Chapter Two
The Soul Clapping Its Hands
The Blessed Virgin Mary nuns at Saint Brendan's grammar school had us all memorize this little ditty: "Good, better, best... never let it rest... until the good is better and the better... BEST." They meant well. The mystical view sees what's lopsided here: the starting point is really not "good," but "bad." We were all thrown out of the garden because we were bad, so now we are desperately trying to become good enough to get back in. It's really about, I suppose, original sin, and the progression is from BAD to good to better to best to holiness and sainthood. Bad is where we always seem to begin.
When homies say they are trying to be "better people," I tell them that they "could not be even one bit better." A homie texted me recently, just this: "Pops... what can I do to be a better man?" It felt more heartbreaking to me than some aspirational expression. We never say to the homies, "We believe you can change," but rather, "We know you can heal." I saw a sign in a store behind the counter, meant to pump up their workers: "My goal is not to be better than anyone else, but be better than I used to be." Jesus uses the word "hypocrite" and its original meaning is "performer." Which is to say, goodness is not about a measurable performance, about being better than we were yesterday. Jesus uses this term when folks make a big show of things, which is why he says we should fast and pray and give alms in private; don't perform. It has been ingrained in us, however, that our "performance" needs to move always from good to better, finally, to achieve best. In the mystical view, goodness is our starting point, and realizing it, not becoming it, is the task.
In prison, folks panic about appearing before the parole board. I suspect at Homeboy we write many thousands of letters each year assuring the boards that a homie has a place with us upon his or her release. The boards hope for a "finding of suitability." Homies have to comb their lives for traces of character defects, feel remorse for their actions, never minimize their crimes, and convince the board that they are no longer the person they were at the time of the crime. Never mind that the people locked up are as much victims as perpetrators.
We want to hold the wounded AND the person who did the wounding¡ªbecause we are all always both. The deincarceration movement can't make much headway unless we reconcile ourselves to this truth. Prosecutorial overreach, I suppose, is the very opposite of the mystical view, since it is unable to see the whole picture, and can't get beyond (or underneath) the criminal act. Hence, the freedom they have to imprison whomever they want for as long as they wish. They don't see the goodness.
It unlocks some door, however, to embrace this mystical view. It will keep us from seeking satisfaction in revenge. It frees us from thinking that peace will come from humbling others, or that being stern with our children makes them gentle, or that justice is pain doled out to those who behave badly. It holds us back from believing that our righteousness arrives when we prove someone wrong. We will praise someone and then say, "with all his flaws." What are flaws, anyway? It would seem that flaws are what only other people have. Not me. Turns out, judgment is blind, only love truly sees, and only an understanding heart speaks the whole language.
Ignatius said that his "last defect" was that when he walked the halls and saw another Jesuit, he would laugh because he was so filled with the other's goodness. He finally "reduced this" to a smile. Such an impulse comes from knowing that the Tender One has "pitched his royal tent inside of you," as Hafiz writes, "So I will always lean my heart as close to your soul as I can." A smile is hard, then, to contain.
A senior staff member asked me once, what was a force more powerful than death? I said to her that I thought it was inhabiting your true self in loving and thereby no longer being a stranger to your own unshakable goodness. Homeboy is the Lost and Found Department. We all lose ourselves and find ourselves in the other, and then so find our true selves in loving. A powerful force.
It's not about discovering your good qualities and making them better. Nor is it about finding your potential for good. A donor once said of me that I didn't see "gang member" when I saw the homies, but that I only saw "potential." Not quite. I only want to see goodness. None of us want to settle for reaching our full potential when we can inhabit fullness. We find our true selves IN LOVING¡ªin the verb of it. Otherwise, we get stuck in the noun of it. What seeks perfection is not our self but our love. We need to, each day, if you will, "log on" with our username and password, fully agreeing (to the cookie policy) and allowing the free flow of tenderness in the world. If it stays a verb, tenderness doesn't seek or care about its return on its loving investment. It just finds its full measure of goodness in this loving.
I have a framed photograph in my office of Victor, a young homie, receiving a bouquet of flowers from the queen of Sweden¡ªin Sweden. (Long story.) A very smart kid. I had met him in a probation camp and he later told me that he taught himself French in the camp. "Why'd ya learn that?"
"Cuz ... I was bored as fuck." After that picture was taken, he flew home and came straight to the office, jet-lagged and giddy. He stopped me three times that day to hug me and say, "THAT was life changing. I'm even gonna remove my tattoos." Later he would tell me, "I'm gonna try and dress differently now¡ªless gangster. In fact, I wanna dress more like you."
