Social change begins with relationship-building. Reach out. Keep reaching out. Really listen. “Break not the circle of enabling love… ’till it includes, embraces all the living.”

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            This year we have been looking at the three key issues of spirituality.

            To be “spiritual” conjures up images of quiet serenity, or blissed out ecstasy, or perhaps a specious connection to reality.  But to be “spiritual” doesn’t have to refer to what you believe, or what you do.  To be spiritual doesn’t mean that you believe in angels, or past lives, or read Tarot cards, or do yoga, or burn incense, or see messages in the stars, or spirits in old trees, and so on.  Nor does it mean you go to church or synagogue, or have a home altar, or keep kosher.

            Spirituality is broader than that, for me.

            I say we’re all spiritual, because reckoning with spiritual concerns is something humans do.  All humans.  We’re all spiritual, because we all ask three questions, that are spiritual questions, and which have only spiritual answers:  Who am I?  Why does it matter?  And what should I do?

            Identity.  Meaning.  And Purpose.

            Everyone contemplates those questions, at least casually.  Even if you don’t deliberately address those questions, you have to answer them at least unconsciously to make the choices that create your life.  Why go to college?  Why get married?  Why choose one career over another?  Why do anything?

            Well, because you have a sense of who you are.  You have wrestled with the question of identity.  And you have a sense that there are some choices that are better than others.  You have wrestled with the question of meaning.  And then you choose a way to live that will help you express your true nature and the values that are most important to you.  You’ve found your purpose.

            That’s spirituality.  It’s not mysticism or magic, necessarily, but just living, and hopefully, living consciously, deliberately, thoughtfully, carefully.

            How you ask and explore your answers to those questions defines your spiritual practice.  Again, we need to think broadly about that term.  Spiritual practice might look like mediation and prayer, or going to Mass.  But other people explore those questions by hiking, or gardening, or by studying philosophy or physics or visiting an art museum.  Some people answer those questions with religious doctrine, like a Buddhist answer to the nature of the self.  Other folks answer in terms of biology, or they read science fiction and wonder if there’s a difference between artificial intelligence and human intelligence.  Some people say our lives matter because of God, or because of their grandchildren, or out of an innate calling that they can’t explain but feels very real to them.  Those are spiritual answers.  Some people find a purpose in life that is expansive:  they want to bring justice to the oppressed, and heal the sick, and right the wrongs.  Others have a very narrow purpose based on personal power and pleasure.  Spirituality can be healthy or unhealthy, after all.  But any purpose is a spiritual answer, because the question of purpose is a spiritual question.

            We start with the question, “Who am I?”  Then we ask the question of values, “What do I care about?”  And finally, we ask the question for today, and for the next several weeks, the question of purpose, “What should I do?”

            If you know who you are, and if you have identified some worthy goal that gives meaning to your life, then the question of purpose is, “what should I be doing with my life, to achieve that goal?”

            Now that I know myself, and where the path of life ought to lead, how do I start?  How do I keep going?  What do I do?  What should I do?

            I’m going to address that question by offering over the next few weeks some strategies that I have found helpful in achieving goals and making change in the world.  Think of these as strategies for effective social change:  a spiritually healthy tool kit for whatever work you want to do in the world.

            These strategies come from my own experience, having spent a lifetime in the helping professions focused on making social change, first on the staff of AIDS Project Los Angeles for 10 years, and then as a minister for 25 years.

            So I’m not going to offer answers about what, specifically, you should do with your life.  Our answers to the spiritual question of purpose are as individual as are our answers to the questions of identity and meaning.  I can’t tell you what you should do, because that answer will be different depending on who you are and what you want to achieve.  So I’m not going to talk about specific issues, or causes.  What you want to work on, political or personal, grand or small, is up to you.  But whatever you choose to do, I have some ideas about how you can go about doing your work that will be most effective.

            Today, I want to begin with one of the most basic strategies for social change.  Not even really a strategy, but a necessity.  All social change work begins with relationships.  It’s all in who you know.       It’s all about making connections.  It’s all about making real relationships that are honest and true.  Effective social change begins with caring for other people, as they are, not because they might be useful to you.  But in fact, real relationships will be useful to you, in whatever you want to do.

            In the words of Nelson Mandela that Christina read to us for our Call to Worship:  “We know it well that none of us acting alone can achieve success.  We must therefore act together as a united people, for national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world.”

            As we sang in our opening hymn:

Break not the circle of enabling love where people grow, forgiven and forgiving, 

break not that circle, make it wider still, till it includes, embraces all the living.

