Description: "Over the past thirty years, Gregory Boyle has transformed thousands of lives through his work as the founder of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang-intervention program in the world. The program runs on two unwavering principles: (1) Everyone is unshakably good (no exceptions) and (2) We belong to each other (no exceptions). Boyle believes that these two ideas allow all of us to cultivate a new way of seeing. Every community wants to be a safe place, where people are seen, and then are cherished. By remembering that we belong to each other, we find our way out of chaos and its dispiriting tribalism ... [In this book], Boyle calls back to Christianity's origins as a subversive spiritual movement of equality, emancipation, and peace. Early Christianity was a way of life--not a set of beliefs. Boyle's vision of community isn't just a space for an individual to heal, but for people to join together and heal each other in a new collective living, a world dedicated to kindness as a constant and radical act of defiance. ... He calls us to cherish and nurture the connections that are all around us and live with radical kindness"--
Brief description: Gregory Boyle is an American Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and reentry program in the world. In 2024, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States's highest civilian honor. He has received the California Peace Prize and been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. He received the University of Notre Dame's 2017 Laetare Medal, the oldest honor given to American Catholics. He is the acclaimed author of Tattoos on the Heart, Barking to the Choir, and The Whole Language. Cherished Belonging is his fourth book, and he will be donating all net proceeds to Homeboy Industries. Visit the author at HomeboyIndustries.org.
Review Quotes: Praise for The Whole Language:
"I cannot stop talking about The Whole Language. You want to talk about something that exists to balance out the news? . . . Things are so terrible, people are so polarized, what do we do? Read The Whole Language, and then you'll know what to do. Which is just try to be a better person where you can. Try to stand with the people who need you to stand with them. . . . I am so profoundly moved by his work. . . . [Greg is] my hero." --Ann Patchett "The Whole Language filled my cup with hope, and I will be returning to that well to drink again. . . . Boyle's simple answer to the boundaries that we have put up for ourselves is extravagant tenderness . . . And that means love in all its multifaceted characteristics--a loss of defensiveness, an invitation and acceptance, a welcoming in. This could appear naïve coming from someone else, but here it is argued exceptionally through the stories of so many men and women who have been helped by Homeboy Industries, where inclusion and safety gave them the power to grow. . . . In between sharing intimate stories of the homies, Boyle intersperses lessons, parables, and philosophy from thinkers ranging from Dorothy Day and Pedro Arrupe to Rumi and Kafka." --America, The Jesuit Review