Creating a Culture of Tenderness: Embracing Our Kinship with All of Life
Written and Narrated By: Gregory Boyle, Pema Chödrön
Length: 1 hr and 48 mins
Whizbang-ish intros lead to a bit of a Whoops, but it all leads to the BEST meeting of two peaceful, joyful Souls…
Pema Chödrön? I’m there…
Father Greg Boyle? I’m sooooo THERE!!!!!!
…can I shout that any louder, ya think…?
And so we get to the opening of this fundraising WOWZER of an event thought up by Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön to benefit the absolutely wonderful Homeboy Industries. A Homeboy introduces the Event. Bang! Awesome. A Homeboy introduces Pema. Bang! Awesome. The Awesome Pema gets into her piece, and fizzzzzzle…!
Whazza?! screeched I to m’self. Pema bombing her speech?! Wellll, it’s like this, see. Even Pema herself says it: She’s a goober with Facts. Cuz ya see, her opening speech is to, even tho’ the room is packed with Homies, a buncha people who’ve not the faintest notion who Father G is. They’ve never heard of Homeboy Industries, so Pema is telling them about this amazing place that is The Homeboy World. And she was given facts about what the Industries are, how they’re run, etc. and she botches them miserably. As she stammers and Heh Heh Heh nervous-chuckles her way through, I was writhing in embarrassment for her cuz I felt her PAIN. It’s not until G shouts out a reassuring: You’re On A ROLL! and makes the audience laugh, that I relaxed and kinda sorta just kicked back and opened myself to this little gem of an audiobook. Pema goes on to struggle a bit with describing the levels of Suffering, repeating herself somewhat; I got all tense again… Then G takes over for HIS opening speech.
Not a dry eye in this house, I tell ya. If you’ve been with me for a while, or if you’ve seen that m’ Fave Memoir that I listened to in 2020 was Tattoos on the Heart, then p’raps you’re already well aware that I find Father Greg Boyle (G!!!!) just… well… would SAINT be too grand a word for the man? Saint-In-Training? What else does one call a person who chooses to not only stand by and lift up the Marginalized, society’s throwaways, but who also finds complete and utter JOY in doing so? In his speech, he tells of a young man, on the right path, who’s chosen a life whereby his own daughter has a Home, where she knows she’s loved and valued, where she knows she’s safe. It’s GREAT! G avers. It IS. This young man has known that he himself is not his worst offenses, and he’s come to the awareness of, the living of his days, as a Nobly Born son of a loving God. This, G tells us, is the story he told at the young man’s funeral, killed execution-style, a target of convenience as he was outside, packing his car to take his family camping. What Is The Point Of Any Of It? the grieving have begged G to tell them.
The point? It takes him days to realize, to KNOW, that the young man had a chance, those days between that story and his death, to live as the Image of God, to know himself truly, to live in peace and with love. Yeh yeh yeh, dude, I was sobbing as G told the audience this. The man knows how to speak. The man knows how to live. The man knows how to love, heart and soul.
So yeh, things got better. And then things got reeeeeally fanTAStic as Session 2 is what I THOUGHT the whole thing was going to be: Pema and G sit down together and just discuss things, a Conversation between two of the most loving Essences that exist on the planet today. God is discussed (And due to her early Catholic upbringing, Pema finds that she quite simply canNOT use the word God at all. But she sits with her discomfort, doesn’t buy into the storyline she’d learned as a youngster), and both Nun and Priest discover they believe the same things, they’ve just gotten to their Truths via different streets.
Make no mistake, these are two inCREDibly funny people. And the Homie who was given “suggested questions” to ask them, totally throws the suggestions away and hiLARiously stumps them, awes them, wows them with the Truths he himself learned via another street. God might not be the word; Love might be too loaded as well: But Tenderness? A warmth and softness that is experienced first, that starts with the individual, with learning for the Self, then extending beyond the Self. Maybe that might be sooo much better than Love, which can isolate, which can exclude.
Tenderness…
And then it’s all wrapped up with questions from the audience which kinda sorta had my teeth on edge, as they were ALL questions for Pema, nobody having heard of Boyle or his work before, seemingly disinterested with the Grace in which the man lives his life and extends it to others. So, here’s what you’ll hear: Pema, I LOVE YOU! And HOW am I supposed to live with Trump in Office? I’m serious, each question was a variation of that single theme.
Both Pema and G posit that it starts with YOU. Find the roadblocks within yourself, the anger, the hatred, the lack of love and acceptance. Cultivate a tenderness for yourself as a flawed individual, deeply Human. Accept the dark and hold onto it as much as the light is grasped for.
And just BE to yourself, that which you’d have other people Be.
This was released in October of 2019, faaaaaar before Lockdowns, Civil Unrest, Attempted Coups; one wonders how the questioners have been managing… I’d LOVE to get on a verrrry High Horse and say that one listen to this all absolutely changed my approach, and now I’m all Tenderness and a Beacon of Light for the World. The truth? One questioner so annoyed me that I kept hitting the 15 sec. fast forward.
I’m learning!
I’m learning.
I’m learning…
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