i think a lot of folks find it much more spiritually uplifting and satisfying to do charity work then to do social action and political and public advocacy for structural change and i'm here to to work on that with you to work on that issue and that problem really with you to see if we can get to a different place together i have a feeling that everybody in this room cares a lot about public policy issues i don't think i even need to not about that i'm just you wouldn't even be here at this at the series of you didn't have that proclivity and that point of view so just really quickly then few words as you can say i'd just like to ask folks why do you care and keep it short and there's a reason i'm asking you to keep it short besides time ok why do you care about public policy issues this is an important question i think for us to meditate on it's a it's a it's a it's a montra why do i care whenever you're engaged in social issues try repeating that to yourself why do i care and seek an answer from yourself comes in a short sentence yes a short sentence so that you're this is a this is a meditation this is a spiritual practice to engage in in the course of political and social advocacy why do i care where are my in this at the depths of my being what brought what delivered me to this rock us rowdy outrageous confusing frustrating very often business of public policy change why am i here why do i care and being able to ask that question and seek out a short and clear and concise answer maybe it's not short and concise but that's good to know too you know and then you can kind of look deeper within yourself and go wow it's complicated it's kind of a boiling churning mess in there so it's an opportunity to get to the root of why you care to act out of the reason that you care and to be mindful so it's a mindfulness practice right be mindful of what it is that motivates you to be involved this is a very powerful thing i think the politicians who touch our hearts and make them and inspire us to vote for them and to go with their efforts and follow them where they're leading these are politicians who are able to answer that question and are not afraid to express the answer to that question in concise clear terms politicians activists leaders are the ones the good ones the ones that stand for what we stand for but also have the capacity to lead and to inspire are able to answer that question they know the answer to that question they're asking themselves that question so that is a spiritual discipline to apply in the course of social there wrote a book this past year got a book published this couple of men actually but it's all i didn't write them all this last year mind you erode a novel i have a novel that just came out published called soldier on but it took me ears to write it so i just want to be clear i'm not that prolific this one is called hitchhiking to alaska came out last march and seattle is actually in the story here's how it goes how we got the title of this b k some friends of mine back when i was a young goof in santa cruz california bunch of us guys were pals in high school and then a couple of my pals they were all about eighteen nineteen twenty years old a couple of my buddies decided that they were going to leave santa cruz and go to the great northwest and be a lumberjack surface or people or whatever you know do something adventurous in the north country so they decided to hitchhike to seattle and so they went down to the bottom of highway seventeen in santa cruz which is the road north over the hill to san jose's ever cisco and points north stuck out their farms put out a cardboard sign cardboard sign said s at their thumbs out nobody picked them up and they're waiting waiting they're standing there it was back when people used to hitchhike but some of us are old enough to remember those days and you were there are standing there it she trying to hit nobody's picking him up things happening finally my friend rock one of the two guys he gets a bright idea turns the sign around writes alaska on it and sticks out that stick over thumbs right away somebody picks him up alaska cool i'm only or as far as san francisco without help oh yeah that would help me hop in and so they made it to seattle holding up a sign that said alaska and i think that is a  deep concept that has application generally for the work of social change and public policy advocacy because there are times when in order to get to hear the best way to get to here is to aim here right there at example this would be more hondas k gandhi right gandhi's goal in life was ok he was a spiritual a spiritually minded person his whole you read his autobiography the title of it is the story of my experiments with truth ok spiritual truth  so his goal was god ultimate reality whatever word you want to use self realisation he was aiming that up there so to speak that was the purpose of all of his work  trying everything he did was a bit was about peeling back the layers of truth in the search for self realisation and so for him getting you know  ending the british raj over india was actually just to go that was just a step along the way to self realization you say the process of doing that was part of how he would get closer to the so since his goal was up here any kind of trouble or roadblock along the path to get to here was just you know just another stop on a much longer road it gave him the patience and the stick to it have nice to keep going a friend of mine young friend of mine is a border justice activist he's part of a thing called no more deaths i take students down to the us mexico border in to learn about the mouse on the us mexico