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I'm not sure any book has shaped my Christian practice more than Fr. Greg Boyle's Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion.
There’s a line from Fr. Greg that has stayed with me: we’re not called to serve the margins - we’re called to erase them. Kinship, as he describes it, isn’t about helping from a distance or fixing what’s broken. It’s about drawing close enough that the distance disappears, until there is no “us” and “them,” only a shared belonging.

Scripture points us in this same direction. Reflecting Jesus' death and resurrection, Paul writes that Christ “...broke down the barrier of hatred that divided us.” (Ephesians 2:14). What once separated us - fear, judgment, difference - gives way to something new: a community where we belong to one another.

I would argue that this is more important now than ever. I worry that we are collectively experiencing a communal amnesia of sorts. Mother Teresa diagnosed this when she said, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” We've forgotten that your life has bearing on mine, and mine on yours. So we need to remember - and I mean that literally: re-member... put ourselves, collectively, back together. Church is one of the places where this work can start.

Because this kind of kinship reshapes everything - how we see one another, how we show up, and how we imagine what’s possible together. It invites us beyond charity into relationship, beyond service into solidarity, until love is no longer something we offer from afar, but something we share up close.

- Pastor Michael