            But before I talk about how we do the work of reconciling, building, and birthing, forgiving, embracing, I want to tell you a little about myself, and where I learned these strategies.  Think of this as my social change resume, my credentials for the observations I want to make later.

            Most of you know I grew up in Los Angeles and I’ve lived here my entire life.

            I was actually born in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1962.  After a few years there, my family moved to Klamath Falls, Oregon.  We lived there for a few years, also.

            Halfway through my kindergarten year, in 1967, we moved again, this time to Santa Monica.  My parents bought a modest house on the south side of Santa Monica, just a block from the border with Venice.  My father worked for a sister company of the Rand Corporation.  My mother spent a few years raising the kids and then went to work as an elementary school teacher in Santa Monica.  We attended the Methodist church.

            I first learned the value of community and the model of working to make social change from my parents.  My father got involved with the neighborhood property association.  We would host neighborhood meetings in the living room of our home.

            Because our neighborhood was located under the flight path of the little Santa Monica airport, airplane safety and noise was a big issue for the neighborhood.  My father eventually served as a volunteer in city government appointed to the airport commission.  For a time, the Mayor of Santa Monica, Nat Trives, lived across the street from us, and he was often in our living room discussing local politics.

            My parents were active in politics in other ways, as well.  They were involved in campaigns for candidates, including Tom Hayden, and Maxine Waters.  My parents weren’t big political players, certainly not donors, they just had a family and a house and regular jobs, and they cared about their lives and the health of their community.

            And so their kids, my three brothers and I, were also naturally involved.  Sitting on the floor in the living room as the neighbors talked about airport safety.  Or walking up and down the neighborhood streets distributing packets of campaign material at neighbor’s homes when there was an election.

            I remember very specifically the year that California voted on the “Briggs Initiative”, Proposition 6.  This was 1978.  The Briggs initiative proposed to ban homosexuals from teaching in our public schools, by giving the state the power to fire gay and lesbian teachers, and also to fire any straight teacher who expressed support for gays and lesbians.  I was 15 at the time and knew I was gay but wasn’t yet out to my parents.  You can be sure I listened very closely to how my parents talked about the Proposition.

            My mother, the teacher, was extremely forceful in declaring what an awful and misguided proposition that was.  But not only did mom and dad denounce Proposition 6, privately.  They also worked against it.  They joined the opposition campaign.  One of the flyers I helped distribute in the neighborhood that year was a flyer urging a No Vote on Prop 6.  And I was as gratified as my parents were when the California voters rejected it.

            I went to High School at Santa Monica High School.  I went to Santa Monica College and UCLA.  I came out, finally, to my parents, and they were supportive.  They actually said they wished they had known sooner so they could have been more supportive when I was struggling with the issue.

            And then I went to art school at Cal Arts and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts, in 1985.

            By that time, the AIDS crisis was becoming a catastrophe for the gay community.

            In 1983, I joined an AIDS study that I am still participating in now, forty years later.  In 1985 I had my first HIV test, learned that I was negative, and continue in the study now as part of the control group.

            In 1985 I also walked in the first AIDS Walk, and then started volunteering at the AIDS Project Los Angeles.  I had to do something.  It was an all hands on deck situation for the gay community.  My volunteer work turned into a paid position and I worked at APLA for the next 10 years, until I left to go to seminary.

            Working in AIDS, at the height of the AIDS crisis, I saw firsthand, the work of social change.  How do you change attitudes?  How do you get funding?  How do you push helpful legislation forward?  How do you counter the voices of fear and misinformation that oppose the necessary change?

            Again and again, I saw how important relationship are, for caring, and for change.

            I love the story that the APLA leaders were talking about how they could raise money for our work when no public funds were available because the government was ignoring the crisis.  They thought they could hold a fundraising dinner but knew they needed a big name as a draw to get a big crowd of donors.  What kind of person would have that kind of drawing power? they asked.  One person said, “Queen Elizabeth.”  Another person said, “The Pope.”  A third person said, “Elizabeth Taylor.”  And then someone said, “Well, I know Elizabeth Taylor.”  So they invited Elizabeth Taylor.  And she said yes.  And she went on to raise millions of dollars and found the American Foundation for AIDS Research.

            I also saw, while doing AIDS work, how important spiritual care is when working for social change.  When the cause is important, when people are literally dying and the government ignores them, or religious voices condemn them, and families abandon them, how do you care for the suffering?  And how do you deal with your own loss, and grieving, and anger?  How do you keep going to make the change and make the change stick?  How do you answer the questions of who am I?  Am I just this sick body, or am I an immortal soul?  Why does it matter?  Who cares whether we live or die?  What should I do?

