I am reading a great book entitled “Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion” by Gregory Boyle. Father Boyle is a Jesuit priest who works with gang members in Los Angeles. He pastored a congregation there and founded Homeboy Industries, a non-profit organization that employs current and former gang members in various occupations (including a bakery). Members of rival gangs often work side by side, which breaks down the barriers of hate and violence that have been falsely created. Father Boyle writes about how shame and disgrace is at the root of all addictions, including the gang addiction. He says that gang members take disgrace and shame into themselves to such a degree that it becomes part of who they are, that it “infects their very sense of self.” He tells a story of a kid from the projects who regularly missed school. When Father Boyle sat down to talk with him about it, the kid told him with tear-filled eyes that the reason he missed so much school was that he didn’t have enough clothes.

Feelings of shame and disgrace don’t just haunt those with obvious addictions. Many people we interact with each day (perhaps even the person in the mirror) walk around feeling worthless, like their very existence does not matter to anyone. They have accepted the lie that they are irrevocably, unredeemably bad. That no one truly cares if they live or die. Thus, they make decisions in their lives that reflect this sense of worthlessness. Their badge of shame and disgrace is writ large over their lives. Father Boyle shares these beautiful thoughts about disgrace: “In the face of all this, the call is to allow the painful shame of others to have a purchase on our lives. Not to fix the pain but to feel it. Beldon Lane, the theologian, writes, ‘Divine love is incessantly restless until it turns all woundedness into health, all deformity into beauty and all embarrassment into laughter.'” These thoughts make me look at those around me differently, even as we are on vacation this week in a beautiful resort in Florida. Every interaction I have is an opportunity to encourage someone, even with just a smile or a kind word. To let them know that they matter, that they have worth to someone and to their Creator.