45 pages • 1 hour read
Gregory BoyleBarking to the Choir
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 8-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary: “The Choir”
This chapter opens with a quotation from Whoopi Goldberg. When the famous entertainer was asked who the living person she most admired was, she answered Pope Francis. “He’s goin’ with the original program,” she said (153). Boyle asserts everyone knows what Goldberg meant when she said this: “It’s not about taking the right stand on issues but about standing in the right place with the excluded and the demonized,” (153). He cosigns Goldberg’s belief that Pope Francis is getting it right—especially in his dedication to ministering to the poor. “If we can find ourselves in this salvific relationship to those on the margins, we see as never before and it becomes our passageway,” he writes (155).
The chapter moves to address the topic of fear. Boyle shares about a homie who once told him the phrase “Do not be afraid” occurs 365 times in the Bible—once for every day of the year (155). Boyle expands on this idea, declaring when people choose to be fearless for each other, they stir their own hearts to courage and cultivate a true selflessness that, in turn, produces true joy.
Boyle shares a story about a man named Bear—a revered person within Homeboy Industries, lauded and worshipped for being a former gang member who changed his ways and grew into a solid, loving, family man devoted to his wife and children. Bear refused to leave the neighborhood and gang territory in which he grew up and was shot during a drive-by. Two homies named Magoo and Shorty were standing sentinel by his bedside when Boyle came to visit him. Boyle, no stranger to fatal wounds and hospital procedure, could tell by the room’s setup that Bear was going to recover. But Magoo and Shorty were convinced the man’s end was nigh. No amount of reasoning or assurance from Boyle could convince them otherwise. When Bear suddenly awoke, he jokingly asked him if he touched his penis. The room erupted in laughter as Bear drifted back to sleep with an unmistakable smile across his lips. Bear did this because, even in his state, he could see his friends were gravely worried about him, and he wanted to lighten their burden. “He was fearless for them,” writes Boyle (157).
The Gospel of Luke depicts Jesus ministering to a crowd about impending calamity, and says, “Do not be terrified” (158). Boyle interprets this as an instructive command, rather than an assurance of comfort. He feels that any calamity humans face can lose its sting and power if met with the “openhearted kindness” and “tenderness” of Jesus (158). He feels a homie named Pato, a baker at Homeboy Industries, also bears this idea with the signature phrase he uses to end every day: “Today was a beautiful day. Tomorrow will be even better” (161). For Boyle, Pato’s words are borne from the man’s ability to “be fearless for the other, to be unafraid to pull another soul out of the paralyzing grip of terror and assure them that all will be well” (162). For Boyle, this ability is life- and love-giving.
Boyle repeats his belief in ministering to the poor: “Sometimes there are lessons learned at the margins that can’t be found elsewhere. It is where the Choir finds its true height” (160). According to his count, the Bible enjoins its reader to care for the poor 200 times. “It is this preferential care and love for the poor that sets the stage for the original program […] It doesn’t draw lines—it erases them. It rises above the polarizing temperature of our times,” he writes (164). He says The Choir endeavors to help humans rid themselves of limited and limiting conceptions of God. He believes people are called to “ignite our own goodness and reveal our innate nobility,” and “the poor are our trustworthy guides in this” (165).
Boyle supplies several anecdotes supporting both of his major positions on the poor: Firstly, they are bursting with humanity and kindness; secondly, followers of God should feel themselves compelled to care for the poor. However, he is also careful to state that the real leadership should belong to the poor themselves.
Boyle speaks of his homie Carlos, who was deported. However, through a string of extremely dangerous and strenuous maneuvers, he made it back across the U.S.-Mexico border. A robbery left him completely stripped naked near a small Mexican village. When people began noticing Carlos darting among the trees, they asked him to tell them what was going on. He told them he had been robbed, then found himself immediately clothed and cared for by this community of strangers—despite being covered in gang tattoos. Carlos vowed to honor the kindness shown to him by extending kindness to everyone he subsequently met on his journey. He cared for and protected a young mother and her baby. And then, when passing by a church while hitching a ride on top of a train, he saw that its billboard inexplicably read “Carlos, I Am With You” (169). It was then Carlos knew he would be making it home. For Boyle, this story represents “the tenderness that was always and already there, found” (170).
