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Bill Kirlin-Hackett, Change Agent.
Photo by Katia Roberts |
Bill Kirlin-Hackett recalls an old line from a military man he knew back in his Army days: “I’m not easy, but I can be tricked.”
Taken in a more dignified sense, Kirlin-Hackett says it applies to a lot of people whose curiosity and caring spurs them to move a little beyond their comfort zones.
A former Lutheran minister, Kirlin-Hackett, 61, teamed up with Baptist Rev. David Bloom in 2001, and the two of them went fact-finding on homelessness: its causes, consequences, and means of amelioration. Now chair of the Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness, he lectures frequently to religious groups eager to plumb the meanings of justice, charity, and compassion.
But to overcome the knee-jerk reactions of guilt, shame, or denial, he urges people to get out of the meeting hall and get tricked.
“Talk to a Real Change vendor, go visit a Tent City,” he says. “When we can’t dismiss the reality of what they’re living, things change enormously,” he says. “In a religious setting I call it conversion.”
Or just a good trick.
“We kind of want to be tricked a little bit,” he says.
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