Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle

Tattoos on the Heart is one of my favorite books of all time. The authenticity, clarity, humility and compassion that Father Boyle brings to his work with Homeboy Industries, a gang intervention program in Los Angeles, is deeply moving and inspiring. I cried and laughed equal amounts as stories of loss, hardship, courage and profound transformation flowed seamlessly from one to the next.

Here's an excerpt:
I'm working at my desk one day, eyes pouring over something. You know how you can feel when two eyeballs are staring at you. I look up and it's Danny. He's a short, chubby ten-year-old who lives in the projects and is one of the fixtures around the office... ​

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A goofy likeable kid who does not do well in school. He seems to have purloined this oversized sketch pad, nearly as large as he is. He has it resting on his arched knee, and in his right hand is a pencil. He's sketching me. He workes furiously on this drawing and then positions his pencil, held up at me, as if to size up the subject of the portrait. This is a technique he has retrieved, no doubt, from cartoons. He works on the portrait and then stops and holds his thumb and pencil at me to, again, capture my essence. This cracks me up. It is completely charming and funny. So I laugh. 

Danny gets quite annoyed, "Don't move," he says, with not a little bit of menace. 

Well this makes me laugh all the more to think it makes any damn difference if I move. I'm howling a lot now. Danny turns steely on me, not the least bit amused. He becomes a clench-toothed Clint Eastwood. "I said, 'Don't move.'"

I freeze, stop laughing and he finished his portrait. 

Danny rips the sheet and lays the thing on my desk, revealing his obra de arte. A there in the middle of this huge piece of paper, about the size of a grapefruit, is me, I guess. Apparently, I've been beat down with the proverbial ugly stick. It is Picasso on his worst day. My glasses are crooked, my eyes not at all where they should be. My face is generally woppy-jawed, and it is an unrecognizable mess. I'm kind of speechless. "Uh, wow, Danny, um... this is me?"

"Yep," he says, standing proudly in front of my desk, awaiting a fuller verdict.

"Wow, I hardly know what to say... I mean... it's... uh... very interesting." Danny looks a little miffed. "Well, whad ya spect. YA MOVED."

We squirm in the face of our sacredness, and a true community screams a collective "don't move." The admonition not to move is nothing less than God's own satisfaction at the sacredness, the loveliness that's there in each one- despite what seems to be the shape that's less than perfect.