no small Endeavor is brought to you by Progressive Insurance what if comparing car insurance rates was as easy as putting on your favorite podcast with Progressive it is just visit the progressive website to quote with all the coverages you want you'll see Progressive's direct rate then their tool will provide options from other companies so you can compare all you need to do is choose the rate and coverage you like quote today at progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive Progressive casual insurance company and Affiliates comparison rates not available in all states or situations prices vary based on how you buy Hello friends Lee camp this is no small Endeavor this is our unabridged interview with Father Greg Bole father Bole is a Catholic priest in Los Angeles California he's the founder of Homeboy Industries the world's largest gang member Intervention Program this interview I did with Greg we were live together here in Nashville I think it's one of my favorite interviews of all that we've gotten to do it's just so beautiful and he was such a lovely human being is such a lovely human being and I hope you find this as moving as I did enjoy when you're committed to improving more lives in more ways it helps to have a big family of care to back you up TriStar health shows up for you with the experts technology and resources to deliver treatments and Care personalized for you whenever wherever you need them find a location near you at TriStar health.com father Greg Bo is the founder and director of Homeboy Industries the world's largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program former pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles a native Angelino and Jesuit priest from 1986 to 1992 father Bo served as pastor of dores Mission Church in Bole Heights which was then the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles that also had the highest concentration of gang activity in the city he witnessed the devastating impact of gang violence on his community during the so-called decade of death death that began in the late 1980s and peaked at 1,000 Gang Related killings in 1992 in the face of law enforcement tactics and criminal justice policies of suppression and mass incarceration as the means to end gang violence he and Parish and community members adopted what was a radical Approach at that time to treat gang members as human beings in 1988 they started what would eventually become Homeboy Industries which employs and trains former gang members in range of social Enterprises as well as provides critical services to thousands of men and women who walk through his do every year seeking a better life he's also the author of the 2010 New York Times bestselling tattoos on the heart and his new book barking to the choir published in 2017 welcome father Bole it's good to be with you it's great to have you here with us here in Nashville Tennessee away from home in the west coast yeah um grateful to have you here with us today you um have been at homeboy well or at least you've been at this work in Los Angeles for quite a while now and uh would you tell us a little bit about kind of how homeboy industry started and your ministry started there well I uh was pastor of the poorest Parish in the city as you mentioned and uh so that was 37 years ago that I first arrived so uh though homeboy is 33 years old I was kind of working with gang members prior to that but I was kind of forced to I mean it wasn't I never set out to do anything and then you um you know first thing we did was we started a school because we had so many middle uh School junior high age gang members who no school wanted them so once they got the boot they were wreaking havoc in the projects and they were uh riding on the walls and violent and selling drugs so so I went out to them and I'd say hey you know if I found a a school that would take you would you go and and they said uh yes uh but the main impetus was the fact that I was burying kids so 1988 I buried my first and on Saturday I buried my uh 249th and then I on Thursday upcoming I'll bury my 250th so um that was a kind of a a wakeup call for us as a parish because then it started to become a quite intense eight funerals in a 3-week period all Gang Related homicide so um so that was tough so we started a jobs program and you know and then started Enterprises you know businesses because we couldn't find enough felony friendly and employers so uh I take it from some of the stories you tell that it was not necessarily welcome by all in the neighborhood when you started well you know look back it's hard to retrieve how hostile The Wider Community was towards homeboy and the notion of it um so the first 10 years were death threats bomb threats hate mail never from gang members CU we always represented hope to them but but be you know kind of fueled a lot by law enforcement many of the anonymous letters were I'm a police officer I'm a sheriff we hate you you know you're part of the problem you're not part of the solution which always seemed sort of confounding to me because it was abundantly clear to anybody close to the ground that if you you know invested in them or you engaged them in a positive way they weren't uh participating in anything negative and yet they had so been demonized they were the enemy so the friend of our enemy is our enemy and so that became untenable for folks