Name: Father Greg Boyle: The Soul of Homeboy Industries | You Made It Weird
Uploaded: 2025-09-10T14:00:43.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Father Greg Boyle: The Soul of Homeboy Industries | You Made It Weird' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-09-10. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Father Greg Boyle: The Soul of Homeboy Industries | You Made It Weird' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-09-10. Transcript available.

Father Greg Boyle: The Soul of Homeboy Industries | You Made It Weird

You made it weird, yes you did, you made it weird, yeah. You made it weird,
with Pete Holmes. Yes you did, you made it weird, yeah.
What's happening weirdos? This is an exciting one for me because this is one of
my absolute heroes in my life.
One of my great teachers and a dear friend and the author of, now it's four,
four of my absolute favorite books in the world.
If you are looking for a book that, it's a great audio book by the way, that
opens your heart and just feels, makes you feel connected and there's deep
stuff, touching stuff, but it also just is brimming with hope and joy.
His new book is called Cherished Belonging, the others are Tattoos on the Heart,
Barking to the Choir, something like that.
And the whole language, I'm pretty sure it's Barking to the Choir.
Anyway, they're all great. Look up Greg Boyle books and the newest one is his
best one. It's called Cherished Belonging. I absolutely love it. Check it out.
So happy that you're here. Not much to plug up top. I'm going to be in St.
Louis this weekend, if you're hearing this the day it came out.
Followed by Los Angeles, we have Cleveland, we have Miami, we have Chicago, we
have Pittsburgh, we have New York, New York.
We have New Jersey, we have Milwaukee, we have Brea, and we have Royal Oak,
Michigan. All of those are available on PeteHolmes.com.
Hope to see you out on the road. And thanks to everybody who came out to Spokane.
I now know how to say it. It's Spokane, not Spokane.
Anyway, also, one very earnest and sincere thing to plug up here. Homeboy
Industries, which is the organization that Father Greg founded, is an
incredible charity.
Whenever I do any sort of charity work, it's to raise money for Homeboy.
So please consider making a donation. Even if it's a small donation, you can go
to homeboyindustries.org.
The work they do is life-changing and just unbelievably beautiful.
So please consider making a donation to Homeboy Industries.
And in the meantime, enjoy my chat with the wonderful Father Greg Boyle.
Get into it.
Can we start? Do you mind?
It's funny that you asked me about touring, because my whole life, I've been
very uptight.
I wasn't planning on bringing this up to you.
And obviously, I want to start by saying how great it is to see you.
But when I talk about touring, I have a real wound there.
Like, it's weird.
Specifically, when I started out to be a comedian, this pastor at my church
asked me how I could,
what was the word he used, like justify or somehow balance being a comedian and
being a Christian,
which, of course, was really upsetting to me.
And then years later, I think I'm so complete now and done all this healing.
I'm with our friend Richard, Richard Rohr.
And this priest that we were with, who I have no bad feelings towards this
priest.
He just touched on a wound.
I mentioned that I'm a comedian.
And the first thing he said was, when do you see your family?
And I just like saw red.
It really is a testament to how much I love Richard and how much I trust
Richard.
Because I just got mad at the guy.
Like, I didn't, you must deal with this a lot.
Like, people on their best behavior.
It's like, there's a police officer on the highway.
So we're all like, I was just like, ah, like really kind of.
So it was more about time spent away rather than content of the comedic life.
You're right.
The first one is a content story.
But like, the questioning of like, how you can be.
Figure the whole thing.
Began this trend of clergy seemingly going, well, if you tour, you must never
see your family.
And I just, I mean, I didn't like lose my, I don't think anybody in the
restaurant was like,
oh, they're having a fight.
But I did let it out.
And you specifically, and Richard obviously, have just been so healing in that
regard.
It's just, I don't know.
Well, in what way?
So like, so to kind of, you have the balance.
I do have the balance, but you understand that.
I say I go out once a month.
You go, good for you.
I believe what you said, something like that.
Yeah.
Because you travel, you know what it's like.
So you hear one a month.
What if I said.
I hear balance.
So I, yeah.
What if I said, I'm home three weekends a month?
That's pretty great.
Yeah.
And one weekend I'm gone, but most people just go like, oh, I could never do
that.
Or they start kind of like, I don't know.
Yeah.
Except you and I know that it kind of has more intentionality than not, you
know, that you.
From whose side?
Their side?
From your side.
Yeah.
You go, one day I do the podcast and Tuesday I do emails and Wednesday I, you
know, and then
I would have thought it was a lot more than that you were on the road more.
Sometimes, because things are kind of slowing down in show business, I'll go
out twice a
month.
It really depends.
And that, when I say that, I don't say that with burden.
I go, what a privilege that I go, oh, things are tight in this area.
Let's tour a little more.
You know that is an incredible gift.
But even that, I don't know, man.
I could try to guess the psychology of why people are kind of like coming at it.
But like, I'm almost certainly wrong.
Yeah.
No, I don't think you are.
I think it makes sense.
But yes, I'm really happy to see you.
I just, it worked out that I finished your fourth book on the drive-in.
I wasn't planning on that.
I wasn't trying to finish it.
How did you read and drive?
I just risk it all.
I just risk it all.
Glance furtively.
Honestly, when I look in windshields, it's 90% of people are looking at their
phone.
It's crazy.
So I wouldn't, I'd be in good company.
It is scary.
But I listened to it.
I think you're a great performer.
I think you did a great job reading all of the books and only got better and
really just found your voice more and more.