border it is our immigration policies i think most of us here probably agree don't make sense but then you get down to the border and you see not only does and i make sense it's a policy of death rate we've got that the purpose of the way that the border enforcement works is to drive migrants to the most dangerous deadly parts of the desert to cross the death rate out there is the same as it was ten years ago but there's you know a gigantic leaf you are wes many many many fewer people crossing but the number of deaths is the same because it's more dangerous and they going out to more remote areas anyway walt's job with this group called no more deaths is to monitor the situation keep track of what's happening in the desert what negro is doing what the migrants have to go through keep track of the humanitarian conditions so at a certain point though after spending you know a couple summers in one hundred twenty degrees and a floppy canvas tent and dealing with a lot of frustrations and difficulties that go with the work he just got fed up frustrated he quipped and then after he quit he began to reflect he goes why is that why is it that the people who stick with this work funny thing they're all spiritual people they're all either religious or spiritual you know spiritual but not religious but have some kind of spiritual practice of some kind they realize it almost doesn't matter what the spiritual practice anything radically but everybody who seem to stick with it or most people stuck with that work and hung in there for the long haul has some kind of spiritual discipline or practice and he was struck by this and he now he is found spiritual direction he's hitchhiking to alaska now right not just seattle sailed great by the way it's beautiful here i don't want to go to alaska but just once i'm good you know i've hitchhiked to seattle a flash this is great here it's beautiful city but my point is he's he's hitchhiking to alaska and now he's regain the patience to take to deal with the frustrations that go with the work of this organization he's back at it he's back involved and he has a very different attitude he has something that will carry him through as h s spiritual batteries like to keep him going so there is something to this so the work of social change and advocacy it can be a long and frustrating and involves going to public meetings i'm sure many of you here i've spent time in public meetings could there be anything more stultifying more mind numbing more soul de than a city planning commission meeting oh man you need god to get through that or something buddha or somebody you know it's just so incredible so you're dealing with you know abject horrific boredom a lot of this work you're dealing with difficult people you're dealing with unspeakably inflated egos that prevent you from getting things done but sometimes egos that you need to to put to work to get things done i mean it is like a minefield for the spiritual seeker to deal with to be involved in public policy change working for peace or justice at the structural level so one way to think about all that is that in fact this is a fantastic spiritual discipline can you remain mindful can you keep your eye on alaska and your thumb out in that direction through all that can you do it that's that is one way of looking at what you're trying what you're doing when you get engaged with this kind of work a little bit of history here to to meditate about and why part of why it's hard a part of why we've kind of fallen out of the discipline the spiritual discipline of working for social change and and structural change in america used to be in america something called the civil religion right lincoln employed the civil religion in his rhetoric of during the civil war he knew you know america has sinned against god almighty the whole country as sinned against god almighty north and south we've all send for being tolerant of or being perpetrators of slavery in america the whole country as sinned against god and the whole country must pay in blood and that's the civil war is america paying in blood for its sin against god ok and the way out of this mess is to obey god and bring in reconcile america and bring the people back together north and south as one nation under god that's the kind of rhetoric that one can used not the thing to remember here is that lincoln didn't like church ok didn't go to church much he thought churches were a mass he wasn't a particularly religious guy in a  formal kind of way he was also completely disinterested in the weeds of the ology right you will not find lincoln you know being concerned about whether the rapture of the righteous will happen in a it's not in the what it sure about wakin right there's no concern there about the doctrine of the trinity or the infallibility of the scripture it's like none of that very simple very simple god wants justice slavery is an injustice and period it's it's simple but it's beautiful and it's from the man's heart this was his religion and spirituality another example of course as martin luther king as you brought up notice that king talks about the beloved community talks constantly about about the people the black people of america you know leaving egypt the promised land for for freedom for another another life a different a different way of life liberation so there's this beautiful language this religious language the spiritual language but you will notice there's nothing in there about whether or not jesus physically rose from the dead right there's nothing in there no no doctrine of the transubstantiation of the elements or the mass nothing totally stays out of the weeds all