but you know the the good news is that's a memory that's hard to retrieve so it's almost you know over it's been 20 years since that's been so pervasive in Los Angeles which is to say I think that homeboy has helped shift how people see what if we were smart on crime rather than just tough in addition to the that memory being harder to retrieve are there other kind of things as you look back um either about the Venture of Homeboy Industries or maybe in the unfolding of your own life there there are surprises to you or that you have to kind of remind yourself of that oh yeah this is the way things have unfolded for me well you know in the early days because we had eight gangs that were at War with each other so my whole being in the evening was on my big black beach cruiser patrolling so I would go to all I'd visit all eight gangs before I went to bed sometimes this was wow you know till after midnight you know and and it was a kind of a it was I don't know a calming kind of thing where they'd see me and it we'd talk and why don't you go inside and you don't live here I'll come back with my car and I'll take you home or put that Uzi down or you sure you want to shoot that guy you know that kind of thing and so in the early days I would do peace treaties trues and ceas fires and and I always say I don't regret that I did that and I would never do it again you know it was one of those things in retrospect you see that uh though on paper it's kind of the outsider view driving the inside of what we ought to be doing so you you you think oh this is what we should be doing kind of Northern Ireland Middle East let's get the Waring parties to sit down huge mistake because it's it it serves the cohesion of the gang which is not a good thing and it supplies oxygen to to gang life equally not a good thing so so I look back on that I go yeah I it was a natural thing now people still do it all over the country and they still try they still think that gang violence is about conflict resolution but there is no conflict in in gang violence there's violence but there's it's not about anything it's not a conflict so you can't sit the parties down which is always a kind of a misconception that people have you know so the notion of it giving oxygen to gang gang mentality your gang identity is simply that I understand you'd be saying that when you sit them at a table or invite them to a table as gang members that's reifying that gang identity absolutely and at homeboy we now say we don't work with gangs we work with gang members interesting and we don't recruit or cajo or coax and everybody knows where we are we call it the you know the magic of The Swinging Doors you know you you open that front door well welcome welcome at ticker tape parade we they come in and and a homie said there's an aroma you know and it's you know it's the whole talk about the kingdom it's about kinship and connection and and U people immediately tasting beloved belonging and then wanting that but we don't try to uh you know go out to anybody it because it's like rehab you know we don't exist for those who need help it's only for those who want it so it doesn't work if if you don't freely walk in the door having said that they're all on a Continuum of of Readiness you know it's it's always like an AA meeting you know like who's there somebody who's 20 years sober somebody who's 20 minutes sober and somebody who's drunk but he's there yeah you know and it's at that kind of fluid um you know Continuum and and spectrum is is a thing that always happens and and do you think then that the you use the word Addiction and you've alluded to AA so do you see um attachment to gang identity as an attachment or as an addiction it kind of is you know in as much as uh you know the opposite of addiction is community and so the opposite of uh you know Community will always Trump gang life once they have a taste of it you know and but it's all part of the longing of people everybody is born wanting the same thing so you uh once they kind of discover that but it it in it in recovery it takes What It Takes yeah and in gang recovery it's the same thing it can be the birth of a son the death of a friend a stretch in prison it takes what it takes you know but no amount of me wanting that guy to have a life will ever be the same as that guy wanting to have one so so you have to I you know I always say ours is a God who Waits and you know and who are we not to so you wait for people it's frustrating because you would like to accelerate you know people's uh feeling cherished and nurtured and accelerate the healing yeah but it's uh it's the same as I I don't know how else you can do it except to wait for people to show up and and to be as attractive you say in your most recent book that um you were angrier when you were younger that you shook your fist a lot um what precipitated a change in you in that regard well you know I I think part of it was I was burying so many kids in that uh and you know and there was a kind of a you know a killing of Karen tsima who was killed Westwood which is where UCLA is and it's uh kind of a shishi Fufu neighborhood you know it's where you'd go to movies and nice dinner that kind of thing and she got she was a graphic artist and was on a date and got caught in the crossfire um in gang Crossfire and she was killed and then suddenly you know it was a $25,000 reward all these detectives