Sepulveda Unitarian Universalist Society

May 2024

Theme: Love as Equity

Can we talk; or at least engage in a dialogue about something that is on my heart.

I’ve been thinking about Investing your time with people and the fact that it comes at a cost. When you go to visit your relatives, go to dinner with a friend, or stay after work to talk with someone you are investing your time with them. You are giving of yourself and I wonder how often it is a selfless act? I am a counselor, a teacher a minister a chaplain. So much of my life is shared with others yet it is my paid profession. Im called to do these things The fact is most of us spend time with others at work but once free from work you do it instead of doing something else, something for yourself.

Sometimes, it doesn’t always seem worthwhile. If I’m honest, sometimes I would have preferred to have just spent my free time by myself. The gregarious me actually loves his alone time. Imagine that?

Recently, I was in a conversation with a few professional UUs and we were talking about the importance of relationships in our lives. We specifically thought about the need for having mentors, advisor, confidants. People who are happy to invest in us. It matters professionally if they have more experience, maybe age, maybe an academic specialty. I think we came to the conclusion that we really wanted someone with a life experience that might resemble our own (race, class, creed, orientation, gender) or similar stage of life (age, years in the profession) to share openly with, and someone for us to invest in as well. These giving and sharing relationships are an important part of the UU experience. They speak to relationship based on things like equity, equality, common values, etc.

I remembered a passage from seminary that touched my heart about this in some way
“Therefore encourage one another and build one another up…”,
Or the song You Lift Me Up.

When you choose to attend a congregation and participate in worship service, book group, a social gathering, or religious education you are also investing your time and I think expecting to receive something in return? The time spent with congregants, friends, family, and coworkers is about investing into the types of relationships that can lead to a higher level of your competencies and even your knowledge base, authenticity of different experiences that lead to greater understanding and love of one another. Expanding outward in ever growing circles of relations, friendships and maybe even deep sense of belongings.

When we know ourselves as a reflection of others and start to really see each other as caring, compassionate being maybe love could be ours.?

The level of investment needed in relationships is huge if we are going to live out the clause about inherent worth and dignity. If we can truly love one another as we love ourselves. If equity and shared ministry are part of what we aspire for then deepening relationships is key to our shared success.

Our conversation, the one with my colleagues, forced us/me to think, is the investment worth it? Oh my goodness how profound it is to say Im so happy to be in those relationships!

Now, building Relational Equity is not easy. Most of our relationships aren’t based on an equal playing field. Even our understandings of the very human differences of experience, gender, orientations, race, etc isn’t all that clear to the average person. You have to be open. You have to be willing. You have to want to understand where another soul is coming from to get to Relational Equity.

I should be clear, the purpose of having good relationships and having relational equity with people isn’t only to help ourselves it is the way forward towards a world that works better than the one we’ve known today. Maybe the hate, the prejudice, the contempt some humans feel toward the otherized peoples of out nation and world could be irradicated if we could see, listen, understand better?

There is much joy to be found in friendships. So much joy in shared experiences. As your relational equity grows with someone, so does the happiness and the ease of being with them is seamless. It will not matter if someone is queer or straight. It will not matter if your educated in schools and Im educated on the streets. It will not matter if Im multiracial/multicultural and your of a single ethnic strain of humanity.

The investment in time leads to more fulfillment as our hearts stretch and grow.
Building relational equity is important. Creating space for people from all walks of life is necessary if we are ever to truly build The Beloved Community.

Learning how to love ourselves will free us all to love each other and then we can build together a better system, a better world.

May it be so,

Rev Gordon