Resilience, Stonewall, and Pride • Lecture by Rev. Stanley Maszczak

Sunday lecture from June 28th, 2026

We welcome you to watch/listen to the video, read the transcript below, and/or share your thoughts in the comments!

About the Lecturer

Rev. Stanley Maszczak (he/they) is an ordained minister with the Chapel and a transpersonal coach whose work is shaped by his journey out of Christian fundamentalism as a gay and gender-nonconforming person. He served over 20 years in the U.S. Army Reserve—including three combat zone deployments spanning the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" era and after its repeal—in military police, public affairs, and broadcast journalism, completing his career supporting Equal Opportunity and Harassment Prevention programs.

Stanley joined the Chapel in 2018, served on the board, and serves as minister and newsletter editor. His ministry work is focused on bridging metaphysical principles with grounded, justice-centered practices of spiritual life—a synthesis he is deepening in the Master of Divinity program at the Pacific School of Religion, where he recently completed requirements for the Certificate in Spirituality and Social Change. As a lifelong learner, he draws on Quantum Human Design, the Akashic Records, and Tarot to help others trust their own inner authority.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GRn4YaRQHQ

Lecture Transcript

Oh, it's good to be with you all in person today. I always love coming down here in person when I can.

A Community of Shared Leadership

So, I appreciate what Sharon was saying about glue and all of that, but it's absolutely not true. There's so many people here that do so many different things, and as we've talked about many times, the chapel's an all-volunteer community, and has been since its inception. So, from Reverend Bill Whitley, as one of the co-founders here, leading the way for so many decades, and sharing that leadership with everybody else here is a really powerful testament to what, if we dare use the word church leadership, can look like when there's not one single person driving the bus, right?

So it's so important that we have diverse leaders and diverse community and everybody sharing that leadership. And it's also hard to do sometimes, because sometimes it's easy to just be like, "You're in charge, go do it," right? But when you're trying to get everybody to collectively work together, it can take a little bit longer. Has anybody ever tried that and noticed that? Yeah?

Yeah, because everybody's got their own idea about what they want things to look like and do, and some of us are more particular than others, and so sometimes people are more stubborn, but we all work through it. We have a really great community of people here who are committed to doing that, which is one of the huge things I appreciate about the chapel, so I'm glad you're here today with us.

Fifty-Seven Years Since Stonewall

So today is June 28th. Does anybody know what that is? The anniversary of?

So today… 57 years ago, today, in the sleepy town of New York City. In Greenwich Village. At a bar called the Stonewall Inn in the wee early morning hours of June 28th, there was a powerful catalyst for change that happened, and it erupted from violence, with police bringing violence upon the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender patrons of the Stonewall Inn, and the people in there finally standing up and saying, no more, we're not gonna endure this violence, even if they're wearing a uniform and say they have the law on their side.

We're not going to deny our dignity and our worth. We're going to fight back.

It's a long time ago. They were fighting against the people who had power, had formal power in that time, that said it's illegal for you to be who you are in public. At the time in the 60s, it was illegal for people to be gay in public. I could not hold the hand of my partner without facing arrest or imprisonment. I could not wear heels without facing arrest or imprisonment, women had to wear at least 3 items of women's clothing in order to be able to escape arrest.

There were lots of things then that were different, and some things that have not changed.

On that night, the police came, as they had done many times in the past. And this time, the people didn't scatter, they didn't run away, they fought. They were largely led, despite some of the things that we see on television, by black and brown transgender women who led the fight, even though a lot of our reenactments, films, and depictions show a lot of white men.

They were led by the most marginalized of the community, and said, no, we're not going to let this stand. They linked arms, they sang songs, and from that uprising, which was built on the shoulders of all the different actions that happened before that, Pride, LGBT, Gay Pride is what it was called at the time, finally got some sustainable traction.

And what we now… what we call gay liberation finally started to take off a bit more. But Stonewall wasn't the first queer action or statement. There were a lot before that, and a lot of queer folks and leaders stood up to abuses of power in lots of different ways. Because they knew that those abuses of power denied the truth of who we are.

When one person is treated as if they are not enough, or not divine, it's wrong.