right this was religion politics in america for a couple hundred years right the founding fathers yes they were fathers day ists you know totally on interests of them sectarian christianity really  most them and so that was religion and politics until the reagan revolution what happens with reagan as the republican party has got this problem you know who wants to go with their program of the elite controlling the country when most people aren't part of the elite so they figure out and they decide to go to bed with fundamentalist christians big constituency and also of course there's other factors but but when when they went to bed with fundamentalist christians and hard core evangelical christians when they did that then they began to use the rhetoric the religious rhetoric of fundamentalism right and suddenly the language of politics of the republicans is do you believe every word of the scripture ok the bible says this about this you know the bible says homosexuality is a an abomination and on on on so quoting chapter and verse starts happening starting to make tests for presidential candidates unheard of before the reagan revolution and so we saw the spectacle in the last couple lection cycles of republican candidates being grilled about stuff that eisenhower would have said don't ask me that question he would have thrown them out right but but now that's like standard operating procedure for the republican party what happened there so the republicans started using very sectarian religious language what did the democrats do they walked away from religion they were so horrified by the way by religion and politics as it was being exercised by that side of the equation that they just gave it all up they walked away from religion and politics not everybody there are exceptions you know clinton you know others sometimes would use this for the rhetoric of the old civil religion but by and large the democratic campaign machine gave it up and ceded the whole landscape of religion in america politically to the conservative wing and that's where we are today there was a brief period back in two thousand and five when there was a a bit of a turn around for a while but  dissipated the party forgot about they got some really good operatives in the party who took religion seriously unfortunately they peter principle them out of their jobs they hired them into the administration and out of the party so all those good voices are now getting government paychecks and they're gone from from the movement to inject the civil religion into into politics so that some background another thing happen around the right time of the reagan revolution and that is that there was despair about the direction of the country and a concern that all the social progress that have been made in the civil rights era and the war on poverty that all that would be lost and at the same time we had a for a number of reasons an upsurge of poor people living on the streets around that time for a bunch of reasons because of the emptying of the mental health institutions long story but suddenly there was a new class of people that was invented the homeless the word homelessness didn't exist in america hundred one right at the time reagan became president so kind of as a political reaction from the left people started highlighting the plight of pork they started paying attention to poor people again and they invented this new class of poor people they call the homeless and then suddenly the religious people of america rise up this is terrible homeless people want to reverse or streets we have to have homeless shelters the homeless programs anyway i was one of those people so i i was the chair of the committee that started a program in paltrow called the urban ministry all to california by stanford well it's a pretty crazy place to run a homeless program the richest place in america  wow anyway so i very involved in starting programs for homeless people shelters drop in centers money management case management food all sorts of stuff and then later saving skid row hotels from being redeveloped that was a big project to go bald them so that became my career for about ten years what happen is that the energy and the resources and the attention of faith of religious people in america shifted there used to be some engagement of faith communities in politics in the war on poverty in the civil rights movement was a huge factor all that energy shifted over to the private sector dealing with the charity charitable institutions to serve poor people and part of that change also was the weakening of religious organizations so dominations like the mouth of us the united church of christ our denominational resources were going down as our membership was declining and so our our national level people who did advocacy had less resources to work with and became less effective at the national level so a lot of energy wanted to charity that otherwise might have gone into preventing the need for the cherry right and a lot of faithful people got sidetracked away from the forest rating mess that was happening in washington as the right wing began to chip chip chip chip take apart the government and reduce our social safety net to the tatters that we have it and today so people like me are culpable here ok it was easier to go to charity it was more personally rewarding to hold the hands of homeless people on the other side and go to the hospital with them and visit them in jail and i loved that work and i believe in it and i totally support it but if you're going to do charity you also because of how we what makes you know because of why we care leads us to do more than charity