We at Cypress House are determined that ours will be a safe place where those who are lost, hopeless, and filled with pain can be encouraged and supported into a new kind of life with endless possibilities as dreams are imagined for a bright future to come.
We seek to never be anything but audacious and courageous with hope because we see CHB as a way to imitate the kind of God who loves unconditionally, who offers second chances, who walks with the excluded in the hope of a deeper, wider inclusion for them. To live in hope is to want nothing less for ourselves than what God wants for us.
Providing an opportunity to heal means more than offering jobs to those previously incarcerated – we must also look at the gulf between those who benefit from injustice and those who are its victims which widens as a result of the inequalities, prejudices, and attitudes that sustain systemic injustices against the formerly incarcerated.
Hope leads to transformation – and transformation can only happen when all in the community treat one another with dignity, honor, and respect, when we abandon the values and practices that seek to exclude.
We at CHB will follow the path of kinship that has guided Homeboy Industries. According to Fr. Greg Boyle, kinship means “…not serving the other but being with the other.” By embracing kinship, CHB will move closer to the marginalized in the hope of obliterating the margins.
By standing with those whose dignity has been denied – placing ourselves next to the poor, powerless, voiceless, demonized – we embrace a kind of kinship that leads to transformation in the hope that the demonizing will stop. As Boyle tells us, we need to situate ourselves next to the disposable so that we get to a point where we stop throwing people away.
