Cherished Belonging by Gregory Boyle

Over the past thirty years, Gregory Boyle has transformed tens of thousands of lives through his work as the founder of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang-intervention program in the world. The program runs on two unwavering principles: 1) We are all unshakably good (no exceptions), and 2) we belong to each other (no exceptions).

Boyle believes that these two ideas allow all of us to cultivate a new way of seeing. Rather than the tribalism that excludes and punishes, this new narrative proposes a village that cherishes. Pooka, a former gang member who now oversees the program’s housing division, puts it plainly: “Here, love is our lens. It is how we see things.”

In Cherished Belonging, Boyle calls back to Christianity’s origins as a subversive spiritual movement of equality, emancipation, and peace. Early Christianity was a way of life—not a set of beliefs. Boyle’s vision of community is a space for people to join together and heal one another in a new collective living, a world dedicated to kindness as a constant and radical act of defiance. As one homie, Marcus, told a classroom filled with inner-city teenagers, “If love was a place, it would be Homeboy.”

Cherished Belonging invites us to nurture the connections that are all around us and live with radical kindness. Boyle believes that “the answer to every question is, indeed, compassion.” Through colorful and profound stories brimming with wisdom, humor, and inspiration, we understand that love is the light inside everything.