By all sorts of things, Boyle means your faith, your purpose, your perception – and he's not just waxing poetic. Boyle has made following his “geography rule” a lifelong endeavor.
After graduating from Loyola High School in Los Angeles, he entered the Jesuit order, and was ordained in 1982. During and after his formation, he earned his bachelor’s in English (Gonzaga University), and master’s in English (Loyola Marymount University); he also holds a Master of Divinity (Weston School of Theology) and Master of Sacred Theology (Jesuit School of Theology). Boyle then taught high school in downtown Los Angeles and Bolivia. He's also been a pastor, a chaplain, a mentor and an organizer.
In 1988, he created Jobs for a Future at Dolores Mission, a program aimed at addressing the LA area's escalating gang problem by focusing on education, and targeting those youths who might otherwise end up on the streets or in jail. The program evolved into what is today Homeboy Industries, which includes Homegirl Café, Homeboy Bakery and Homeboy Silkscreen & Embroidery – all of which provide many with their first legitimate employment.
Don't think his time with the “homies,” as he calls them, hasn't rubbed off on him, either. He recalled one talk he gave where two people up and left in the middle of it.
"I don’t think they were putting their wash in the dryer," he laughed. "They walked out when I used this one word. I was just quoting a homie, so, sue me."
A homie is a gang member – but there's more to it. "It also means friend," Boyle explains. “It also means the person upon whom you can rely."
The man proves every day that he is someone upon whom his homies can rely: He works tirelessly to bring them hope, something that's foreign to many people when they first walk through his doors. Homeboy fights gangs with tattoo removal, and unemployment with job placement services. It's a provider of soft skills and vocational skills. And Homeboy gives former gang members what's usually their first legitimate employment, and thus an alternative to incarceration, re-incarceration or a life in a gang – a life without hope.
In other words, it empowers.
"Homeboy is all about relationships, not information," said Boyle. "We're not going to scare them straight; we're going to care them straight."
And building relationships is what we all ought to do, he says. That's what he told LMU's 2011 graduating class.
"We want to move beyond service to kinship, beyond acceptance to awe, that spacious vast place where we share God's view and stand in awe at what the poor have to carry, rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it," he said. "LMU is not the place you've come to; it's the place you go from, anchored in that vision." Boyle is a popular commencement speaker, and spoke at three Jesuit commencements this past year.
Homeboy Industries is on the cusp of its 25th anniversary of constructive gang intervention, and all the challenges, drama and rewards that come with it. But if you ask Boyle to articulate the life philosophy that's unified it all for him – that is, Homeboy, his book “Tattoos on the Heart,” his endless speaking engagements, his task force and advisory board memberships – he'll just repeat two words.
"Be kind, be kind, be kind."
And that's just like him, to bring it back to simplicity.
