[Applause] thank you very much for this kind and generous honor president Benton called me some months ago when he said Greg do you believe in free speech and I said yes and he said good you're giving one on April 28 if if I could how do the kids call it give a shout-out to to will Carr Jolie he is the sixth of his siblings the last of the six to graduate from Pepperdine which is a huge accomplishment and also a whole lot of tuition you know I'm an expert on nothing but for 34 years I've worked with gang members and and apparently president Benton thought that made me eminently suited to address the class of 2018 you know what Martin Luther King says about church could well be said about your time here at Pepperdine it's not the place you've come to it's the place you go from and you go from here to create a community of kinship such that God in fact might recognize it in fact that is God's dream come true no us and them just us and you imagine with God a circle of compassion and then you imagine nobody's standing outside that circle and you know that God does not share in the demonizing in which we all engage in and so you choose to go from here and you dismantle the barriers that exclude and you go out to the margins because that's the only way they'll get erased if you stand out at them and you stand with the poor and the powerless and the voiceless and you stand with those whose dignity has been denied and you stand with those whose burdens are more than they can bear and every one of the graduates here has had an exquisite mutual experience of knowing what it's like to stand with the easily despised and the readily left out you go from here to stand with the demon eyes so that the demonizing will stop and you stand with the disposable so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away for no kinship no peace no kinship no justice no kinship no equality you go to the margins not to make a difference because then that's about you you go to the margins so that the folks at the margins make you different it's been the privilege of my life for thirty years to have been taught everything of value by gang members and and in the last few years they've taught me how to text and so I'm really grateful to them because I find it sure beats the heck out of actually talking to people and and I pretty dexterous at it lol and oMG and bTW and the homies have taught me a new one Oh H n which apparently stands for oh hell no and I've been using that one quite a bit lately I know I can't be alone and being vexed by this autocorrect thing I had a homegirl kind of a tough cookie named Bertha and she texted me on a Sunday where you at and I said I'm about to speak to a roomful of Hmong cos and Monkhouse is Spanish for nuns sisters religious women I'm about to speak to a roomful of Hmong cos I push sand autocorrect told her I was about to speak to a roomful of ninjas which she thought was pretty darn interesting the homies their hair is always on fire and they're always themed money to finish off they're a nerd of you know to pay their light bill or something and home he texted me once he just needed a hundred dollars to finish off his rent and and I just didn't have it so I texted him things are tight and I push send an autocorrect told him thongs are tight he said sorry to hear that but what about my rent so there I am in a car with two older vatos Manuel and Pancho and they do a variety of things at home boy they're gonna help me give a talk at a high school and Manuel's in the front seat and we're 15 minutes on the road when Manuel gets an incoming text he reads it to himself and he chuckles and I said what is it he goes oh it's dumb it's from Snoopy back at the office well I just seen Snoopy Snoopy gave me a big ahh but I saw as the day was beginning Snoopy and Manuel worked together in the clock in room where they clock in hundreds and hundreds of gang members who work there I I would not want this job it has become as a surprise gang members can occasionally be attitudinal so I say well what's it say and Manuel says oh it's dumb let me find it oh here it is hey Dawg it's me snoops yeah they got my ass locked up at County Jail they're charging me with being the ugliest vato in America you have to come down right now show them they got the wrong guy [Applause] well we died laughing and and I nearly drove into oncoming traffic and then and then I realized that Manuel and Snoopy are enemies they're from rival gangs they used to shoot bullets at each other because I remember now they shoot text messages and there's a word for that and the word is kinship how do we obliterate once and for all the illusion that we are separate all of you go from pepperdine to choose to become enlightened witnesses people who through your kindness and tenderness and focused attentive love return people to themselves and in the process we're all returned to our dignity and to our truth that we are exactly what God had in mind when God made us it occurs to University sometimes you know to force their students to read my book against their will and I'm not complaining but my alma mater Gonzaga University had called me and said they had forced the incoming freshman class to read tattoos on the heart and so I you know I said sure