“I never met a homie who didn’t have a father sized hole in his heart.” Fr.Boyle

Father-Con meets Father Boyle of Homeboy industries.

Moving forward after our 3rd Father-Con event held on April 9 in Downey, California, I and a volunteer assistant, Mio Ishide, visited Homeboy Industries for a meeting with Fr. Gregory Boyle, Father G as many call him, about being the keynote speaker for Father-Con 2023.  Though it is too early to carve this in stone, February is our projected month for the 4th conference and Fr. G wants to bring his message.  What I love about Boyle is his ability to see the image of God even under a lifetime of callous and scars, tattoos and language that could drive a redwood tree to slink back underground.  His “radical kinship” is part of what I have been inspired by in seeing beyond the destructive behavior of men too often demonized for our sometimes dramatic failings, but to embrace the reality that we are kin, related and responsible to help each other see and be our true selves.  We are designed and called to be so much more than a stew of sliding and backsliding into the toxic grease that fattens our sense of unworthiness.  We are as fathers and those with fathers, who know fathers, who behave as fathers, who look forward to one day being fathers, you get the idea, called to a responsibility with the greatest of rewards, imprinting a sense of worth, value, dignity, safety, and love in our children and by extension our communities.  Gregory Boyle is regarded as a father, not only in the priestly sense, by thousands of men and women stepping up to the expectation of grace through his parental heart and heavenly service.

Father-Con is born out of a burning sense of loss with every man we let drip through the cracks of our indifference and distance – every man who seeks relief from unhealed hurt, unrealized hope, and paralyzing terror, in the heart numbing pages of pornography, commercial sex, drugs, drinking or violence.  Each father who falters deprives our community of the gifts only he can bring right from home.  Too many fathers are winging it when there are veteran pilots to help keep the engines firing and the equipment reliable.  There is a Father who provides perfectly if we have eyes to see and ears to hear what we may have been missing.  Fatherhood not incidental, optional or toxic though some fathers can be.  Let’s rise to the challenges before us and encourage each other not with a nudge and wink, but a shoulder and honesty.

Patrick Erlandson, Founder: Father-Con, and See it. End it. Film & Arts Festival