“In the end, effective outcomes and a piling of success stories aren’t the things for which we reach. Though, who am I kidding. I prefer them to abject failure and decades of death. But it’s not about preference. It’s about the disruption of categories that leads us to abandon the difficult, the disagreeable, and the least likely to go very far. On most days, if I’m true to myself, 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. Maybe the world could use a dose of a wrong-size approach, otherwise the hurt wins. Maybe there are things you can’t reach. But you can stretch your arm across a gurney and forgive and heal.”
Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest and the founder and executive director of Homeboy Industries, from Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion
Thanks for posting this quote from Greg Boyle. His book is one of the best I’ve read in the last year.
The book was on coffee table here at the cabin we rented for our vacation time. You are right. It is a wonderful read. Beautiful and challenging.
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