I tell him, "You mean old-fashioned and out of it?"
"Exactly," he says.
Some months later, having decompressed from the experience, he tells me, "Damn, G¡ªI'm in love and it feels proper."
"Who ya in love with? "I ask him.
"Myself," he says. Victor had been invited into his own gracious heart and RSVP'd. Transformation is not just a destination, but a process. He saw his own goodness and then could repurpose himself for positivity.
Before mass at San Fernando Valley Juvenile Hall, we were awaiting the arrival of the kids and I was speaking to one of the Catholic volunteers. She lamented, "There just isn't enough time here with them to teach them. What do we do?" Surely her heart was in the right place.
I found myself saying to her, "But there is plenty of time to learn from them." A willingness to be reached by them is reflective of the God we actually have. If we insist on "teaching," it signals that God doesn't think they are enough. Lifelong learning is, of course, magnificent. Yet, it will be difficult for these kids to shake the already solid sense that they are deficient because they don't measure up. But if we learn from them and cherish them, and one another, all of us inhabit the truth of our unshakable goodness, and with it, our common dignity and noble hearts.
Dwelling deep within all our souls is this undeniable, inexhaustible wellspring of love, wisdom, and goodness. If we can't uncover and see this essential purity in ourselves, then everyone we see is ugly, limited, and not measuring up. So how do we make contact with this?
A homie I met in camp expressed a common lament. "I mean... my jefito [dad] just doesn't get me. He does... not... understand me. I mean... he thinks... I'm good." How easy it is to believe and invest in our impoverished identity, to believe that the injured self is who we are. We never want to be who we are. Yet one doesn't "become" noble. We locate our nobility. The hard part is embracing our inner nobility, beauty, and goodness. Unfortunately, so often for all of us, it is the frightened, damaged self that takes center stage. We can learn to catch ourselves. The homies think that this is their truth. They get caught in the downward spiral and repetitive cycle of unworthiness and shame. The flip side of this is developing a positive facility for a different way to define. To define oneself in donation rather than deficit. It's not that they have forgotten their original goodness, but that they have never been properly introduced to it.
Endlessly, though, we keep trying to rid ourselves of our selves. We just won't let go of this grudge match that we carry on. We sidestep a satisfaction with who we are and how we are and we try to get rid of the parts of ourselves that we find odious.
I met Candelario when he was fifteen and "running amok" (as he called it) in the projects. He got shot in the chest once and a very large medallion of Our Lady of Guadalupe deflected the bullet nicely. Unharmed and breathless at this whole moment of magical thinking, he showed me the dented medal. "This woke my ass up proper." Some years later, though, he wrote me from prison, "Yo no soy malo (I'm not a bad person)... ask God." Such knowledge is a gift from God, and it is a gift God longs to give. Once I know, "que no soy malo," I see this goodness wherever I look. And yet, this "finding of suitability" always seems to elude us.
When drug use became a problem for homies in the late '90s, there was a slow gradation from drinking, to bud, to crack. Meth is most pervasive now, but in the old days, there was this "It's only Thunderbird" or "El Presidente" or the constant "It's only bud." Gang members sold drugs but didn't so much use drugs. Manuel was a full-blown alcoholic as a teenager, then graduated from selling crack to being consumed in using it. When I would visit him in juvenile hall, he would downplay his alcoholism when I brought it up. "I just drink gin and juice... maybe a Thunderbird once in a big while." This ushered in a crying jag and an emphasis he wanted to make. "I never drink beer. Cuz of my mom." She had four kids, left on her own, after being abandoned by Manuel's father. "When I was a kid, I'd wake up early after a night that my mom got really drunk and I'd go to the fridge and take out all the beer left and one by one I'd open them up and reach high up to the sink and pour them out. That's why," he finished proudly, "I never touch beer. Me da asco."
I got him into a rehab to address his crack habit some years later. He left after one month, for one day only, to attend his younger brother Paul's funeral. Paul shot himself in the head. We talked a lot about his brother on the long drive home. After the funeral, returning to the rehab, I asked how his recovery experience was going. "You know, G... I'm not gonna tell ya it's been easy, cuz it hasn't been. It's been real hard." Then as soft as he can be, he said, "But I'm learning wisdom every day. In fact, now I want wisdom to be my best friend."