Effective justice action comes in all shapes and sizes. Do what you can do. Do what fits your skills, your time, your pocketbook. For some of us personal changes may be all we can do. But even those who can do more must begin by changing themselves.

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           We have been looking this year at the three elements of a complete faith:  Beliefs, Values, and Actions.

            From what we believe about ourselves and human nature and the world around us and the material and immaterial parts of all existence, we then come to hold some certain values about what’s important.  From these values we then create principles, like the UUA Seven Principles, which guide our actions in the world.  The third part of a complete faith are the actions that we take in our lives, for ourselves and for the world we share.

            For this look at the actions aspect of a complete faith, rather than talk about specific issues where we might be called to take action in response to our faith, and there are many, I thought instead that I would consider with you some strategies that we can use to make effective social change on whatever issue we want to work on.

            So leaving aside the question of what issue you want to focus on in your change work, to look instead at the question of how do we make change happen?  How does change happen?  Not, for today, what should we work on, but how should we work?

            The foundation of all change work is relationships.  So I started this series of sermons with the conviction that lasting change requires cultural change, not just legislation.

            Think of the issue of gun violence, for instance.  The difficulty we face in getting any kind of legislation passed to enact commonsense regulations on guns and gun ownership is not simply that we have too many, primarily Republican, representatives in Congress that won’t support such legislation, but that we have too many Americans, who won’t support a representative who supports gun regulation.  In other words, our so called, “commonsense” gun regulations are not commonsense at all for far too many Americans.  We won’t have new laws until we change the American culture around guns and gun ownership.  And we won’t change the culture by passing new laws, even if we had the votes to do so.  We will change the culture by creating relationships.  By listening.  By sharing our stories.  By inviting folks we disagree with to share their stories.

            Or look at the issue of a woman’s right to make decisions concerning her own body.  Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court upheld a woman’s right to abortion, with certain limitations, in a single, sweeping, ruling.  Although that decision was broadly supported by the American people, there were enough Americans firmly committed to the opposing view that the issue did not end with that decision, but has become a controversial element of our politics ever since.  The Supreme Court could decide the law, but the law could not change the culture.  Instead of creating cultural change, their law divided Americans into winners and losers, losers in that case who felt unheard and disrespected and more determined than ever not to give in or give up.  Similarly, the Supreme Court decision on the new abortion case, expected later this month, will again, create winners and losers, because again, we are still in the midst of the slow work of changing our culture not at the end of it.

            A final legal resolution that will guarantee a woman’s right to make decisions concerning her own body, and I do think that will be the eventual endpoint of this long cultural change, will come when we do the change work of building relationships and forming communities, by sharing our stories, by listening, by hearing the hopes and the fears, the feelings and the needs of other people.

            Two weeks ago, when I preached for you, I shared two more principles that guide my work for social change.

            One is that we can make big changes when we stay narrowly focused on one shared goal.

Effective, lasting change occurs when we create communities.  Therefore, the goal is to create the largest community we can, by inviting in everyone who shares our goal.  And because people are naturally complex creatures who care about many things and have opinions about a multitude of issues, we have to make the list of opinions that would exclude someone from our coalition as small as possible.  Let’s not exclude people because of an unrelated issue, who would otherwise be an effective ally with us on winning the goal we really need to win.

            This is a strategy, by the way, that I see reflected in our Unitarian Universalist approach to religion.  Why, we said to ourselves, should we exclude a whole bunch of people who want to worship with us, who share our values, who want to live in the world in the way that we do, merely because they don’t believe exactly what we believe about Jesus, or God, or Heaven and Hell?  If you make a creed statement a condition of membership in a church, you’re going to exclude a lot of people from your community because of a quibble about their metaphysics, who would be natural allies in doing the parts of religion that are really important:  kindness, peace-making, respectful of others, compassionate, justice-seeking, and so on.

            So Unitarian Universalists stay narrowly focused on the issue that really matters, our shared values, and welcome in all kinds of diversity, on the other things.

            The other strategy I shared last week was the contrary spiritual advice not to live in the present.

            Sure, practice mindfulness.  Be Here Now, is great spiritual advice.  Don’t carry hurts and angers forward from the past.  Don’t project anxiety and fearfulness into the future.  Live now, in the only moment when living can actually take place.  Don’t miss it.

            So yes.  But to do change work we must have a vision of the future that is different from the present, and that future vision must be as alive to us as is the present moment.  We see the future and long for it, when weapons of war are banned from our city streets.  We must see the day when women are not questioned by the government when they wrestle with the best choice they need to make for themselves and their own body.

            If we live only in the present, we only see the problems of today, and our spirits become resigned to injustice, or despairing.  If we live only in the present, we won’t see the world we need to win, or strategize the step by step path we will need to walk in order to get there.

            Here again, I see how this principle shows up in our Unitarian Universalism.  We have a future goal explicitly stated in our sixth principle, “the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.”  That future calls to us, because we hold it so close now, in our hearts.

            And even though we know the spiritual advice of keeping our attention tuned to the present moment, our hymnal is full of advice to do just the opposite.

            “Fill me with a vision, clear my mind of fear and confusion.” 

“Wider grows the vision, realm of love and light;

for it we must labor, till our faith is sight.”

“Come, thou fount of ev’ry vision, lift our eyes to what may come. 

See the lion and the young lamb dwell together in thy home.  

Hear the cries of war fall silent feel our love grow like the sun.” 

