Clergyman

I work with gang members, and I feel a kind of affinity and gift, even. But who would've thunk it, you know? I mean, I didn't anticipate it.

Does God feel like that same-sex marriage could happen? I don't think anybody who has a connection to God and God's understanding and depth of compassion who's gonna say 'no.'

Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez - these are people whose thoughts are so important.

We can't just settle for the low bar of pope as media-savvy, canny Curia manager.

God seems to be an unwilling participant in our efforts to pigeonhole Him.

Me wanting a gang member to have a different life would never be the same as that gang member wanting to have one.

We ought not to demonize a single gang member, and we ought not to romanticize a single gang.

The powers, conditions, and desires that propel Mexicans and Central Americans into this country are so fundamental, so vast, that no action, legislative or other-wise, can discourage this flight.

I feel called to be faithful.

The mark of our society as civilized will come when we embrace confidence in the power of redemption.

Showing up in the lives of children is everything.

Gangs are bastions of conditional love, and one of the ways to counteract it is to offer community, which will always trump gang, and that's what happens at Homeboy Industries.

What do we know to be true about gang violence? We know we will fail if we fixate on the symptoms and not address what undergirds it.

You stand with the least likely to succeed until success is succeeded by something more valuable: kinship. You stand with the belligerent, the surly and the badly behaved until bad behavior is recognized for the language it is: the vocabulary of the deeply wounded and of those whose burdens are more than they can bear.

We don't need a specialized gang unit. We need patrol officers who specialize in knowing their community.

I know now that gang warfare is not the Middle East or Northern Ireland. There is violence in gang violence, but there is no conflict. It is not 'about something.' It is the language of the despondent and traumatized.

When the vastness of God meets the restriction of our own humanity, words can't hold it. The best we can do is find the moments that rhyme with this expansive heart of God.

You are so much more than the worst thing you've ever done.

I wouldn't trade my life for anybody's.

In my barrio, jobs work and money saves lives. When I have had the funds to place a gang member on a job site and pay his salary, I've seen him stop banging. When, on the rarest of occasions, an employer has offered a job to one of these youth, I've witnessed kids suddenly have a reason to get up in the morning.