were dropped from lots of cases and assigned to this one and um you know police presence was intensified and and the reward was offered for information that would lead to the arrest and conviction of whoever did this now at that juncture that was kind of the climate and at that moment I was burying eight kids in 3-we Period and and and it was clear that one life in Westwood was worth you know the 35 I had buried you know at that point and so so you wanted their lives to matter you know and so but that was a different time for me you know I I suspect I was um you you know you get indignant when you're younger you know and uh and you don't want to settle for moral outrage when when you should hold out for moral compass and they're not the same you know IM moral say say that again that's so helpful well you know it's you know moral outrage is kind of where we get stuck you know where we shake our Fist and and and the hard truth of moral outrage is when I am outraging it's about me it's self- congratulatory it strikes a high moral distance between me and others and that's we settle for moral outrage but we ought to hold out for for moral compass so so moral Outreach uh points things out but moral compass points the way you you know you want to be able to point the way you want to say over here but let's imagine this and and then it you insist on the undering principles that are so essential we belong to each other and every single human being is unshakably good and that's where I begin and once you kind of you once you start there then you can uh you won't fall prey to uh the seduction of moral compass that just has you shaking a fist and basically not just denouncing something but but uh insisting that it be about me it it's subtle I think but wow it's it's U it's terribly helpful distinction um you pointed right there to one of the themes that recurs repeatedly in your public speeches and in your writing that of kinship um how how does that would you describe how that functions for you in your in thinking about your work and and doing your work yeah I you know you don't go to the margins to make a difference you go to the margins so that the folks at the margins make you different and so then it it it ushers in this kind of Exquisite mutuality you know I I I remember there was a woman I was at a conference in uh Rome and we had this kind of Social Justice Conference or something and we were in small groups and and this woman with great sadness said that uh that she had left um work with refugees really undeniably difficult work and she felt guilty about doing that and then she said I think you know there were some moments of joy and then she proceeded to talk about successes you know outcomes measurable things and I thought ah she's mistaking success uh for joy and they're really quite different and so the essential piece of kinship is to is to you know purify your narratives a little bit you know so if you and and you nobody has ever attended a graduation ceremony that didn't say you know go and make a difference yeah but make a difference is is really about if I'm there to make a difference then it's about me if I'm there to rescue save or fix then it's about me and if the principle is it can't be about you so the gospel when Jesus says it's really hard for rich people to enter the kingdom well you know it's it it's not about bank accounts you know it's about um humility and that the kind of the the understanding of Jesus of Rich folks is that there's not a lot of humility it's really huous and and so can you receive people and there was a homie I met met in Houston who a gang member work doing hardcore gang intervention in the streets of Houston and he said how do you reach them you know he kind of pleaded with me after a talk how do you reach them meaning gang members and and I said well for starters stop trying to reach them you know can you be reached by them now that's a whole other stance that's different that's not I'm going to go make peace I'm going to enter into relational wholeness with people that's hugely uh mutual and I'm going to only begin and only do one thing which is I'm going to allow my heart to be altered I'm going to be reached by this person I'm going to receive um when I took this course from uh Henry nowan at at Harvard Divinity you know I remember a woman asked him what is Ministry anyway and he was quite frustrated with the question he said can you receive people he said that's it can you receive people which again feels so passive if were it not for the fact that uh it's the most liberating thing yeah for somebody to be received yeah and well when you say somewhere that you you think that um you've decided that key to all this is simply the practice of showing up that um showing up and receiving people's yeah yeah it feels it feels like you know you're you're not making something happen yeah that you're not making a difference so when which is why people burn out you know because it's about them yeah and they're trying to fix and save but if if it's about the other and if all you do is love being loving and you receive people and you allow yourself to be reached in heart altered then it's eternally replenishing you will never burn out I mean it's kind of the key and uh and I think that's an important thing especially in ministry as people want to serve is is you know it's hard to enter into kinship with