            Profoundly confronted with those questions, and as the AIDS crisis shifted in the mid-90s to a manageable health care situation, and after having found the Unitarian Universalist church in Santa Monica as a place where I could explore spiritual answers to those spiritual questions, I resigned from APLA and went to seminary.

            Some of you know the next part of the story.

            I did my internship at this church from 1996 to 1998.  And then I was ordained, 25 years ago this year.  And I’ve been a minister at Los Angeles area churches ever since.

            I don’t consider myself an activist.  I was the Human Resources Manager at APLA.  I was never a member of Act-Up.  And I’ve been a parish minister in my ministry career, where social justice work is part of my ministry but not the only focus.

            But I have marched.  And I have made speeches at rallies.  And I have made phone calls and written letters.  I participated in a “die-in” on the steps of the State Capital.  And I “married” a friend back in 1987 on the steps of the IRS building in Washington DC as part of a marriage equality action.  I worked for marriage equality in California, too.  And immigrant rights.  And universal health care.  At First Church Los Angeles, I was instrumental in working with a developer and the YMCA and the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health to build 85 units of low income and supportive housing in two five story buildings on church property, including a free preschool facility.

            With CLUE, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, I worked on the “Fight for 15” campaign for a living wage in Los Angeles.  I’ve picketed with striking hotel workers, and with striking teachers.  I served for a few years on the Board of the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry and helped them change their name to the Unitarian Universalist Justice Ministry.  You know I talked about that a few weeks ago.  As part of my work with the Justice Ministry I helped develop the curriculum for the Spiritual Activist Leadership Training, a program to help young adult UUs ground their work for social justice in their UU faith and identity.  The elements of that curriculum are the tools in the tool kit for effective social change I want to share with you now.

            It begins with relationship building.  It’s all in who you know.

            I learned this sitting on the livingroom carpet watching my mom and dad lead a neighborhood meeting.  I saw this, too, watching my parents talk to their friends at the Methodist church, how conversations moved in direct lines from, “Hello, friend” then to “we’re both having that same problem in our community” finally to “what should we do?”

            I learned about the importance of relationships when I heard my mom talking about Proposition 6.  She didn’t know that she had a gay son, but she knew that the other 6th grade teacher at Grant Elementary School was a gay man:  a good teacher, a kind and decent man, a friend she had a relationship with, a person who deserved to be treated with compassion and respect.

            At the AIDS Project I learned that the work of the activists, the marches and protests and public actions were crucial to getting attention when the government would rather ignore us.  But once we had the attention of the people with the money and the power we had to follow up with relationships.  We couldn’t always be antagonists.  Eventually, to make social change we had to make community.  The shouting had to be replaced with reason, persuasion, negotiation, cooperation.  Act-Up did their work in the streets, and God bless them for that.  They set up the work that APLA could then do in the meeting rooms and the legislative offices.  Relationships were required to get the research started, the drugs developed, the bills signed, the funds released.

            You never know who will become a necessary part of your coalition.  You never know how a chance meeting from years ago will become the contact you need to make for the work of today.  One of the advantages I have of having spent my whole ministry career in Los Angeles is that I know so many people!  I know whom to call.  I know someone that works there.  I know who to ask for help and who will get it done, because I made relationships and then I took care to attend to those relationships even when we moved on to other work.

            We become effective agents of social change when we care about the lives of people:  actual persons.  My friend.  The guy I went to college with.  The cashier at the grocery store.  Some visionaries can be sufficiently inspired by ideals of justice, freedom, fairness.  Most people need to attach a human face to the cause.  Most people will be inspired when they can picture the life of a person they care about:  Tom, Linda, Frank.

            My advice to the young adults I mentored in the SALT training, and to you today, is that if you want to be an agent of effective social change you must make relationship, keep making relationships, always be making relationships.  Take the meeting.  Have the coffee.  Go to the party.  Join a church, and the Kiwanis club, and the hiking group.  Introduce yourself to the waiter, and the guy at the gym.  Know your neighbors.

            Seek out, not just friendships, but relationships of all kinds with all kinds of persons.  Love people.  Seek to understand.  Listen.  Make a connection.  Be curious.  Who is this person?  What is she saying?  What does she care about?  What can I learn about their lives and passions and needs and hopes and fears?  What will motivate them to do something?  What can I do for them?  What could we do together?

            What should we do?