Good morning.

I am thankful for the invitation to be with you today and my family and I are thankful for your warm welcome.

We're delighted to be here on our first trip to Petaluma.

I bring greetings from the First Unitarian Church of San Jose, where I am a worship associate and my wife Cecilia is a religious education teacher. Our sons Alex and Martin are frequent participants in services.

I am also active with our local Interfaith Council, where I serve on the board with Rev. Roger Jones, who was your guest speaker last week.

This morning I'd like to introduce you to the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry in California, a brand new organization with an exciting and essential mission.

Simply put, UULM is a way to link the 13,000 California UUs in 79 congregations to seek ways to put our faith and UU principles into action in the statewide political arena.

My goal today is to persuade you to participate in this organization both as individuals and as a congregation.

And for me to be successful, I have to demonstrate that yes - this is a ministry.

I've been thinking a lot about this topic of civic engagement recently.

One reason is the presidential election we have on November 2.

The other is a book that was published recently entitled "Luther P. Jackson and a Life for Civil Rights".

The book is about my grandfather, who was a historian and voting rights activist in Virginia. The author, a Canadian historian, says my grandfather's pioneering work in the 1930s and 1940s helped pave the way for many of the civil rights victories of the 1960s.

One of my grandfather's goals was to encourage African Americans to register and vote. He saw voting as a major path to power and self-determination.

His favorite slogan was "a voteless people is a hopeless people".

And he was very good at remembering his students' birthdays. Not so he could give them presents or sing happy birthday. But so that, when they turned 21 he could grill them in class about whether they had registered to vote and paid their poll tax.

My grandfather got more than a little frustrated when he saw the low voter participation among blacks in Virginia.

So, being a good social scientist, he enlisted several of his students in a research project to determine why these folks were not partaking of their rights and responsibilities as American citizens.

He reached three conclusions from this study:

1. The $1.50 poll tax - enacted to discourage blacks and poor whites from voting - was a very effective voter suppression tool. This was particularly true during the Depression.
2. Many rural blacks had never seen examples of how voting translated into power.

I found the third reason to be quite astounding on many levels.

As one rural black man told one of my grandfather's students: "Why boy, don't you know that voting is for the white folks? We ain't got nothing to do with that ... all we got to do is stay to ourselves, work hard and pray to the Lord. That's what we're supposed to do."

Voting, in essence, was the white man's business.

As I think about the current state of civic engagement in our society, I wonder if we liberal religious folk sometimes see political activism and civic engagement as somebody else's business.

Perhaps it's the politician's business.

Or it's the business community's business.

Or it's the labor unions' business.

Or, perhaps, it's the Christian Coalition's business.

And what about civic education for our children?

Whose business is that? Schools? Parents?

Many people see a fundamental conflict between faith and politics.

Church is where we think lofty thoughts of peace and love. Politics is where less than honorable people get their hands dirty conducting affairs of state.

I think there can be a tendency to segregate the many facets of one's life. I have my family life here. My religious life here. And my civic life and my work life over here.

Many, however, believe that there is an appropriate and necessary intersection of the spiritual and the civic.

In his book "Forward Through the Ages", the Rev. Dr. Dana Greeley - first UUA president says:

"There is a separation of church and state, but there cannot be a separation of religion and politics. The church must be the conscience of the state. ... The major mistake of any church is to make religion only ceremonial and otherworldly and keep it separated from society and everyday affairs."

The Rev. Lindi Ramsden, former senior minister of our church in San Jose, current executive director of UULM and a good friend, said:

"Without the centering and grounding of religious ritual, artistry, music and worshipping community, our social justice efforts can too easily degenerate into becoming a pure political exercise, one that is vulnerable to the dangers of cynicism, despair, and a sense of being overwhelmed by the magnitude of the work to be done."

"On the other hand, pursuing a purely private, personal spirituality without any larger commitments to, and sense of responsibility for, helping to shape the character of the institutions in society beyond home and family can too easily become an organized form of irresponsibility."

Martin Luther King said:

"Power without love is reckless and abusive and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love."

It's too easy for us to see the love as the church stuff and the power as the political stuff.

The civil rights movement is really the best example of love and power working together to produce fundamental change in our nation.

This was truly a faith-based movement.

Non-violence in the face of the Ku Klux Klan and corrupt Southern governments does not come easy.

The ability to fight injustice year after year, does not come easy.

The courage, perseverance, perspective and commitment to the cause don't come easy.

Justice work requires a faith that blends love and power and provides sustenance over the long fight.

I have a personal story about this confluence of love and power.

I work for the San Jose Newpaper Guild, the union local that represents reporters, advertising salespeople and other newspaper workers at the San Jose Mercury News and the Monterey County Herald.

Seven years ago, Knight Ridder acquired the Herald and immediately fired 28 employees and unilaterally cancelled the union contract.

It was devastating to the workers, their families and the community. Our union contract - with its good wages and benefits - had created an island of stability in Monterey and now it was gone.

Our union worked with community allies to spread the word of Knight-Ridder's actions in Monterey.

Although I was beginning to become active in faith-based justice work at the time, I initially did not think there was a role for love or spirituality in this struggle.

We sought power. The power to force this large corporation to treat its workers and the community with respect.

So, month after month and year after year, we kept pounding away at Knight Ridder. We railed about corporate greed and lack of community respect.

And this essentially negative campaign - and the accompanying cynicism, despair and sense of being overwhelmed that Lindi Ramsden talked about -- started to have an negative impact on me. It created strains in our family.

I started to dread that 75 mile drive from San Jose to Monterey.