people if if it's about you or if it's about hubris rather than humbly accepting people where they are I love the story I've heard you tell about um I think you call him Mario perhaps on a trip back to Gonzaga um which you which I think exhibits so well this this um kinship and unexpected kinship would would you be willing to share it's funny it's um stories you know you kind of retire them you know and you don't tell them for a long time but but I remember he was quite panicked uh we went to uh he and another guy and we were going to go to my alma M where they had forced the incoming freshman class to read my book against their will and so um he I you know I've taken endless endless homies with me on trips and and they're all kind of panicky you know but I've never seen anybody like this we were at Burbank Airport which is kind of small and it's one of those tarmac uh airports you don't no Breezeway there's no Breezeway you have to walk out on the tarmac and climb the stairs to board and and he was like hyperventilating and and I almost had to go find a bag that he could breathe in and and uh and I I remember I saw the pilot and two uh flight attendance and they all had their hands filled with no I I'm I'm sorry I there was the just two flight attendants female flight attendants and they both had Starbucks coffees and they were slepping up the steps and and Mario with great desperation when are we going to board the plane and and I pointed at the flight attend as soon as they sober up the pilots um we'll be able to get on the plane and then I remember I walked him around the uh the airport and uh he and this is saying something cuz we get about 50 15,000 folks a year walk through our doors he's the most tattooed individual who has ever worked there which is saying a lot I mean he his arms are all sleeved out to his fingertips neck blackened with tattoos entire face covered in tattoos so I'm walking them through the airport trying to calm him down and I was just startled at how people would you know clutch their kids more closely and step away and I thought wow because to this day he still works there um if you were to walk in and ask anybody who's the kindest most gentle soul here they wouldn't say me they would say Mario and the day won't ever come that I have more courage or I am closer to God than this guy so we get to Gonzaga and and I remember they gave you know they never T they have the big talk you know on on the evening of Tuesday evening or something but what they don't tell you is they have all these classrooms that you're supposed to visit throughout the course of the day so I said look you know I want you guys to get up and talk and uh because I'm going to speak tonight you know and and so and they were absolutely panicked but they did a good job you know and uh it's stories of Terror and torture and and um honesty to God if their stories had been Flames you'd have to keep your distance otherwise you'd get scorched and I look back and I think I wouldn't have survived a single day of either of their childhoods so it kind of uh you know I don't think I did this that regularly but uh but I said get up before me and and just give a little snapshot so that I could you know include you in the question and answer period and it was like standing room only packed thousands of people sitting in the floor I mean total violation of fire code and so they get up and especially Mario was petrified and trembling but they did a good job and then I did my 45 minutes then I invited them up and I said yeah questions yes ma'am and a woman uh stands up she ah I got a question for Mario you know first question out the gate so he's he's just a tall drink of water skinny gu gets up to the microphone yes and he's terrified and she goes well you say you have uh a son and a daughter they're about to enter their teenage years what advice you know what wisdom do you impart to them what advice do you give them and Mario stands there getting a fraking hernia trying to come up with the right answer and uh I can tell he's starting to kind of crumble under the weight of it and and finally he just eeks out I just and then he stops and then he kind of holds his face in his hands and people don't know if he can continue and then he says I just don't want my kids to turn out to be like me and there's silence until the woman who ask the question stands and and and says uh with great tears why wouldn't you want your kids to turn out to be like you you are loving you are kind you are gentle you are wise I hope your kids turn out to be like you and a thousand total perfect strangers stand and they won't stop clapping and all Mario can do is hold his face in his hands so overwhelmed that this room full of strangers had returned him to himself and they were reached by him and which returned them to themselves which is the way it's supposed to work thank you that was Rusty I I haven't told that a no it's it's beautiful it's beautiful um you know I I preach all the time in detention facilities so I I'm you know you know and I I have kind of three stories that I'll use for the whole month and by G I'm going to make that gospel fit these readings and so uh and so I recycle things and then I'll retire things and then of course new stories will come yeah you know I have a book coming out in um not not only my third book I I say my last book is coming up I'm never going to do