yes it leads us to change the system that the upstream stuff that's causing the downstream problem so that's a bit of history spiritual focus while we still have our fingers in our thumbs out hitchhiking to alaska that's what i'd like to think about here today quick little bit of a slideshow how can coffee hour and  starting shelters and pomo services would start an organization called the urban ministry although one of our projects was to create a shelter quite like the one in this building yes we call it hotel does inc long other part of the story is that all of america jails are nicknamed after the sheriff of that place you'll notice this if well if any of you been in jail you know what i'm talking about anyway so we started translate coffee hour into serving poor people or income people living on the streets so that was charity but then why are these people homeless well big part of it is that they used to have access to housing that was cheap and then that housing want to weigh in there used to be skid row hotels in our major cities and then they got rid of the downtown areas got redeveloped it happened here it's happened in cities all over the country and that cheap housing stock turned into condos office towers etc well paul to head for skid row tells paul to who knew this wealthy town we had him while one of them was  eminently going to be converted to a condominium office condominium and that's where i got involved and rounded up a bunch of stanford students to do research to back it up on this topic about the need for these hotels and then started organizing the hotel residents and that is me back in the day with my daughter lives in my hands they're organizing hotel tenants to go to the city appalled so to get a a change to the city's general plan to identify these hotels which were paying hotel tax and were considered transient occupancy we tracked we converted the hotels to being housing or carrying on that tradition so yeah it's like ok we could just put the band aid on forever or we could deal with the upstream problem change public policy in this case the local level to prevent people from winding up on the streets because they don't have any housing that's just one small example of working upstream and that by the way we're meeting in a or junkies would go to get their fixes anyway when it was all done it was turned up beautifully the remodeling and preservation of it taken over by a law income housing development development corporation it's a happy ending so an upstream solution here are some statistics to meditate upon about why we need because we care for it because of the reasons why we care in our souls why we need to turn more energy towards public policy change and not just to charity here's your here's some stats  the it turns out is not on the slide is another way to describe this problem so the federal snap program food stamps as it's often known in two thousand and five two point twenty eight point six billion dollars program  the total volume of food bank food in america is two billion pounds now you can figure all sorts of ways devalue that but if you were generous that might be worth four billion dollars so that's the difference in scale between the public programs that feed homeless and feed hungry people in america and the private ok bread for the world bread for the world is a evangelical conservative christian charity in america which is working very hard to try to stop cuts and in the snap program why because bread for the world it's a very reputable organization works worldwide and they have figured out that the and i'm just going to ask you a question what do you think the percentage is of private food donations in america of all kinds foods food banks soup kitchens church food closets all of it all donated food and money to buy food and part from private charity in america what's the percentage of that relative to the federal total food others yes one percent answer six check you out do you work for bread for the world six percent six percent so the paul ryan republican budget cuts for food stamps in the congress that is a bigger amount than the entire charitable donation system for food report for hungry people in america that cut wipes out with dollar value of all donated food in america so anybody who is under the the the pre supposition that somehow charity can fix these problems you know now we need charity for other reasons to pony up the gaps in our social safety net so we need food banks and glosses totally but it's not going to pick up the slack forget it what happened there was another set of statistics housing ok i'm a units of housing has habitat for humanity and most beloved housing charity maybe one of the most beloved charities in america how many houses are built in america since the one nine hundred seventy eight thirty thousand how many units but of housing are subsidized every year by section eight the federal subsidy program for rants by the way virtually the same subsidy in each case thirty percent of income that's habitat standard that is  standard one point four million units every year so anybody who thinks that private charity is going to solve our housing problem you do you drank that you must have been drinking tea party tea ok because it just there's just no way no way jose no son to keep in mind here about this one point four million it's actually more than that it i think at this as of bit old slide here but it turns out that many millions more people in this country are eligible for section eight subsidies than can get them because it's so ridiculously underfunded right we could have thirty million people thirty million units covered