And we are called, especially as people who are connected with our common source, as metaphysical practitioners who see the divinity in all, we are called to be supporters and helpers and people who stand up for those who are being marginalized when we're not, right? Because we see, in this room, we see and we honor that you are divine, and you are divine, and the divinity of God is in you.

You are God-expressed, or source-expressed... right? You are an expression of our common, living, creative source. And if that is true, then I'm gonna look out into my world and see if anybody is treated like they're not, and I gotta say something. Especially from places where I'm treated okay and they're not.

Did you hear that?

Especially in places where I'm treated okay, and somebody else is not. Right?

So, across all these spectrums of sexuality and gender and sexual orientation and race and color and religion and ability, we are the ones standing up and saying, we are all one.

We Are All One — Not One Blob of White Paint

But there's a difference because sometimes people will say, "We are all one." I used to hear people in the military say, "I don't see color." I get the intention, and I'm sure there are people in here who probably still say that or feel that way, but let me share this with you. There's a difference between saying, "We are all one. And we all fit into this one giant blob of white paint."

Versus saying, we are all one. Look at this vibrant, colorful spectrum of shapes and sizes and colors and forms and expressions across this vast sea of life and experience. You see the difference? Yes. That is the difference between, I don't see color, and we are all one.

Something to ponder.

So when we allow those spaces to be able to bring out our full human selves in ways that can look out at that vast, colorful ocean with eyes of appreciation and love and wonder, and allow that supportive vision of our future to inform all of our actions that we take. In a world that has not figured it out yet.

That's when we stand in our power, and we bring others in with us. We walk together in this work of creating above, below.

A lot of metaphysical New Thought, New Age communities have that… go back to that axiom. As above, so below. As below, so above. As within, so without. Well, if the without ain't matching the within, somebody's gotta do something. Right?

Meditation's so important, but we can't meditate all day.

Nothing's gonna get done, that trash isn't going to get taken out.

When the Government Chose Silence

The riot at the Stonewall Inn so many years ago may have started that larger momentum in the movements toward allowing our society to embody more of that full, beautiful, inclusive, diverse vision of our future. But liberation and the way we embody that vision are rarely a straight path. It's not a straight line, usually. There's lots of meandering and circling back and doing this differently.

As a manifesting generator in human design with a line 3, I know all about going back and forth, trying to get to the fastest, quickest end, and then realizing I gotta double back and fix some stuff. And if you don't know the words I just said, there's something to look up later. Human design is one of the metaphysical modalities that I practice a lot, and it's really… I am enjoying using it as a tool for understanding the vast diversity of all of our human experiences.

As we talk about that line for liberation and embodiment as metaphysical practitioners and as human beings living in this world as it is today in 2026, we can look back on history to see what has taken place in the past because our history is also cyclical. Can we agree? Y'all believe that too? Yeah, history is definitely cyclical. We go back and forward and we spiral towards things, hopefully towards progress and inclusion, right?

But, even after all those years, after the Stonewall uprising in 1969, less than 15 years later, the same community, the LGBTQIA plus community, was still in the process of fighting, but also celebrating, but also fighting, and building things all at once. But they were confronted with something even more devastating. In June 1981, the Centers for Disease Control reported a cluster of unusual pneumonia cases among gay men in Los Angeles. Does anybody remember that, if you're old enough? Okay.

It was the first public notice of what the world would come to know as the AIDS crisis. And in the years that followed that, that disease moved through communities like wildfire. Friends were burying their friends on a daily basis. Lovers lost their lovers, their partners, entire families were hollowed out, and the government's response was, we're gonna fix it! No! The government's response was silence.

And then after the silence, it was worse. It was ridiculed. And then all throughout that process, it was a willful neglect, willful neglect of our government's responsibility to take care of all of the people within the society, right?

President Reagan didn't publicly address AIDS until 1987, 6 years into the epidemic. And by that time, more than 20,000 Americans had already died. His press secretary even joked about the disease at White House briefings. Isn't it horrible when we see people in positions of power joking about the least of these, about death and destruction, about ostracization of our family members, of our siblings?

