cherished belonging: the healing power of love in divided times

At a time when society is more fractured than ever before, beloved Jesuit priest Gregory Boyle invites us to see the world through a new lens of connection and build the loving community that we long to live in--a perfect message for readers of Anne Lamott, Mary Oliver, and Richard Rohr.

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. Pooka, a former gang member who now oversees the program’s housing division, puts it plainly: ＂Here, love is our lens. It’s how we see things.＂

In CherishedBelonging, 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. ＂The answer to every question is, indeed, compassion,＂ Boyle exhorts. He calls us to cherish and nurture the connections that are all around us and live with radical kindness.

Gregory Boyle is an American Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. He has received the California Peace Prize and been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. In 2014, the President Obama named Boyle a Champion of Change. 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. CherishedBelonging is his fourth book, and he will be donating all net proceeds to Homeboy Industries.