in terms of the eligibility compared to the availability of the units there  counties in california that we can't even get on the list for it you know it could be ten years before you could even get on the list at all and then you'd have to wait after that so it's a real problem but the scale gives you a little clue about this issue so please memorize the statistics and repeat them to your friends and family whenever they suggest that somehow charity can fix these problems not  happening and there are some advice about agencies that you know organizations that are working for systemic change in the in the realm of just in the christian world there are also beginning to be wonderful religious diversity spreads and new institutions come into being to work on these issues with new partners in this work all the time from other faiths cell i want to close my talking par with with a little piece from my book which i came to alaska and then what's on my ask a question and let's get into let's say two groups this group in this group to talk in a circle about this question so this is a chapter from my book short where there is no vision the people perish that's in the bible yes proverbs chapter twenty nine where there is no vision the people perish wise words then and still now so the title of this is a vision for  america imagine a nation of free healthy happy people living in a democracy and working in a vigorous market economy nobody worries about whacking the money for rent or food people are emboldened to be entrepreneurial because they know that they will not starve or become homeless or lack health insurance if they fail in a business venture the private sector thrives because the public sector guarantees basic universal protections for people the social safety net is funded by taxes that services are provided efficiently by public and private agencies wherever possible and practical market based incentives are used to maximize the quality in the costs of the program everyone has health insurance paid for through their taxes public insurance pays for services provided by private doctors and hospitals free k through twelve education is an excellent accessible to all higher education is excellent and adapts to new  technology like web based teaching to wissen is heavily subsidized for students research universities well funded from public and private sources are engines that drive the nation's global leadership and technology and cultural development workers displaced by economic changes or offer generous retraining opportunities taxes are substantial but not so high that they stifle the economy people are willing to pay them because they get so much in return a huge federal budget deficit is brought into balance by a combination of careful cuts and measured increases in revenues from closing tax loopholes and raising taxes on higher income people straightforward efficient regulations govern the economy to protect the natural environment the interests and interests of consumers while maintaining the health of industry and commerce regulation is carefully crafted to avoid bad unintended consequences and excessive more ta incomes of citizens very widely but low income people do not suffer depor severe deprivation and the total wealth is not overly concentrate in the upper income class executive compensation as modern as moderate regulations that require transparency in court corporate governance the liberty of individuals is honored unless it adversely affects other people directly laws are based on the principle of harm reduction if a ban on  assault destructive personal behavior will not prevent it or will make the problem worse than the behavior is not criminal criminalized public health service and mass media campaigns are employed instead to reduce the personal and social harm of substance abuse alcoholism gun ownership but cetera the number of people incarcerated goes down annually as a result of rehabilitation and educational services inside and outside jails abortion is legal and safe because but there are fewer abortions performed each year as a result of universally accessible family planning and excellent public education about sexual health religion thrives in the country because the rhetoric of politicians and was  government do not officially endorse one particular faith or institution religious institution over others a free market of faith keeps religious organizations responsive to the spiritual needs of the people the system of democracy is reformed to encourage maximum citizen participation through greater representation of all political perspectives and less and influence of big money interests constitutional changes are made so little wider range of public opinion can be represented and also to encourage the formation of broad consensus it's a vision that builds on america's historic strengths and makes it once again a beacon of hope for all humanity that's my vision america what's yours so i'd like you to share two things in your groups with each other and probably not everybody is going to be able to speak but just get a sampling in a sense of your group two questions why do you care what in your soul your deepest place who you are mix you care about these issues and what's your vision because again without vision the people perish so what's your vision for america your short version of what this country could be like because i think part of spirituality is imagination right spiritual practice activates the moral imagination to imagine how life could be imagine the impact the public policies or any actions that we take are going to have on other people imagine the enemy the unintended