this again and it's funny when you everybody and his latest book 2017 that's nobody's version of latest that phrase you ended that story with u returning to ourselves that's another one that shows up often in your writing and your speaking and I I will I'm I'm about to share a quote from the poet gway canel but I I will say that especially um in tattoo's uh from the heart on on the heart from the heart um the I want to go back and just collect the quotes you've got in there that hold these stories together so many beautiful and it's like um you know you got meron you've got uh Windle Berry Pima shodin Emily Dickinson Mary Oliver and so forth and uh and I love the way it shows your ma in English I suppose it's being put to good work there but you you quote go canel sometimes it's necessary to retach a thing its loveliness um and it seems that this is a particularly helpful way to construe um what it means to be human you know to return to ourselves I love and my students I'm sure get tired of hearing me talk about rnas 2 Century you know the glory of God as a human being Fully Alive that's right and I I hear that that phrase you use being return to ourselves as sort of synonymous with that sort of vision of of life but what talk to us a bit more about that how does what that look like you know I mean it's a wonderful poem but it's uh it's a little bit like uh people talk about Second Chances and uh there was a homie who worked at the silk screen who said uh our homeboy silk screen Factory who actually's the supervisor there and he said whoever gave them their first chance and so it's retach somebody their loveliness as if it had been taught to them before so that's kind of a misconception because it often hasn't been but it's when you talk about you know unshakable goodness it's there are no exceptions to that and and part of our being stuck in moral outrage is we think there are plenty of exceptions to the you know unshakable goodness piece so you have to kind of believe that every human being has that the loveliness that is their truth and that uh and surely there are things that impede people from seeing that truth and uh and what you know it's about the human being glory of God fully alive but it's also uh the glory of God you know in holding the mirror up and reteaching loveliness in in in telling people that truth you know Carl Rogers talks about prizing you know which isn't so much praising you know it's it's about this notion of fully accepting a person and then prizing who the person is and and that is about the most foreign land that anybody has traversed and and at homeboy you know which is kind of a you know I don't know it's the front porch of the house everybody wants to live in it's the it you know it's a model I guess of of a paradigm that could be different where we're only in a community of beloved belonging where everybody's engaged in repairing and uh attaching and repairing severed belonging because everybody that's the that's where they begin they've they've had belongings severed and um and it's never too late to repair that and to attach I mean it we have an 18-month training program that's what they sign on for and they get paid and it's they're supposed you know they'll work in a bakery and Etc but they're also you know equal parts working on themselves in group and the in therapy but the whole culture heals the whole culture of the place so if it's true that a traumatized person is going to you know likely to cause trauma it's equally true that a cherished person will be able to find their way to the Joy there is in cherishing themselves and others so then they are U reteaching L loveliness to to others and so it and then it becomes that's where the joy is but the 18 months we it was just how did we arrive at that you know we said well year is probably too short two years is too long okay 18 months but then we looked back and then just by kind of a coincidence that 18 months is the time it takes they say for an infant to attach to the caregiver and we went that's it you know we hadn't thought of that but then it became huh our reason was yeah this is about attachment repair where people who you know all of them you know all of them are a nine or 10 on the aces on the adverse childhood experiences Spectrum you know I'm a zero on the Aces and I grew up in the same city as these folks but that's just you know if you want to talk about white privilege that's just you know the lottery of of my parents and zip code and education and siblings and um but then can stand in awe at what folks have to carry and uh what brought them to walk through the swing of the doors that at homeboy yeah um in one of your chapters um uh I think I think it's entitled disgrace um and you tell the story about a I think a young woman coming to see you who's kind of undone one day and she says I am a disgrace and um so you work a lot in that chapter with this notion of undoing shame um as you look back and think about uh poignant instances of that who who are some what are some examples of how that's happened or people in whom that's happened or what's that looked like to for you to see the undoing of shame or the dismantling of Shame so that a new healthy attachment can occur yeah I well Marcus Borg the scripture scholar says that the principal suffering of the poor throughout scripture and history is shame and disgrace and and I think that's