and they said can you bring two homies with you and and I said sure they were gonna have a big talk on a Tuesday night with a thousand people and so I always invite homies in the same way I pick homies who are enemies rivals who worked together at homeboy justa that they have to share a hotel room just to mess with them and and I always pick homies who have never flown before just for the thrill of seeing gang members panicked in the sky once I had two homies we were flying to DC and older guys and one guy said to me eh are we flying Virgin Airlines because it's our first time I said well yes it's anaphor requirement evil will come home on American so I picked these two guys Bobby and african-american gang member worked in the bakery of Mario who worked in our merchandise start done this hundreds and hundreds of times with men and women I've never picked anybody more terrified of flying than this guy Mario he was just absolutely petrified in fact he was hyperventilating and we hadn't even boarded the plane yet and so we're at Burbank Airport in the big bay windows and Southwest Airlines and they they don't have that hermetically sealed chute where you walk onto the plane you you walk out onto the tarmac like you're the president and you climb the steps to go to the front of the plane or the back of the plane they have steps and so our plane arrives it's early morning and I tell Mario there there's our plane and and I think wow he may actually die before we climbed those steps and and then our flight a crew arrives and I see two flight attendants females and they both have very large cups of Starbucks coffee and they're slepping up the front steps and Mario goes when are we gonna board the plane I said as soon as they sober up the pilots there there they go now perhaps I shouldn't have said that but I should tell you that Mario in our 30 year history at home boy is the most tattooed individual who's ever worked there his arms are all sleeved out neck blackened with the name of his gang heads shaved covered in tattoos forehead cheeks chin eyelids that say the end so that when he's lying in his coffin there's no doubt and so I'd never been in public with him and we're walking and people are like this and mothers are clutching their kids more closely and I'm thinking wow isn't that interesting because if you were to go to homeboy on Monday and ask anybody there who's the kindest most gentle soul who works there they won't say me they'll say Mario he sells baked goods at the counter at her cafe he's proof that only the soul that ventilates the world with tenderness has any chance of changing the world so we get to Gonzaga and they don't just have the talk at night they have all these other talks throughout the day and I tell them you get up and give those talks I'm gonna sit and look back of the classroom and they were terrified but they did a good job stories of terror and torture and violence and abuse of every imaginable kind that led the audience to stand in awe at what these two had carried in their lives rather than in judgment at how they carried it and honest to God if their stories had been flames you'd have to keep your distance otherwise you'd get scorched so the nighttime talk comes and it's a thousand people and I invite them up to share their stories in front of all these people for five minutes each and I do my thing and then I invite them up for Q&A and and I said yes ma'am and a woman stands and she says yeah I got a question it's for Mario first question out the gate and Mario steps up to the microphone he's a tall drink of water skinny and clutching the microphone and he's terrif yes and she says well you say you're a father and you have a son and a daughter who are about to enter their teenage years what advice do you give them what wisdom do you impart to them and Mario clutches his microphone and he's just terrified and he's trembling and he's getting a hernia trying to come up with whatever the hell he's gonna say when when finally he blurts out I just and he stops and he retreats back to his microphone clutching terrified retreat but he wants to get this whole sentence out I just don't want my kids to turn out to be like me and there's silence until the woman who asked the question stands and now it's her turn to cry and she says 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 stranger stand and they will not stop clapping and all Mario can do is hold his face in his hand so overwhelmed with emotion that this room full of people strangers had returned him to himself and they were returned to themselves and I think that's the only praise God has any interest in no kinship no peace no kinship no justice no kinship no equality graduates you go from here to stand at the margins because that's the only way they get erased and you brace yourselves because the world will accuse you of wasting your time but the Prophet Jeremiah writes in this place of which you say it is a waste there will be heard again the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness the voices of those who sing make those voices heard for you go to the margins not to make a difference but so that the folks at the margins make you different and may God bless you as you go from this place [Applause]