“Yea, we dip into the future, far as human eye can see,

See the vision of the world, and all the wonder that shall be,

Hear the war-drum throb no longer, see the battle flags all furled,”

            Today I want to add a third piece of strategy advice for effective change work.  This is a suggestion about the scale of our work.  And again, I give my sermon a contrary-sounding title.

            In change work, we need to sweat the small stuff.

            You’ve heard just the opposite of course, the advice Not to sweat the small stuff.  Stay focused on the big goal.  Don’t get bogged down in the details.  Be willing to compromise and keep moving, even fudge a little on some of the incremental stuff if you have to, because there’s a bigger goal in mind.  Don’t expend your energy on the small stuff that won’t matter at the end of the day.

            And also, be clear about knowing what is the small stuff.  Don’t turn what is after all not that important, a minor inconvenience, an annoyance, into a crisis, a catastrophe, a curse.  Just let it go.  Save you sweat for the big stuff that actually matters.

            Again, all good advice.

            But in change work, the small stuff matters, too.

            We should sweat the small stuff.  We should honor the small stuff.  The small contributions.  The small victories.  The small steps.  The quiet conversation.  The one changed mind.  The single vote.  The small donation.  The letter to the Senator.  The signature on a petition.  In change work those small deeds matter.  They are worthy of our sweat.

            If we agree that lasting change comes through cultural change, which comes through community-building, which comes through relationships, which comes through sharing stories and listening to the hearts of other people one by one, then we have moved down through successive levels from the very large to the very small.  If we follow this theory of social change then we realize that all of our grand visions rest on the smallest of bases:  one person talking to one other person, sharing from the heart and listening with compassion.

            Those conversations are not to be made light of, or swept aside so we can get on with the real work of organizing a speaker’s rally downtown, and a protest march, and a lobbying day, and running a well-financed opposition candidate.  Those private conversations are actually the foundation on which every other action will succeed or fail.  They’re worth sweating over.  Or rather, they are worth calmly, peacefully, as one friendly, genuinely curious human being to another, making time for.

            We should also sweat the small stuff by recognizing and respecting that in the grand movement of social change that different people show up with different gifts and abilities.  We should recognize and respect that there are always a multitude of issues that call for our attention, and that some folks will be moved by one issue and other folks moved by another.

            So there will always be some people, fired up and passionate and ready to spend their life’s energy on an important issue.  And there will be other people who deeply, intensely, care, about that issue but simply aren’t able to take a day off to canvas a neighborhood, or take a week-off to camp out at city hall, or take six-months off to plan a demonstration at the capital, or take two years off to run for office, and so on.

            The big commitments from the big leaders are vital.  Change won’t happen without them.  The smaller contributions are vital, too.  No gift is too small.  What can you do?  What can you give?  How can you be a part of this movement, in the way that fits your body, that fits your bank account, in the way that fits your life?  How will you let that little light of yours shine?

            The person who comes early to make coffee.  Or the person who stays late to put away the chairs.  The person who volunteers to make a few phone calls.  The person who volunteers to pick the speaker up at the airport.  The one who makes the flyer, or posts an announcement on facebook.  The one who invites their friend.  The one who cannot attend but wishes you well.  The one who prays.

            We aren’t all called to be activists.  But cultural change is more than political activism.  Cultural change is also story-telling, art-making, music-making.  Cultural change is making friends, joining a book club, joining a hiking group.  Cultural change is hanging out at the dog park, and waiting with the other parents to pick up your toddler from pre-school.  Cultural change is the message tee-shirt you wear to the grocery store, and the book title you recommend to the clerk at the bookstore.  Cultural change requires all those gifts.  Some are large.  Some seem small.  But all are necessary.

            For many people, for some issues, what they can do is make a personal change in their own life.  I’ll make a point to drive less or switch to a car with better gas mileage.  I’ll take a shorter shower.  I’ll notice the amount of plastic I bring home from the grocery store and see if I can make different choices.  I’ll resolve to be kind, to smile at strangers, to be helpful to others, to pause when I notice a judgment rising up in me and ask myself what’s making me feel that way.

            Rather than saying these small changes are more or less important than the big work of the activists, we could just say they are different.  Different ways and means to do the one work.  To address climate change we need people to change.  To address racial injustice we need people to change.  So when a person changes, even one person, that is a reason to celebrate.

            We need to sweat the small stuff in one other way, too, when we consider the pace of cultural change, how long it takes to achieve the big goals we seek, decades of work for a single victory, or centuries of step-by-step improvements with always more work yet to do.

            If we can only count as success the final, Heaven-on-Earth, realm of love and light that we ultimately seek, then we will have years and years and years of bitter disappointment.  Some of us will never live to see the day our grandest visions are made manifest.  Our activism will turn dark and depressing.  Our hopeful gladness, by which we seek to invite others to join our cause, will turn to anger and gall, and no one wants to hang out with, or work beside, people like that.

            So we have to learn to sweat the small stuff.  We must learn to delight in the little wins of every day.  We got this piece done.  The legislation isn’t everything we wanted but it’s better than what we had.  One person moved this much.  At least they’re talking about our issue, now.

            I want to encourage people to do what they can do, to celebrate every contribution, to delight in the change as it happens, to measure by how far we’ve come, even as we plot our way forward to further change.  I want us to celebrate our diversity of gifts, to recognize the many issues that call to us, and the many challenges that we face, and to acknowledge that to do anything to help in any way, is a sacred act and a blessing to the world.

            May it be so.