The chapter ends with a quotation from Pope Francis: “Jesus wants to include” (170). Boyle says his homies have been his own trustworthy guides as “they have taught [him] not that [he is] somebody but that [he is] everybody. And so are they” (170). This, to Boyle, constitutes the fullness of “the original program” (170).
Chapter 9 Summary: “Exquisite Mutuality”
This chapter begins with Boyle praising Cesar Chavez. The characteristic Boyle most admired about Chavez was his ability to fully and sincerely listen to everyone as if they were the most important people on earth. This especially moves Boyle because he is a chronic multitasker known to be doing any number of other things while meeting with homies in his office. Boyle remembers a reporter once remarking to Chavez that the day laborers really loved him. “The feeling’s mutual,” came Chavez’s reply (172). Boyle states the thesis of the chapter:
When the feeling’s mutual, we are seized by a tenderness that elevates us to the very largeness of God. As Christians, we want to bridge the gap that exists between people. Even in service there is a distance: ‘Service provider...service recipient.’ Service is where we begin, yet it remains the hallway that leads to the ballroom. The ballroom is the place of exquisite mutuality (172).
Once, during a PBS interview, Boyle was asked how it felt “to have saved thousands and thousands of lives” (174). Boyle responded, without irony, he was not aware he had saved any lives. Instead, he feels his homies save his life in myriad ways every day. He does not believe the homies need salvation. He believes instead of orienting self as savior to the world, humans should be focused on savoring it. “Don’t set out to change the world,” he writes, “Set out to wonder how people are doing” (175).
Boyle offers anecdotes from Homeboy Industries to demonstrate his point. In one, he collapses into laughter at a particularly funny homie’s joke—and in that moment, the division between “service provider” and “service recipient” collapses (174). In another, a shy teenage homie is welcomed with tenderness and compassion by two older and heavily tattooed men. One story finds Boyle dismissing critics who insist his whiteness impedes his work at Homeboy Industries. Another depicts a privileged white woman persisting in a humble and compassionate approach as a teacher and being welcomed and accepted by the community as a result. In still another story, a homie hired as a valet at the Oscars is allowed by Martin Scorsese to hoist the famous director’s freshly earned Oscars in the air for a photograph. Another story finds Boyle telling God that a homie is a pain and his ass, which is met with a grinning “the feeling is mutual” from the homie (186). Each story demonstrates the transformative love arising through both egalitarian mutualism and the subsequent erasure of the chasms and borders separating humans from each other. Boyle ultimately believes these separations are artificial, and “God invites us to always live on the edge of eternity, at the corner of kinship and mutuality. We only seek to create a connection of hearts, to show others that they are seen, acknowledged, and embraced in the mutuality of value” (182).
Boyle ends the chapter by saying his 30 years of working with Homeboy Industries taught him to cherish the relationships he has built within the organization. He persists in his claim that his work has never been about saving anyone, but about mutuality. He writes, “I don’t empower anyone at Homeboy Industries. But if one can love boundlessly, then folks on the margins become utterly convinced of their own goodness” (188).
Chapter 10 Summary: “Now Entering”
This final chapter centers on the idea of kinship. Boyle’s first story of the chapter sees two former gang rivals playfully texting each other, demonstrating the transformative power of kinship. Several more vignettes of formerly bitter enemies, whose animus was both gang-based and based upon personal vendettas, coming together in friendship and love demonstrate Boyle’s declaration.
Boyle says, “the kinship of God is where everyone matters” (190). To illustrate this point, he uses an anecdote about a homie, accustomed to being ignored, being genuinely surprised Boyle had come to visit him in the hospital.
