics of fear and the stances that limit our sense of God. It believes that a love-driven set of priorities will ignite our own goodness and reveal our innate nobility, which God so longs to show us. It invites us to inch the

When the gospel connects with our hearts and we find ourselves on the “outskirts,” those on the margins may wonder what we’re doing there. They aren’t accustomed to our presence in their space. In the end, though, the measure of our compassion with what Martin Luther King calls “the last, the least, and the lost” lies less in our service of those on the margins, and more in our willingness to see ourselves in kinship with them. It speaks of a kinship

The essence of our credibility lies not in our rescuing or saving the poor but rather by humbly surrendering to their leadership and listening to them.

I’m sorry,” I said. “ ‘Dem Genesis days’?” “Yeah . . . cuz God woulda BEEN HAD . . . struck yo ass down already by now.” In unison, we fell out of our chairs laughing, defying anyone to identify exactly who here is the “service provider” and who is the “service recipient.” It’s mutual.

I was not aware that I had saved any lives—I remain utterly convinced that my life has been saved, repeatedly, by the homies. When I need patience, the homies save me from my impatience. When I lack courage, they rescue me from my cowardice. And when I am completely convinced of the rightness of my position, the homies douse me with a big ol’ bucket of humility. Days don’t go by without them saving me. I told the interviewer that I thought “saving lives was for the Coast Guard.

Certainly, if we live in the past, we will be depressed. If we live in the future, we are guaranteed anxiety. Now is always fast and new. Like any practice, it's not about technique or program. It's a decision.

If they embark on a journey to turn their lives around, homies become accustomed to speaking of paths. "I used to walk the bad path,"one might say, "but now I'm on the good path."it's a natural thing to say, but I don't think there are two paths. There's only the good journey. We are never on any other path but that one. There are obstacles along the way of the good journey, of course:ruts and gulches and seemingly insurmountable impasses requiring logs laid across the ravine over which we gingerly walk. At times we get stuck in mud or even quicksand on this path, but it is one journey and it is good inasmuch as in beckons us toward the God who calls us who only wants us to be drawn forward.

Every single moment of our lives asks us to be charmed, captivated, enticed, thrilled, and pleased. We don’t wait for such moments to fall out of the sky; we just put ourselves on high alert to catch these moments as they happen. After all, like certain bodily functions, discovering the holy in all things is indeed a process. It is also an impulse, like smiling, which does not await the arrival of joy but actually precedes and hastens it. Being alert to the sacred in our midst is a choice that gets more meaningful as we practice it.

It is our human occupational hazard to settle for little.

The kinship of God won't come unless we shake things up- to bark up the wrong tree, amd to propose something new.

We want to live our lives "out loud"- for all the world to see- not with the volume cracked high but with our lives speaking for themselves.

We are at our healthiest when we are most situated in awe, and at our least healthy when we engage in judgment. Judgment creates the distance that moves us away from each other. Judgment keeps us in the competitive game and is always self-aggrandizing. Standing at the margins with the broken reminds us not of our own superiority but of our own brokenness. Awe is the great leveler. The

Readying oneself for awe, at every turn, insists that compassion is always the answer to the question before us. A

Our practice of awe empties a room, and suddenly there is space for expansive compassion. “Walk in my presence,” God says to Abraham, “and be without blame.

We are forever fretting over things we think ruffle God’s feathers. God is not feathered, though.

I look her in the eyes. We are both crying. We gaze at each other for a very long time. “Lety,” I begin, “I swear to you, IF I get to heaven and you’re not there . . . I’m not stayin’.

Generosity in Buddhism is to be relieved of the “stain of stinginess.” God thinks there is plenty to go around. Before

telling a story and approaching the climax, he wants to say “And lo and behold” but says instead “And holy befold.” I never correct him, because his version

On the mountain tonight the full moon faces the full sun. Now could be the moment when we fall apart or we become whole. Our time seems to be up—I think I even hear it stopping. Then why have we kept up the singing for so long? Because that’s the sort of determined creature we are. Before us, our first task is to astonish, And then, harder by far, to be astonished. —Galway Kinnell

We live admits a universe soaked in grave that invites us to savor it.

order). It isn’t simply that being poor means having less money than the privileged; it’s that being poor means living in a continual state of acute crisis. This is what they have to lug around every day. The poor are always one straw away from calamity and catastrophe.

The Buddha teaches that life is only available in the here and now. Jesus doesn’t teach differently. We hold out for happiness, healing, transformation, always awaiting a few more conditions that need to be met. This is one of the reasons why happiness eludes us in the now: we still think it’s around the corner.

Paradise is not a place that awaits our arrival but a present we arrive at. A place, in fact, we are already in. When we expect that moment, we grow more confident that we will be “tooken on a ride” to see it. How many chances a day are we given to recognize this—an opportunity to practice sacred presence?

And, as I have done in every oral exam I’ve ever taken, Artie, extemporizing confidently, explained: “Well, it’s a disiac . . . with a mean-ass fro.” The guys in the backseat nodded their heads. You learn something new every day.

Scripture reminds us, constantly, that we are meant not to wait for salvation but to watch for it today. Heaven, then, is not a promise we await but a practice we fully engage in. What is entirely available to us is the Kingdom of God, or what the Buddhists call “Pure Land.

All I have in my system is hope,” he says. “I will test positive for that.

A loving heart doesn’t color your world like rose-colored glasses; it alters it. William James wrote, “The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.

never seen anything so able to defuse a burst of violence or the spewing of hate or the indifference to those in pain than love shown in a kind word, gesture, stance, and presence. It is a way of being possible only in the present moment. Like the gentle rocking of a colicky baby, loving-kindness, as the homies say, “kicks in.

I asked how he could, and he said, simply, “If you’re humble, you’ll never stumble.” Another catchphrase

Mystics ask God to remind them that they are nothing. This is irritating to the ego’s need for self-importance. Holy men and women knew that it was precisely the “smallness” that gave way to favored entrance into kinship. Juan

It is liberating to be brought back to one’s insignificance. We are allowed to abandon the pretense that we are more than we are and find comfort in knowing that we are enough. We hand over our self-dramatizing intensity and the need to get the seat of honor and find the thrill that is in our “place”—in the last row and worst seat.

To move forward, homies must make a choice to no longer be a victim of their own anger. They befriend their wound to keep them from despising their woundedness. “Keep your loneliness warm,” Thich Nhat Hanh tells us. Our brokenness is meant to be kept close.

No, I wasn’t competing with him.” A tear trails down his cheek. “I was connecting with him.

already knew that in my speech I wouldn’t be thanking Jesus. This is not because he is less important to me or my life. But I know, with all the certainty of my being, that Jesus has no interest in my doing this. To just say, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, I’m your biggest fan,” causes him to stare at his watch, tap his feet, and order a double Glenlivet on the rocks with a twist. Fandom is of no interest to Jesus. What matters to him is the authentic following of a disciple. We all settle for saying, “Jesus,” but Jesus wants us to be in the world who he is.