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Dear Friend, Not long ago my older daughter Ellie and I made a pilgrimage to Los Angeles to visit a patron saint of Whole Harvest Farm, Father Greg Boyle. Do you know Greg Boyle’s work? Boyle is a Jesuit priest and founder of Homeboy Industries, the world's largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program. Boyle is also a writer of unusually moving books. Father Boyle’s gang intervention program runs on two unwavering principles: 1). We are all unshakably good (no exceptions), and 2). We belong to each other (no exceptions). These principles build what he calls a “community of tenderness.” (“Tenderness,” Boyle has wonderfully said, “is the highest form of spiritual maturity.”) At a time seemingly at the mercy of anti-virtues and when many of us are desperate for orientation, Greg Boyle stands out—stands out for his generosity of spirit and extravagance of soul. Historian C.V. Wedgwood’s memorable words about William the Silent could be recruited to describe Boyle. Father Greg Boyle “shames the cynic and renews the faith of humanity in itself.” Boyle reminds us that mercy—toward so-called “evil” ones, toward the political other, toward the distressingly unwell and distressingly poor—is the most accurate name for God. And Boyle is funny. Laugh-into-the-rafters funny. While reading his books one hitches with guffaws and sobs at the same time. It’s been said the great changes in history occur not through argument but through seeing things differently. Greg Boyle—artfully and unhectoringly—-sponsors a new seeing, a new vision. Thank you, Father Greg, for inspiring us at Whole Harvest Farm to attempt (fallibly and fumblingly!) to live into that vision, into a “community of tenderness.” In gratitude, Teddy Macker Executive Director
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