consequences that cut could come for but from a particular action so spirituality activates our moral imagination to think of what could be and to imagine the impact that what could be would have on people for good or ill so what's your vision of america now why do you care let's do it thank you very much this is a serious problem give you another illustration of the problem as i teach public policy at the graduate school social worker u s c so my job is to turn social workers and activists ok now almost you know hardly any of these students come to social work school with any intention whatsoever being activists of any kind they want to be therapist with individual families and kids and adults and so on they want to help individuals so the idea of taking a class about public policy is like they're kind of happy about it so my job is to get them excited about it and i'd like to say that you know i'm having moderate success with us that are you know it's fun it's a fun challenge to try to turn him on to this just tell on which kathy early earlier tonight about this you know there's a club at the social work school called the social action club and i want to they're me i was an advisor for a while on this group i think it's kind of fall apart anyway they're talking about what they want to do for the or and well or the social action club let's go feed the homeless on skid row social action that social action you know where i come from social action is like changing housing policy and all sure feed the homeless great but you know what about policy you know they're all like a no to the silence in the room all these young adults was deaf ening like public policy that social action yeah yeah preventing people from winding up on skid row so there's just a you know what's happened that this is also about history we've had thirty five years of an assault on public institutions by the right way government is your enemy said reagan taxes are evil say the republican party for thirty five years you have americans for tax reform you know grover norquist americans and americans for tax deform right i mean what's cripple our government by taking away it money he wants to you know he said i want to get government small enough so i can drag it in the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub well actually he doesn't say that he wants to cut the military to the point being here we have an assault an assault on the concept of the common good for thirty five years and it's an assault and it and it worked and now kids of the social work school social work school don't know what social action has because it's been demonized for so long they think of it as a hopeless mouse who wants to have then to do a politics that's what we're up against also there's been a steady erosion of trust in all kinds of institutions all institutions who trusts any institution right so people their trust in government has been eroded or their trust in big business has been eroded and their trust in temples churches and mosques has been eroded too so you've got this atomize ation of our society that's going on so this is a tough thing to deal with but again if we go down deep and i think even these you know that's what i try to do with my students is to get them to think this to every class begins with start with heart i start my classes with a meditation that they lead to go deep to find out what a while i do i care why do i want to be a social what do i care about who do i care about and why and go there and then if you really care and not just kind of care but really care then you're going to do what it takes to care which inevitably leads you into political structural social change work inevitably inevitably leads you to engage with institutions and belong to institutions that engage with institutions so we've got to go back to the basics here i do think this is a spiritual problem is a wonderful book long story but anyway in his book reverence eretz this beautiful book called reverence and then there is a chapter on which he says voting is irrational think about your vote will not change an election your individual your individual vote will not change the result of any election except maybe for condo board ok anybody ever been in a condo association scary democracy run amok but anyway my point is we do not vote because it changes anything says woodruff voting says woodruff is a ritual ceremony ok it is the ceremony in which we act out our deep value of democracy our deep sense that every each individual human  beings opinion counts and matters mion as much as the high and highest and mightiest of the mighty right so we have a belief a conviction and we act in a ritual to manifest that just like we do in religion voting is religion it's a religious act ok until we know until we understand that we're we're going nowhere we're getting people engaged as voters and citizens it's a ritual so here's something i would like to spread virally in seattle next time you vote whether you do it by mail or do it in person salute your ballot as you put your your ballot into the mail box probably all of you here absentee ballots that's how it works  as you go to the mailbox salute your bow and say i salute all those americans who risked and gave their lives for me to have the right to vote do that please and tell everybody you know to do that because it's a ritual ok so that when you put that ballot in the box in the mail box your heart is activated your soul is act ok this is a ritual and when people catch on to people that want to do rituals together it's communal all rituals are communal even if you do it privately it's still communal right do that spread