So the newest one, like the Greg Boyle style, it's like a style.
Like you've defined a style.
And once you sync up with that, which is very easy to do, what a pleasure.
I just loved the book and I just so happened to finish it while I write it.
Yeah.
And I thought it was wonderful.
Oh, thanks.
Wonderful.
And what I wanted to start with, if I, I didn't map it out too much, but I was
like, I listened to your work to open my heart.
I'm in a great mood.
I think because I was like, it unlocks something or it lubricates something or
it softens something.
Exactly.
And that seems to be kind of what the book is about.
It's what you're talking, like how quickly we can be nudged towards more
openness, more expansiveness, more gentleness, tenderness.
And even just saying those words sometimes reminds us of ourselves.
But it's also kind of, it's not like me or something, or it's like if the
minute you do something like that.
So we have a mutual friend, Mira Weistar.
I'm reading her, a book that you wrote a long time ago, God of Love, but she's
asked me to write a foreword for kind of a new thing.
So I'm going through it again, you know, and I was this morning and I thought
it does the same.
It does, it softens is a good verb.
Yeah.
Because all of a sudden you're softened.
I mean, like your own practice does that, but reading somebody who you like and
you go, oh, that's interesting.
And then when you put it down, you go, wow, yeah, I feel open, softened, ready.
So close we were, I'm talking like Yoda, but how close we were to love.
Yeah.
We were so close.
Yeah.
But when we're tight, when I'm like a little bit off, I feel so far.
Yeah.
So far from it.
But it's not like you're, now I'm going to live these words in particular
somewhere.
Yeah.
No, it's just a way of kind of aligning your heart to a kind of way that you
want to kind of steadily live.
Yeah.
And you don't always, you're not always able to stay there because you're,
because I was just in the office right now.
So it was chaotic and people are demanding things.
But it helped me that I had spent the morning, well, in my own prayer, but also
with Mirabai.
Yeah.
It brought me to this, you know, kind of awareness of everybody's coming in and
their hair is on fire and they're unreasonable.
And that's okay.
You know, it's just kind of their wound.
Right.
Being witnessed.
Yeah.
You can kind of, well, there's a certain solidarity to it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like I hear, you just did it.
You were like, it's not me.
You're sharing how you're staying spacious as well.
That's right.
And I think that's really valuable.
And you're not coming down the mountain.
Yeah, that's right.
With tablets.
But spacious is good, you know, because then it's, you have room for people.
But when you're tight and you're constricted, then you don't have room for
people because, you know, it's, you're on a limited kind of scope.
And you go, I don't have time.
You know, this is really annoying.
Yeah.
That's so unreasonable what you're asking me right now.
But I was aware that I wasn't so much like that this morning because I've been
gone too.
So I'm really delighted in people in a way that people who are there every day
are going, oh, we've had it with this guy.
He's driving us crazy.
So I can come in and be a little bit more spacious.
But that's a gift too, going back to me going on the road.
Yeah.
So if we had no financial needs whatsoever, I would still want to go out once a
month and do shows.
And Val knows this and Leland knows this.
Yeah.
I just come back.
It's not a vacation.
It's actually pretty stressful, to be honest, like parts of it.
You just realize you're very alert, you know, you're in your hotel and you
realize you've just kind of been sitting there.
You know, like I'm like getting ready for something.
Yeah.
So it's not like going out and seeing the sights.
But when I come back, I'm a better, because of that space away.
So I have, is that, I don't want to call it a strategy.
But you're also kind of in, you know, you're FaceTiming, you're.
Yeah, yeah, staying in touch.
Staying in touch and people are.
Yeah.
You're able to kind of maintain that in a way that was inconceivable 40 years
ago.
I know.
We couldn't really do it like we can do it now.
I know.
It's really amazing.
Yeah.
And then my daughter is growing up with FaceTime and just being like, of course.
And Zoom or whatever.
Yeah.
You can have a whole little hang.
Is she like first grade?
Yeah, exactly right.
Yeah.
She's about to be seven.
To go into first grade.
She's going into first grade.
Yeah.
We made the choice to keep her in kindergarten.
Yeah.
Which people always say that's the right choice.
Oh, yeah.
Let her be the older kid.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, yeah.
It was a huge.
Makes a difference.
My father put my brother in Little League and God love my dad.
He just did what he thought he was going like, put him in the, let's say it was
11 to 15 instead
of the six to, I don't know, I think he was up 10 and he was 11 or 10 and a
half and he put him in the bigger group.
My brother and I are still like, that really was a big trip for my brother.
It really blew him.
You caught me being a good person for you.
I was going to say, I was going to say it really fucked him up.
Let's not do that.
It can, it can.
It did.
Do that, yeah.
I mean, and I don't think my dad, my dad was like, you can do it.
That was his spirit.
And then suddenly you're with these kids that have been playing ball for 10
years.
Yeah.
So I'm curious about, we're talking about Mirabai taking a moment in the
morning.
I think people are probably, I'm interested in how you anchor yourself in tenderness.
Because one of my ways is by reading and listening specifically to your books.
I have other ways.
But you know, there are moments where like, I wrote this down in my notes.
I was like, I obviously cherish my daughter.
We're all trying to cherish everyone with the ferocity that I cherish my
daughter.
And sometimes I have to ask her to brush her teeth 30 times and it breaks me.
Like it literally, my daughter doesn't know the sound of me yelling, but she
does know the
sound of me being like, maybe I can't, I can't.
Like she's seen me go like, like, just like, like, just kind of like taking
like a, like
a tender, broken b