Gregory Boyle

“We constantly lived in the paradox of precariousness. The money was never there when you needed it, and it was always on time.”

“You don't really keep vigil; it keeps you-suspended in awkward silence and dead air-desperate for anything at all to stir some hope out of these murky waters and make things vital again.”

“This was to be their place- outside of communion- forever. Maybe we call this the opposite of God.”

“Compassion isn't just about feeling the pain of others; it's about bringing them in toward yourself. If we love what God loves, then, in compassion, margins get erased. 'Be compassionate as God is compassionate,' means the dismantling of barriers that exclude.”

“No daylight to separate us.Only kinship. Inching ourselves closer to creating a community of kinship such that God might recognize it. Soon we imagine, with God, this circle of compassion. Then we imagine no one standing outside of that circle, moving ourselves closer to the margins so that the margins themselves will be erased. We stand there with those whose dignity has been denied. We locate ourselves with the poor and the powerless and the voiceless. At the edges, we join the easily despised and the readily left out. We stand with the demonized so that the demonizing will stop. We situate ourselves right next to the disposable so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away.”

“Kinship– not serving the other, but being one with the other. Jesus was not “a man for others”; he was one with them. There is a world of difference in that.”

“Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.”

“Terror melting into wonder, then slipping into peace.”

“Sometimes resilience arrives in the moment you discover your own unshakeable goodness.”

“Close both eyes see with the other one. Then we are no longer saddled by the burden of our persistent judgments our ceaseless withholding our constant exclusion. Our sphere has widened and we find ourselves quite unexpectedly in a new expansive location in a place of endless acceptance and infinite love.”

“If there is a fundamental challenge within these stories, it is simply to change our lurking suspicion that some lives matter less than other lives.”

“God would seem to be too occupied in being unable to take Her eyes off of us to spend any time raising an eyebrow in disapproval.”

“God can get tiny, if we're not careful.”

“Kindness is the only strength there is.”