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Tatoos on the Heart by Father Gregory Boyle
Tatoos on the Heart by Father Gregory BoyleBook review from Amazon:
"Description - How do you fight despair and learn to meet the world with a loving heart? How do you overcome shame? Stay faithful in spite of failure? No matter where people live or what their circumstances may be, everyone needs boundless, restorative love. Gorgeous and uplifting, Tattoos on the Heart amply demonstrates the impact unconditional love can have on your life. As a pastor working in a neighborhood with the highest concentration of murderous gang activity in Los Angeles, Gregory Boyle created an organization to provide jobs, job training, and encouragement so that young people could work together and learn the mutual respect that comes from collaboration. Tattoos on the Heart is a breathtaking series of parables distilled from his twenty years in the barrio. Arranged by theme and filled with sparkling humor and glowing generosity, these essays offer a stirring look at how full our lives could be if we could find the joy in loving others and in being loved unconditionally. From giant, tattooed Cesar, shopping at JCPenney fresh out of prison, we learn how to feel worthy of God's love. From ten-year-old Lula we learn the importance of being known and acknowledged. From Pedro we understand the kind of patience necessary to rescue someone from the darkness. In each chapter we benefit from Boyle's wonderful, hard-earned wisdom. Inspired by faith but applicable to anyone trying to be good, these personal, unflinching stories are full of surprising revelations and observations of the community in which Boyle works and of the many lives he has helped save. “
I was given this book by a friend and read it on the plane ride back from California. We stayed in Los Angeles and I realized as we read Father Greg Boyle’s book that the ‘neighborhood with the highest concentration of murderous gang activity in Los Angeles’ was about twenty minutes where I once walked to grammar school. The schools, shops, families and homes I once knew in this Los Angeles suburb have been overridden with violence through gangs. Father Greg, like Father Ron (Chaplain at Sing Sing) knows the value of any life and conveys that respect and dignity to all the men they encounter. Through their faith and loving men with violent pasts, and potentially violent futures and early deaths they heal, they save lives. I loved reading the personal, and often funny stories of these lives of courage and faith. I realized after reading the book, that Father Greg was the commencement speaker at my son’s college graduation from Loyola Marymount in Lost Angeles. Hopefully one day I will meet him again. I highly recommend the book—it will make you smile, it will make you pray, it will make you grateful.
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