the word what us or revive this ritual of voting ok so that people remember their deepest value yeah i do matter as much as bill gates or as much as  obama or as much as george bush a matter just as much so please spread the word and try to push this out there another thing i do that i do in churches have done for years is the blessing of the taxes ok thirty five years of demonizing taxes in america my friends go to a religious communities and bless your taxes so what i do is i take a i r s form an envelope i put it on the altar i put my hand on it and i pray over it on behalf of the whole carriers and i pray lord that these taxes be spent for the common good that they be spent well and that all of us be activated as citizens to assure that these taxes are spent well to benefit the least of us in our society who suffer from the operation and need and we serve the people with these taxes and on something to that effect you can look it up burke low blessing taxes google that you'll get the tax per share and every you know the sunday before tax day i do this in church and it spread it around the country and it's a lot of people are going us a lot of pastors are in the rabbis etc doing this it's a ritual ok pay or taxes a ritual what us celebrate our taxes right so it's a very subtle thing i'm doing there is not you know when you blast taxes suddenly they're not evil like grover norquist and company are saying you know i just excuse me grover norquist is a sick man ok that is sick what he's doing all right and it's something else i propose that we do because it's crazy think about it i'm getting excited now it's crazy that that you know thousands tens of thousands of politicians in this country  signed a pledge to never raise taxes under any circumstances wait a minute are they have pledged to serve the people and if that means raising taxes now and then that's what it means to serve the people period don't be signing a pledge that gets in the way of the pledge you did when you took office ok and that's what this is about so here's what i propose you know what he does with those pledges there are in a vault he put them in a vault like the sacred holy things so i say ok let's do this let's get another vault where we take the pledges and we shred them up and we put them in the vault shred them up and put them in vault in a church someplace should be a church how about a rich would you be willing to receive them here is that a commitment seriously watch out dude shush watch out because it's going to happen you're going to get  american document that's wrecking our country they didn't make any pledge to you know they're not they don't pledge to not cut ties you know they cut taxes they're allowed to do that but they can't raise them again when we need it it's crazy all right so this is just it didn't make any sense at all so they'll be coming to the basement at the united temple university temple church over in here in the archives  that's it ok we're have some fun with us but you see my point so this is we have to think spiritual when think about politics people see there are freaked out about politics and religion oh no the politics and religion don't mix sorry they've always mixed how do we mix them is the question not whether right so we got to really think about this i know i'm preaching now an excuse me i'm supposed to be answering questions but it just gets me go on others we are all one we are one john chapter seventeen in the bible i in them and they in me and we indian google jew no no jesus says we are all one that we may be put perfectly one as i am the father one may they and we all be one my answer is we are one author and early twentieth century and he has this one as wonderful proverb says the question of bread for myself is a material question the question of bread for my neighbor is a spiritual question i want to repeat that the question of bread for myself is a material question a question of bread for my neighbor is a spiritual question whenever you  expressing concern or trying to express concern for your neighbor for someone else that is a spiritual thing because you have to activate your moral spiritual imagination in order to think of what what does it mean to love my neighbor what it was my neighbor need and to really ask your neighbor what she needs and and to be curious about what your neighbor needs that is spiritual that gets that's an out of ego experience right spirituality is about out of the ego experiences so the question of bread for your neighbor that spirituality period until we start thinking of it that way i think we're going nowhere you know it's been said about mention those to folks here tonight one description of difference to conservatives and liberals in america progress as us conservatives say their motivation and their goals in one sentence one simple clear we're often very weird sentence but it's clear and short right and liberals respond to that question in ten pages of ten point type wonkily and details and trivial weeds basically we have to get out of the weeds we have to go deep to the center of our souls and find the one liner in there that expresses our souls ok until we do that we're nowhere as a progressive or a movement in america so it is a spiritual thing i dare say or a religious thing in order to make a difference we have to activate our spirituality and express our religion again not with some you know bunch of trivia about doctrine and save us from  that does not serve especially in a multicultural multireligious society but there is a way to do this that activates our souls in the service of these cause i think i better stop it's been a joy being w