A lot of popular religious figures and televangelists. I was a big Southern Baptist back in the day. Jerry Falwell was my hero. I went to Liberty University. Oh, right, okay. I'm speaking from experience, from some of the… maybe not… I was… I was born in 82, so, you know. But, you see what I'm saying? Those popular religious figures, even the Reverend Falwell, described AIDS as a punishment from God. Right? The people dying were not seen as people worth saving. They were seen as less than.

That's why it's so important that any time we see that stuff happening, we've got to do whatever it is our part to do to make sure that we are embodying and creating the world that we want to live in. And that can start in our meditation, it can start in our community here, and it can start when we meditate and we allow spirit to change our hearts and our minds and come through and heal us and open our eyes, open our spirits to what we are actually supposed to be seeing and embodying and creating, and then taking that into action.

It does no… and this is something I'm learning and relearning over and over and over again. It does no good for me to learn something profound and have this amazing breakthrough and then forget about it the next day. Right? I've got to take action to embodiment. Otherwise, I'm going to find myself in the same pattern, the same cycle again, until I learn it. Because learning means embodying it. It's not about the mind.

A new thought we talk about, change your mind, change your life. Yes, and… And? And! Do we really change our mind if we're not doing anything different? No. Right? We can say, that's just as much as I used to believe gays were going to hell, too.

I had a lot of mental gymnastics going on in here, but I believed it. It was a belief in my mind that was implanted into me violently by other people, right? So it took work to get rid of that and you replace it with something else and then you embody it in ways you do work that contributes to people's acceptance and liberation. You join communities that are affirming and supportive and you allow that energy to build and grow and make sure that all the things that we say and do embody that. Because spirit is one, and if spirit is one, it is colorful and big and is for everybody, and if we're missing that mark, we just gotta make some adjustments, right? Keep it going. Continuing to grow.

They Mourned, They Organized, and They Danced

So the community… did what communities do back in the day when the government abandoned them. They organized. They had to organize, even while they were in mourning.

We have to take time to mourn. We have to. Mourning is so important.

There's… I don't think there's any value, personally, in saying, I know everybody in my life just died, but love and light! It's like, that's not what that means.

When I infuse love and light into my body, that means that I am free to embody all of the appropriate emotions for whatever I'm going through. I'm able to fully embody grief and mourning and loss when it is appropriate, because that is part of the healing process as human beings. I'm able to fully embody that joy that comes in the morning, the joy that comes next. But if I skip to the joy, I'm gonna come back to that grief at some point, and it's probably gonna be when I'm not ready for it and don't want to. Right? I've been there.

My mom died 15, 12, I don't know how many years ago, and I still, like, whoa, I didn't fully address that, gotta go back, you know? These things we have to allow ourselves to work through, and not blow past them.

So the community organized, even while they mourned, they formed ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, in 1987. They staged die-ins at federal agencies. They held candlelight vigils. They plastered the cities with the words, silence equals death. Because the people who were supposed to be speaking about it and taking care of them were not. They knew the longer people stayed silent about what was happening, the more people would die unnecessarily.

And this is the part I want you to hold with me. They mourned, they organized, and they danced.

Activist and writer Dan Savage put it this way.

"During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for."

When you embody that energy of joy and dancing, even in the midst of the grief and the organizing and the stuff that we've got to deal with on a day-to-day basis because people haven't got their stuff together yet, we contribute to that energy of the vision we're creating. Dancing is essential.

This is something I need to remind myself, and I need you to help me and remind me of. Regularly. Because… I'm not gonna blame it on my human design, but… I'm very much attuned to what's not working.

Trish said, "No, how dare you?" Yeah, Trish has gotten that sometimes. Sorry, Trish. I'm working on it. Grace for everybody, right? But we've got to dance. We've got to dance and we've got to be where we are. I have to be okay with where I am, not to excuse when I mess up or hurt other people. But to be okay with where I am, enough to say, I messed up, what can I do to repair this, my relationship with you, so we can all move forward supportively together, right?

But if I'm so focused on being perfect and not messing anything up, I'm not gonna do the actions I need to do. And this is as much with social justice things, as much it is with other aspects of our community, as much as it is with our spiritual development.

