“We are all part of a movement to put first things recognizably first. This movement is about heals over head. It is far easier for [an organization] to compile of menu of services … than it is to create a community of tenderness, a community so loving and so welcoming that everyone feels like they are wearing a parachute. A place, a geography, where we all decide to make a decision to live in each others’ hearts.”—Father Greg Boyle, Founder & Director, Homeboy Industries.
I’ve heard plenty of speeches in my day, but the words above constitute what is for me perhaps the most moving “oratory experience” I’ve ever had.
This speech was the culmination, or the final plenary event, of a two-day conference at Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles which I had the honor and joy of attending this past week, together with two dear friends, D.G. Montalvo and David Dickerson. We were attending this event at the invitation of the Episcopal Health Foundation of the Diocese of Texas, in hopes that it would benefit us here at Christ Church as we partner with the E.H.F. in hopes of increasing the holistic peace and justice of our community.
Allow me to unpack the most salient phrases in the snippet above. First, “recognizably first.” When Fr. Greg uttered these words, it “cut me to the quick.” In other words, I became deeply convicted of the need, not just to state that justice is a priority for us at Christ Church (including Christ Church South), but to make that priority recognizable, visible, clear. It must be obvious to anyone who visits us on Sunday morning that we are a community where Christ binds us together: not class, not race, not affinity.
Second, “heals over head.” I could talk about this one for hours. A huge part of my “spiritual / intellectual biography” is the issue of “reason vs. desire”: which is privileged? For Aristotle it is reason’s job to discipline the human being’s passions and desires. And yet, Christian Neoplatonism responds (I’m painting with insanely broad brush strokes here) by pointing to a “higher” kind of desire which, in turn, woos, summons, and directs reason itself. Father Greg is clearly one who affirms the priority of desire / feeling / passion over reason. Hence, “heals over head.” In the same vein he stresses that “a community tenderness is harder [and more important] than a menu of services.” In other words, for Fr. Greg, nothing can be more important than love (which, after all, is a kind of desire). Nothing can be more important than relationship, intimacy, “living in each others’ hearts.” This is the foundation of Homeboy. Good thing, too, since this is also the foundation of the Kingdom of God.
Last phrase to unpack: “parachutes [instead of backpacks].” Father Greg’s goal is to make the “homies” among whom he lives and works feel like they are wearing parachutes, and not backpacks. At first I was not sure what he meant by this. It was either David or DG who helped me “get it.” A parachute softens one’s landing; a burdensome backpack, in contrast, only weighs one down all the more. The goal here is to facilitate a soft landing, for any homie who is falling to the ground. Soft landings, instead of crashing & burning.
How is this facility accomplished? Only by a community which puts first things recognizably first. Only by a community in which the members truly live in each others’ hearts. Only by a community of tenderness which privileges healing over headiness, and gives people parachutes and not heavy burdens of condemnation.
The first paragraph of ch. 5 (“How it Works”) of Bill W.’s Alcoholics Anonymous is riveting and crucial:
Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to the program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average.
If I ask myself, “am I (constitutionally) capable of being honest with myself?” … well, that is not an easy question for me to answer. I think I am … but I also think it is important for me to open myself up to the possibility of self-deception.
Enter Psalm 139, verse 6: “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?”
When I cultivate an awareness of God, of the Holy Spirit, deep within me, it allows me to be honest with myself. It allows me to sit in silence and not need to pretend to be anything. Instead of pretending to be something, I can simply be. I can be comfortable with myself.
Because in that moment, who am I trying to impress? The Holy Spirit? That would be really dumb. I can simply be, simply sit in silence, with my feelings, with my body, with my sense perception, with a biblical passage or a word or a mantra echoing in my heart.
Now, sitting in silent meditation is not the only way to cultivate rigorous honesty. And if this practice occurs in a vacuum, cut off from other spiritual practices, it will be especially “ineffective.” Really, I think that the progress which results from meditation has to do with presence. When I practice being present in presence of the Holy Spirit in silent meditation, it gives me the “spiritual muscles” to be present with others: my spiritual director, my sponsor, my wife, my friends, my parishioners, complete strangers I encounter on the street, etc.
But it all begins, and ends, with rigorous honesty.
In eight short days I will have the staggering privilege of initiating (at least) five precious human beings created in God’s image into the holy community of the Body of Christ through the mysterious waters of Holy Baptism. (How the cosmos arranged itself to allow for this state of affairs is beyond me.)
Now, I have been intrigued by baptism for quite a while. In fact, if I were to make a list of the top ten reasons I left evangelical Christianity for the Anglican Way (embodied in the Episcopal Church, in the Diocese of Texas), somewhere on that list would be baptism. In particular, the teaching about Baptism contained in the Book of Common Prayer, on page 298 of which we read:
Holy Baptism is full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s Body of the Church. The bond which God establishes in Baptism is indissoluble.
Thanks be to God that, in my mid thirties, I finally found a community of people who believe this crazy teaching. Crazy, but necessary.
Necessary, that is, if secularism is not true, not the “be all and end all.” Necessary if God is real and there is more to existence than “matter and energy.” Necessary if real truth and beauty are grounded in a metaphysical reality which transcends human wants and needs.
Necessary, but crazy. Why “crazy”? Because it flies in the face of so much “evidence.”
I mean, just look (as a good friend of mine would say) at Richard Dawkins. Dawkins, who was of course baptized in the Church of England as an infant, but who as an adult has attacked the Christian faith as vociferously as anyone in modern history.
What about him? Surely, my friend argues, he is proof that baptism is not some ontologically real and efficacious transformation that grafts one permanently into the life of God … right?
Well, what if that’s not right? What if we take page 298 of the BCP at face value? What if, since Richard Dawkins was baptized many decades ago with water and the Holy Spirit, God has “sealed [him] by the Spirit in baptism, and marked [him] as Christ’s own forever,” as the Celebrant confesses in the actual service of Holy Baptism in the Episcopal Church? What if, on the basis of this sealing and marking, together with all that they entail, and together with the context in which they find their larger meaning, God has promised to bring Richard Dawkins finally back to himself, at some point and in some way which right now is unclear to us?
After all, it seems to me, the alternative is untenable. For if Baptism (together with all that it entails, and together with the larger context in which it finds its meaning) does not save, then secularism is the case, and we Christians should, finally, put all this religion stuff and “God talk” to sleep.
