Greg Boyle Quotes

Mother Teresa diagnosed the world's ills in this way: we've just "forgotten that we belong to each other." Kinship is what happens to us when we refuse to let that happen.

Teilhard de Chardin wrote that we must "trust in the slow work of God." Ours is a God who waits. Who are we not to? It takes what it takes for the great turnaround. Wait for it.

It is an essential tenet of Buddhism that we can begin to change the world by first changing how we look at the world.

For no amount of our screaming at the people in charge to change things can change them... the powers bent on waging war against the poor and the young and the "other" will only be moved to kinship when they observe it.

On most days, if I'm true to myself, I just want to share my life with the poor, regardless of result. I want to lean into the challenge of intractable problems with as tender a heart as I can locate, knowing that there is some divine ingenuity here, "the slow work of God," that gets done if we're faithful.

There is no force in the world better able to alter anything from its course than love. Ruskin's comment that you can get someone to remove his coat more surely with a warm, gentle sun than with a cold, blistering wind is particularly apt.

I steep in the utter fullness of not wanting to have anyone else's life but my own.

St. Paul challenges us to "dedicate ourselves to thankfulness" and so I will.

Jesus says, "You are the light of the world." I like even more what Jesus doesn't say. He does not say, "One day, if you are more perfect and try really hard, you'll be light." He doesn't say, "If you play by the rules, cross your T's and dot your I's, then maybe you'll become light." No. He says, straight out, "You are light." It is the truth of who you are, waiting only for you to discover it. So, for God's sake, don't move. No need to contort yourself to be anything other than who you are.

To embrace the strategy of Jesus is to be engaged in what Dean Brackley calls "downward mobility." Our locating ourselves with those who have been endlessly excluded becomes an act of visible protest. For no amount of our screaming at the people in charge to change things can change them. The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them. The trickle-down theory doesn't really work here. The powers bent on waging war against the poor and the young and the "other" will only be moved to kinship when they observe it. Only when we can see a community where the outcast is valued and appreciated will we abandon the values that seek to exclude.

Leon Dufour, a world-renowned Jesuit theologian and Scripture scholar, a year before he died at ninety-nine, confided in a Jesuit who was caring for him, "I have written so many books on God, but after all that, what do I really know? I think, in the end, God is the person you're talking to, the one right in front of you." I mantra I use often, to keep me focused in delight on the person in front of me, comes from an unlikely place. Richard Rolheiser writes that, "the opposite of depression is not happiness, it's delight." After all, we breathe in the Spirit that delights in our being. We don't breathe in the Spirit that just sort of puts up with our mess. It's about delight.

I find consolation in a no doubt apocryphal story of Pope John XXIII. Apparently at night he'd pray: "I've done everything I can today for your church. But it's your Church, and I'm going to bed.

Apparently, FDR had a sign on his desk that read: "Let unconquerable gladness dwell." Our search to know what's on God's mind ends in the discovery of this same unconquerable gladness.

A cherished person is going to find their way to the joy of cherishing themselves and others.

If you don't transform your pain, you're going to continue to transmit it and inflict it.... The first step in anybody's transformation is a safe place.

Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, Father Greg Boyle

All things are inventions of holiness -- some more rascally than others.