I started my studies of quantum human design four years ago, went through the program, did some great things. I've done a lot of great stuff with some sessions with people, but have I really embodied it fully in ways that I intended to when I began? No. I've let some other things kind of swoop in and take over, right? So every time I say, oh, I want to go back to this and keep moving this forward, I want to share this with this person and this person, because to whom much is given, much is required, I'm going to share what I've been given, make sure I'm using all the gifts and blessings that I have to share with others. Every time I do that, I go back to that, feeding that future vision.

Right? It doesn't have to be about holding the weight of all the things that have passed, but about what am I going to choose in this moment to make sure that I'm contributing to that future vision that I'm bringing into the now, today. Meeting the needs of today.

He said they danced all night. Not because the dance was an escape from the struggle, although sometimes it could be. But it was part of it. Remember, they were embodying the right for them to gather with people who looked like them and loved like them. To be seen in public. Or in private. To move their bodies freely without shame. Joy wasn't just a reward at the end of that, it was the whole point, so we have to remember the point.

The Work of an Ally

And this goes beyond the queer community. This is about our allies, people who were not directly affected by the crisis in their own bodies. People who may have been straight. Cisgender. But people who saw the truth of the divinity in each person and wanted to help even as non-queer person, as straight folks. They stood up and did what they saw as their part. One of our big metaphysical voices right now was a big part of that. Do you know who that is?

Marianne Williamson. Oh. Marianne Williamson founded the Los Angeles Center for Living in 1987. She launched Project Angel Food in 1989 to provide critical support to individuals suffering from HIV-AIDS during that epidemic. Those organizations offered psychological counseling, emotional support, and delivered meals to the patients who were often shunned by their families. Your family's not going to bring you food, religious organizations aren't going to bring you food, and the broader medical community is still treating you like it's your fault. Right?

So Project Angel Food began as an outreach program with that church, the Centers for Living that she started, initially operating out of a church kitchen, to serve those homebound patients in LA. And by 1982, they were delivering almost 400 hot meals daily. And as of recent reports, they've now delivered over 12 to 14 million meals to those with terminal illnesses and chronic conditions. So they've expanded beyond just the AIDS crisis. They continue to give and support people wherever they might be in need there.

Well, Marianne Williamson personally facilitated support groups, she organized fundraisers, she paid for prescriptions and transportation for patients when no other help was available. She did work as an ally, as a person, as a metaphysical practitioner who understood the divinity in all of us and put it to action. Especially in those places where help and support should have been available from all those other avenues.

We Are the Dance

So when I bring that back to the chapel, I understand that we here hold a deep truth, that we are all whole. We are complete as we are, and in that completeness, in that perfection, we are still adding to it. We are still stripping away the filters that society places onto us from the outside that makes us forget our perfection, makes us forget all that we are, makes us forget that we are one.

Part of our guiding statement says that we practice the open acceptance of everyone in every religion, understanding that we all worship the same God within and without. We are all part of that same source, co-creating this life together. One of the purposes of the chapel is to share the love and light in ourselves and in others, so that we are open and receptive to the flow of God's light and love.

And to share our love, and our light, and our gifts, and our wisdom, we have to nurture it. I have to feed it. I have to allow my connection with spirit to grow and deepen, and I have to allow my mind, my body, and spirit to be in sync. I have to nourish my mind with good information, with good vocabulary that helps me speak words of life into our society around us, and doesn't use terms that we don't even realize are degrading to other people, right? This is all education. It's a commitment to that growth in all areas of life, body, mind, and spirit.

So when we work toward that right for all individuals to live fully, to love freely, to just occupy space without any apology, we are participating in one of the most sacred acts we can participate in. Because we're embodying the above below.

That same community back then that held vigils and danced while burying their dead wasn't waiting for permission. To live fully, they demanded it, and they claimed it, even in the midst of unimaginable loss. That's not only resistance, but that is resilience.

One of the things we must focus on in these times that we're in is our individual and collective resilience. How do we come together and cultivate our ability to be resilient?

So today, on this anniversary of Stonewall, we honor that lineage, we carry that dance. We acknowledge that so many people have done so many things to contribute to this time that we are in now.

And it's up to us to recognize our call from the divine to embody the change that we want to create in the world from wherever we are in this room and beyond, and remembering that that dance continues and that we are the dance.