SDM is a non-profit organization that provides outreach and resources to individuals in search of authentic spirituality.

For the past fifty years, the religious landscape of the United States has changed tremendously. Today, the encounter between people of different religious traditions takes place in our own city, Los Angeles and other neighborhoods throughout California. In 1991, the Pluralism Project at Harvard University began a pioneering study of America's changing religious landscape. Through an expanding network of affiliates, documentation and research of the contours of our multi-religious society, explore new forms of interfaith engagement, and study the impact of religious diversity in civic life.

Thus, SDM provides a sacred and safe space for individuals of all faiths. The plurality of spiritual traditions has come to characterize every part of our lives today, especially in California. Here are four points to begin our thinking:

•First, pluralism is not diversity alone, but the energetic engagement with diversity. Diversity can and has meant the creation of religious ghettoes with little traffic between or among them. Today, religious diversity is a given, but pluralism is not a given; it is an achievement. Mere diversity without real encounter and relationship will yield increasing tensions in our societies.

•Second, pluralism is not just tolerance, but the active seeking of understanding across lines of difference. Tolerance is a necessary public virtue, but it does not require Christians and Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and ardent secularists to know anything about one another. Tolerance is too thin a foundation for a world of religious difference and proximity. It does nothing to remove our ignorance of one another, and leaves in place the stereotype, the non-truth - half-truth, the fears that underlie old patterns of division and violence. In the world in which we live today, our ignorance of one another will be increasingly costly.

•Third, pluralism is not relativism, but the encounter of commitments. The new paradigm of pluralism does not require us to leave our identities and our commitments behind, for pluralism is the encounter of commitments. It means holding our deepest differences, even our religious differences, not in isolation, but in relationship to one another.

•Fourth, pluralism is based on dialogue. The language of pluralism is that of dialogue and encounter, give and take, criticism and self-criticism. Dialogue means both speaking and listening, and that process reveals both common understandings and real differences. Dialogue does not mean everyone at the “table” will agree with one another. Pluralism involves the commitment to being at the table -- with one’s commitments.

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SDM provides invaluable community services through spiritual direction, counseling, and other public service programs. We provide a sacred and safe space for individuals of all faith in our group spiritual direction meetings and events.

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We have been blessed with the generousity of our members and supporters. It has been because of your generous donations that we are making it through difficult times.

Your tax deductible contributions and donations are always welcome.  We wish to thank you in advance for your generosity toward our cause.  Love, light and blessings to you.