quite right and so um it's the thing it's the pervasive sense not so much that they've done wrong but that they are essentially wrong and and that they can't shake that and so the only way to to counteract that huge uh you know power in their life is to offset it with you know seeing them as God does which is easy it's not you're not pretending I'm going to pretend that there is a reason to prize this person that that part has always been easy you know and it doesn't feel like it might be you know tattooed menacing looking folks uh but like you know um during the pandemic because I have leukemia so they they set up this tent outside in the early part of the pandemic and it was um you know think more Lawrence of Arabia it was just a huge white with Windows it was quite spectacular it had a rug and my desk and you know and they kind of surprised me with it because they were just petrified of me actually being in the building you know so um um we had a um we have a security guy named Miguel who's just the largest guy you know who has ever uh worked there and and you has big shirt that says Security on the back and so he's um uh he's kind of traffic cop so he's escorted people in make sure they have their masks on and and uh and then he shows them how to leave you know how to exit and and uh so I'm watching him and he's uh you know very especially with the younger homies who came in to see me you know and the whole thing is kind of The Godfather will see you now you know and so they brought bring them to me and and they're six feet apart and all this kind of stuff and and so then he would direct the young guys out and I would hear him say hey papa you can leave this way now Papa is something you would call your your son and it's very affectionate and it's a loaded word because it it's just steeped with a very healthy good fatherson relationship Papa if you could just go out that way you knowuh very tender and then I homie comes in um later on and he sits down and he says you know that guy back there and he points out meell and he says uh well he's my worst enemy in the whole world and right now he just gave me advice that consoled me which seemed like a incredible word to use and then you know he left but at the end of the day I called Miguel in and and I I wanted you know to prize him sort of you know and I wanted to say you know I noticed how uh you know you would say to the younger kid I was so tender andos so you know affectionate and then I mentioned that kid who was his enemy and he knew who exactly who I was talking about and uh he so valued your advice to him well he just big huge Hulk of a guy sitting in front of my desk holds his hands in his face and just sobs H and uh he says I have found my purpose here now this is a guy when he was you know 12 you know lived with a stepfather uh who just would torture and beat his mother and and he was sexually abused by three adult relatives and one day he came home and he couldn't find his mom and she was tied up and and gagged in a closet ET and his stepfather once had thrown her through a window like you see in the movies and so he killed him and he was whatever he was 14 and he went to what we called then Youth Authority which is where they send very young seriously offending kids and he was there till he was 25 and then they sent him to prison for an additional 10 years and now he works for us but he's found his purpose and uh I've never had to carry what that kid carried and so it's reteaches loveliness but loveliness was a foreign land for a kid like this but now he loves being loving which is uh and was he always unshakably good yes did he always know it rarely that's beautiful um I want to close that section with another quote from your book quoting beld and Lane Divine love is incessantly Restless until it turns all woundedness into health all deformity into Beauty and all embarrassment into laughter y' uh you've done a lot of this um as you said at the beginning you started doing what you did um not because you set out to go look for it but because it needed to be done and that's that's informed it appears a lot of the stuff that you've done like even tattoo removal I think you started as this was something that needed to be done well what's been the significance of of something like removal for example well yeah I mean it's funny you know just everything you know when Ray Stark who had $500 million wanted to help and how should I help and I said well I don't know you could buy this abandoned bakery across the street from the our school and and you could fix the ovens that don't work and that kind of thing so it had it been something else had it been an upholstery shop you know we would have had homeboy upholstery or something but it it was that's kind of a how it all everything was quite random and reactive and people come to our headquarters now which is huge and impressive and how did you think this up and the truth is you don't think things up you evolve and so tattoo removal was there was a need and we did it and and uh we don't force anybody you know uh to get their tattoos removed but they it's all part of their own uh you know desire to you know turn their life around I mean in the early days we had just you know one hour a month from a Dr vanor at White Memorial Hospital who would remove tattoos and and uh and I remember a homie came and and we were trying to limit you know