Hope and the Homies

For days I have known the person who would blow into our ears so we would follow him to the meaning of Hope. Charity, Joy, Peace, Patience, Hope….  These days as I move through the “Fruits of the Holy Spirit” I find that as soon as I post the morning’s blog, I take in the seed of the next day’s word, and throughout the day I till the soil around it, water it, warm it with my heart.  During that day, the seed germinates, delighting and surprising me with shoots of insight, unseen birdsongs of grace that make everything seen more beautiful.  Sometimes a person comes to mind, as Kathy did as I reflected on Joy. 

Father Greg Boyle is a Jesuit priest who for 24 years has been serving among the gangs in East L.A.  New to Delores Mission at the beginning, he would walk the streets at night, right into the middle of gang warfare and gunfights.  “Mothers in the projects,” he said in a recent interview on NPR’ Fresh Air, “put their babies to bed in the bathtub at night, preparing for the warfare that would happen at night.”  (Click here for a link to the program) 

The lethal absence of hope.  When he realized that solidarity alone would not stop the violence, when one crazy white guy loving them didn’t stop them hating each other, he began to discover in the gang members that “when they went into these fight, they didn’t do it because they wanted to live, they did it because they wanted to die.  There was in them the lethal absence of Hope.” “The best way to stop a bullet is with a job” was the truth that led him to found Homeboy Industries (click for a link) that for more than a decade has put into the same room the “homies” who would not have allowed each other onto the same street.  Silk-screening, maintenance, and hospitality food service have helped them hope for life.

And the reduction in street violence has helped the community hope for its end.  When Fr. Greg, “G”, as the “homies” call him, described this, the community daring to hope for the end of this seemingly endless problem, I remembered my own small work with the homeless in Detroit.  I remembered how like “G” riding his bike into the middle of a gunfight, I would stroll into the middle of those who worked with the homeless in Detroit, actually suggesting that we could end homelessness.  And I saw their faces find in me not madness, but hope. 

Hope in what is seen is not hope.  2000 years ago, another crazy white guy wrote to the Romans “we were saved in hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for that which he sees?  But if we hope for that which we don’t see, we wait for it with patience.  In the same way, the Spirit also helps our weaknesses, for we don’t know how to pray as we ought. But the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which can’t be uttered.”   

Hope in the unseen, even the unimaginable, like Fr. Greg Boyle’s work with Homeboy Industries, is a sure sign of this Spirit, its groaning the birth pangs of peace, streets free of homelessness, free of gunfights.  Hoping for the possible abandons us to the ways of the world, the ways of the street.  Falling into the arms of the Infinite requires us to dare to hope that the wings of the Spirit will save us, that Hope will lift us above foolishness and despair.  

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.