Boyle also subverts the common Christian belief that it is the Christian’s job to formally worship God. Boyle believes God is bored by blind fandom, when “what [truly] matters to [God] is the authentic following of a disciple” and the breaking down of the barriers that separate us from joining each other in kinship (196).
The notion of hope is also addressed in this chapter. Boyle states that, without hope, there can be no forward motion or progress. He offers several tales about homies both floundering without a sense of hope to ground them, and coming into kinship with themselves and with Boyle when their sense of hope is rekindled. A story about a police officer vindictively smearing gum into the hair of an adolescent homie is countered by the story of an officer who went out of his way to affirm a homie who recently became a father. Boyle contrasts these stories to show how kinship can arise between two people when they each refuse to treat the other in diminished ways based on the labels placed upon them.
A homie named Mario shifts into focus. Mario was the most heavily tattooed homie at Homeboy Industries; however, he is also known as the kindest and gentlest person employed there. Boyle invited him and other homies to an event in Spokane. In the airport, Boyle noticed the wide berth everyone gave Mario based on his physical appearance. The speaking engagement entailed each homie delivering a version of his life story. During the question and answer segment, a woman asked Mario what advice he would give to his children. “I just don’t want my kids to turn out to be like me” is his answer (205). Mario begins crying. The woman, beginning to cry herself, responds: “Why wouldn’t you want your kids to turn out like you? You are gentle, you are kind, you are loving, you are wise...I hope your kids turn out like you” (205). Boyle remembers he and another homie quietly put their hands on Mario’s back as he became overwhelmed with emotion. “[Mario] gently sobbed and a roomful of strangers returned him to himself. As I looked at the crowd, it was unshakably clear that they, too, had been returned to themselves. It was all exquisitely mutual,” Boyle writes (205). For Boyle, this interaction illustrates the deep and powerful impact of kinship—of humans connecting to each other despite all the wounds and frailties keeping them separate from one another. For Boyle, the cultivation of this kinship is the true worship of God.
Chapters 8-10 Analysis
In these chapters, the homie-propisms still make regular appearances, but tare no longer the framing devices for each chapter. Instead, Boyle takes on three major topics: social justice (Chapter 8), mutuality (Chapter 9), and kinship (Chapter 10). These three things are Boyle’s true holy trinity. Not content to stay with the stale triad of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—which calcifies God into entities far-removed from everyday life and posits God as the occupant a rarefied realm—Boyle persistently and consistently locates his religious narrative within the material, psychological, and social realities of his community. For him, this is the true undertaking of Christianity and the true honor of God.
For Boyle, those who want to bring God’s love into the world must attend to the economic, political, and social realities preventing people from regarding everyone else as worthy of love, redemption, and forgiveness. This cannot happen without an education in, or at least sensitivity to, social justice: without attending to the systematic ways in which some segments of society are locked out from receiving not only from material wealth, but compassion. He asks his reader to become acutely aware of both the systemic and personal dynamics contributing to this lock-out, and to favor compassion instead of a socially-accepted and institutionally-created ostracization.
The idea of mutuality is key, since one could easily take an awareness of the idea of social justice and move straight toward charity. Boyle does not view his homies as the recipients of charity, because such a conception places the charity-giver as higher than the charity-recipient. Boyle does not see such a hierarchy as either morally correct or desirable, as it poses the recipient (i.e., the homies) as less-than. Instead, Boyle persistently places the homies on either higher or equal grounding to him. True mutuality is predicated on a relationship between equals.
Finally, both the ideas of social justice and mutuality coalesce into the idea of kinship: the cultivation of deep and tender bonds between people within a community. This kinship is not possible without both a macro-level understanding of the segmentation and hierarchization of society, and the inequalities therein created, as well as a micro-level practice of relational mutuality. It is through awareness of these ideas, and the purposeful practice of compassion and tenderness that kinship is created. For Boyle, kinship creates an relation with God. These three chapters demonstrate the singular nature of Boyle’s Christianity. They express his deep and nuanced, though somewhat paradoxical, commitment to finding God and holiness through the creation of a human community.