alarming tattoos neck and face elbow down and he lifted his shirt and his whole chest was covered with the name of his gang and I thought well keep your shirt on you know and no one will see it he goes my son will I go okay I mean it's so painful it's so arduous a tattoo like that would have taken 30 treatments painful treatments but he was willing to do it and that was that was uh in the recovery mode it it took What it Took which is why we don't ever um I remember once we had a kid who court ordered to get his tattoos on his face removed and uh and once he was off on Pro off probation he just put them all back on H he didn't work at homeboy but I knew him in a probation Camp yeah and they would transport him there and since he was under order even if a minor comes in with a parent which requires a parent permission we always isolate the kid and say hey do you really want this off if the kid says no we won't do it yeah um I I wondered so you said a moment ago uh this week you'll be conducting your 250th funeral and the um I I hear what you're saying about on the adverse childhood experiences your your friends that you're working with a lot of them are nine and 10 and yours was a zero but I also look at your ministry and think about the the trauma of doing 250 funerals like this of young men and women that you love and so I wonder um how do you how do take care of your your own self how do you deal with u what surely has to feel traumatic at times in tending to yourself yeah you know you you learn to um as a home who I buried Nam Moreno used to say death as a punk he said that when his brother died in his arms and uh and the the guys who shot him came back to see if he was also dead and he had to pretend as he was lying there that he also was dead and then two years later he was killed but after his brother died he said death is a punk how was that different from you know death where is your sting or um Jesus say Paul says death had no power over him it couldn't hold him it says and so so that takes it doesn't mean that you kind of don't feel things but if if you don't put death in its place then you'll be toppled by it you'll be toppled by life itself and so coupled with you know how do you stay anchored in the present moment and how do you Delight in the person in front of you because that's all you have in and we're only saved in the present moment so that keeps at Bay a certain thing you don't get depleted because you are delighting in the Luminous now now that may feel like you're you're not grieving but you you allow grief to not leave you where it found you and you want to uh it grief sort of loosens you and and you allow that to happen but uh but most people kind of look at maybe what I do for a living and they and they are kind of uh the presumption is that would be hard and I've never had that experience and I really haven't it's it's mainly delighting only because you choose you you choose to cherish with every breath you take and you choose to Delight in the person in front of you that's hard to do because it's um you have to decide today and then you have to decide tomorrow and it's never once and for all but it's um you know the practice doesn't make perfect but it makes it makes it permanent and so you are able to continue to do that without being depleted and it's eternally replenishing because it's mainly people being tender with each other and you you and you laugh a lot so the presumption is that that uh death would win and it it doesn't if you put it in its place you know the uh the the third main topic that that I wanted to raise with you is the one again you just you just pointed to and that is delight and gladness which is another kind of thing that keeps repeatedly bubbling up in your in your writing um and um you tell this story about being on a live radio show and something funny happening and then you're driving away and you said I steep in the utter fullness of not wanting to have anyone else's life but my own which reminded me of one time hearing Stanley haras um read a paper in which he opened up with the uh a phrase from a a man an Englishman who was Oxford trained writer and then had decided to go back home and be a shepherd and in one of his essays this Oxford trained writer who's a Shepherd uh is reflecting upon one day looking at the sheep and says quote this is my life I want no other end quote and and I heard I remember Stanley saying this is what it means to live life is to find yourself as you look back upon your life being able to say this is my life and this is what I'm grateful to receive and this is what I want um but could you share with us more about what what what's it look like for you to learn to delight and to learn to practice gladness well it at at homeboy there was a home girl who was giving a tour we always have you know three or four tours a day in big groups and from lots of countries and all over the place and so the homies give tours and they're walking uh through and uh and I and I heard the home girls say here at homeboy we laugh from the stomach which everybody knows exactly what that is that it's deep it's profound it's it Alters you it's not superficial and so um again during the pandemic uh on his break a guy named we call him chamok and chamok means um it's kind of a playful uh name that in Spanish for the devil you know it's kind of affectionate actually chamok because he has