Barking to the Choir

Boyle tells us that Gato, a large and muscular gang member, always says “And holy befold” during his storytelling, instead of “Lo and behold” (35). Boyle never corrects Gato, because Boyle prefers the misnomer. He writes, “[Gato’s] version is better than the original—indeed it is the sacred, the holy, unfolding right before our eyes” (35). Boyle feels too many people think the sacred must look like a pristine image of the church—instead of what unfolds in their lives in the everyday. He uses a quotation from Psalms to assert, “what God considers sacred won’t be pigeonholed,” despite the human tendency to “confine the divine” (36). 

Boyle says Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order to which he belongs, “invites us to find God in all things” (36). Ignatius instructed his order to meditate on the world and its occurrences rather than on theoretical dictums. Boyle’s story about a homie named Nestor proves the beauty of this approach. Once, when Boyle asked a large group of homies if they had ever had a religious experience, Nestor volunteered an answer. Nestor once saw the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was sitting in a church pew with her young son in her lap.