Barking to the Choir

Boyle states he has recently taken to studying the book of Acts, which provides useful insights about community health. One line from the book sticks with Boyle: “And awe came upon everyone” (51). He feels the most important metric of community health “might well reside in our ability to stand in awe at what folks have to carry rather than in judgment at how they carry it” (51). 

Boyle talks about a time he was invited to speak to a gathering of 600 social workers in Richmond, Virginia. Not realizing he had committed to filling an entire day with material, he brought along two homies named Sergio and DeAndre. Sergio told the group about his childhood. He was six years old when his mother told him to kill himself for the first time, and nine when she abandoned him off at an orphanage in Baja. His grandmother eventually retrieved him, but his mother beat his back bloody throughout his elementary school years. He developed a habit of wearing three shirts, even in the summer, to cover up the wounds and blood—and took this habit into adulthood. But eventually, he learned to accept his scars: “How can I help others to heal if I don’t welcome my own wounds?” he rhetorically posed to the group of social workers.