two big Devil's horns tattooed on his forehead and he works in the uh to his credit he's getting them removed but he works in the bakery so he he comes in and he's you know dusted with flow and has his apron on and he has his hair knet on and he has a mask on so this is during the pandemic and he's standing in front of my desk and during the pandemic I was able to fix his teeth and he wanted to express his gratitude so he he says can I take off my mask to show you my grill they always say Grill when they talking about to show you my grill and so he he's kind of broadly smiles and big Colgate smile and then he looks at me and he says not only did you pay for this smile you are the reason I'm smiling and then there's the silence and he goes hey that's good write it down and so I start to write it down and he's re he's red dictating it and not only did you paint and I think he was just hoping to get in my third book and he did he right under the wire I I begin my Epilogue with that but the two of us we just laughed from the stomach and uh uh I I don't do you have time for one yeah so we we he went with me before the pandemic with another guy Robert and we went to Sacramento to give some talks so we got in late later than I like to on a Sunday night you know and so we're at Sacramento Airport we're going to a uh you know the shuttle bus to take us to the rental cars and so so we get in and I'm sitting across from this guy Robert well chamok goes and sits in the back the very back of the bus and then um you know people start to fill on the bus but as soon as they see him nobody wants to sit on either side of this guy so they assiduously do this Fox Trot to avoid him until finally there are only two seats left on either side and people very reluctantly sit down next to them then we start to go to the rental car thing and and if you ever been there it's it's um very kind of wooded secluded dark and somewhere in the middle of this wooded and secluded place the the electric thing just all the lights go off and the and the bus shuts down and for some reason everybody is silent and you can hear clicking the sorry I'm working on it and silent and in this dark secluded place this voice from the back of the bus says I saw this in a movie once it does not end well well the whole bus laughed from the stomach and and it was so joyous and and at that particular time you know uh you know I almost certain that half the bus voted a certain way in a presidential election and the other half voted in another way but but somehow this kinship was brought to you by the guy with the devil's horn sitting at the back of the bus that nobody wanted to sit in next to and suddenly kinship so quickly and connection and beloved belonging brought to you by this guy we've been talking to Father Gregory Bole founder and director of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles California thank you so much for your time and for your work and your goodness and Delight in the world thank you great to be with you thanks the Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States since it was established in 1861 there had been 3517 people awarded with the medal I'm Malcolm Gladwell and our new podcast from bushkin Industries and iHeart media is about those Heroes what they did what it meant and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice listen to Medal of Honor stories of Courage wherever you get your podcast [Music] our thanks to all the Stellar team that makes this show possible Christy Bragg Jacob Lewis Sophie byard Tom Anderson Kate Hayes Mary EVN Brown Harriet Harmon Jason sheesley Audrey Griffith and Tim low thanks for listening and let's keep exploring what it means to live a good life together no small Endeavor it's a production of PRX tokens media LLC and great feeling Studio oh hey there Jacob Lewis Here executive producer of the show as well as co-host of all of the bonus material that you will hear with Lee on no small Endeavor plus and I just wanted to chime in and share a little taste of our conversation we had recently with songwriter Andy ghorn so the context here is that on NSE plus all those bonus episodes rather than talk about the good life we conduct experiments with a guest derived from our many interviews that Lee has had with amazing people over the years and this month we tackled climate change and we've assigned singer songwriter Andy ghorn the task of making a climate action Vin diagram this is derived from our interview with Dr aanna Johnson and then he's got to take some sort of action toward what he comes up with on that climate diagram here's a little uh taste of that conversation did you ever interview Peter Harris yeah yeah like getting to know Peter over the years I was thinking about that when you're talking about you he talks about doing climate work is like sitting with a dying friend and and and and asking you're saying having both feet firmly and like yeah there's some serious stuff that is happening here but is there still something beautiful like if there wasn't a way to completely change all the damage that has been done is it still worth loving you know um so getting to be around people like that who ask those kinds of questions and I just get to learn from them yeah all right that was just a snippet of our NSE plus conversation if you want to hear the whole episode right now go to no.com and click join n+ from PRX