Those of you who have been to Monterey, know there's a stretch of southbound Route One in Sand City when you climb up a little rise and that breathtaking vista of the city and bay opens up in front of you.

For me that view might as well have been a garbage dump.

I bottomed out one day when it was my turn to buy the food for one of our periodic strategy sessions.

I was grumbling and complaining about having to buy this food. This was an inconvenience for me because it meant I had to rush through traffic to make it to the meeting on time. What was usually an hour and fifteen minute drive from San Jose would be even longer.

But as I stood at the Safeway deli counter that morning, a miracle occurred.

I started thinking about the people who were going to eat that food. I thought about Mac and Allene and Sheila, some of the most courageous and dedicated union people anywhere.

My thoughts turned from my own inconvenience to what a blessing it was for me to be able to serve such an extraordinary group of people.

At long last, love had entered our justice campaign.

From then on, my whole outlook changed. I thought less about the negatives of the corporation and more about how much I loved the union and its members.

Our meetings became more upbeat and productive. We started to attract new people to get involved in their union.

And lo and behold, last November we got a new contract after six and one-half years of struggle.

Through love, we found the power to win justice at the workplace and the community.

Here in California, UULM and many congregations believe that - not only do we have a role to play in Sacramento - but that the state lawmakers need to hear our progressive religious voice.

Let me read a few words from the UU principles and as I read them, think about whether our voice is needed in the state political process:

Worth and dignity, justice, equity, compassion, truth, meaning, acceptance, peace, liberty and respect.

Think of this as sort of a UU party platform. Pretty attractive isn't it?

Talking about groups like UULM in the abstract is all well and good, but I always want to know about the actions the group has undertaken to fulfill its mission.

This year, UULM has made the Freedom to Marry or Marriage Equality its primary focus.

Specifically we have been working in coalition with other groups to support the Non-Discrimination in Marriage License Act which has passed out of the state Assembly Judiciary Committee.

Tomorrow we've got a Marriage Equality caravan that's driving from San Francisco to Washington, D. C.

We're conducting a workshop on November 6 at the UU Pacific Coast District leadership development day in San Francisco on how to start a UUs for Marriage Equality Task Force in your congregation.

When we talk about the freedom to marry, we're talking here about right of people in committed loving relationships to marry without regard to gender. Just as people in my grandfather's generation and later fought for the rights of men and women in committed relationships to marry, regardless of race.

Clearly you know from reading the papers that we are currently in an uphill fight on this issue.

And I have to say that the folks who came up with that proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage are pretty clever.

I said clever. Not moral, ethical or just.

They are the same people who have created a whole bunch of so-called wedge issues, designed to scare and divide people for political ends.

I've recently thought that there must be a secret laboratory in a suburban Washington dungeon where people dream up these hurtful strategies. Yesterday they targeted black people and immigrants. Today it's gays and lesbians.

These folks are able to tap into that insecure part of our brains that makes us want to constantly focus on perceived differences in people and fear others because for those perceived differences.

And their sinister plot is working in some quarters.

No sooner had marriage equality folks talked about gay marriage as a new civil rights movement, than others took the bait and said: "how dare they compare their issue to the real civil rights movement."

And that's the way people are.

There's always a tendency to say my struggles are more important than your struggles and my freedom is more authentic than your freedom.

My freedom is more hard fought than your freedom.

My freedom is more meaningful than your freedom.

But because we are one people, there is only one freedom.

And freedom always smells sweet, whether it's for African-Americans, immigrants or gays and lesbians.

In talking about how to promote UULM, I think we should think like marketing executives.

We should brand UULM as the freedom organization and the power to change organization.

Imagine you're on an elevator proudly wearing a large UULM button on your lapel. Someone asks, what's UULM?

You say: We're the freedom people. And we have the power to make the dream of freedom a reality.

What I appreciate about the potential for UULM is the same reason I'm so thankful to be part of a spiritual community.

It's that connection with something larger and more majestic than I am.

The chance to - pick your metaphor - walk in the footsteps of, stand on the shoulders of, march arm and arm with Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez and all of the faith-based justice leaders of the past.

UULM would love to connect with this congregation and have you work in fellowship with other UUs - from Palm Springs to San Diego to San Francisco - who are working together on issues like the Freedom to Marry and to build the capacity of UULM to become an even more effective force for good in our state and in our world.

We looking to build a sturdy justice organization that will serve both our congregations and our state.

Specifically, here's how this congregation can become involved.

1. You can provide input to the UULM to help them pick priorities for UU social justice projects over the next two years. You'll find issue surveys in your order of service. Please fill it out today and leave it with me.
2. You can communicate about UULM with members and friends through your website and, in turn, tell UULM about your congregational social justice activities so we can share news of your good works throughout the network.
3. You can promote individual memberships by filling out the brochures I've left today and making them available to others.
4. We welcome your participation in advocacy programs like Marriage Equality.
5. And of course we would always appreciate financial contributions from individuals and from annual collections on behalf of UULM.

I would be delighted to work with you to find out about additional opportunities for collaboration.

By working together we can, to quote Lindi:

1. fuse power to love.
2. be more effective in our social justice ministries
3. identify and like the talents and passions of UUs throughout our magnificent state.
4. raise our UU visibility in the public square and changing public policy and attracting more people to our congregations.
5. train the next generation of UU social justice activists.
6. help all of us find our own civic voice.
7. be a model for other UU legislative ministries around the country. We're the first.
8. infuse social justice work with a commitment to prayerful reflection, worship and artistry, friendship and fun.

This is a noble venture that can only be made stronger with your enthusiastic participation.

Together we can make love, power and freedom our business.

Thank you.