Sermon 9/14/25

 

A rose cannot thrive without water.
It may bloom for a time in dry soil, reaching upward with all its strength, its petals unfolding in soft defiance of the drought. But without nourishment, the petals begin to curl inward, and the life at its center begins to fade. Something essential starts to pull back, as if the rose itself knows it cannot keep giving without first receiving.

That slow withdrawal formed a question I carried with me for years: what does it mean not only to be welcomed, but to truly belong? What does it mean to receive the kind of nourishment that allows a soul to stay open?

To understand the shape that question took in my life, I have to go back a little. Well, maybe more than a little, although perhaps not all the way to my own child dedication, but close. I was raised Unitarian Universalist at West Hills UU Fellowship near Portland. I was deeply rooted in congregational life from a very young age. I loved being the one to light the chalice on Sunday mornings. I led services and participated in CUUPS gatherings. I completed OWL and Coming of Age. I served as a youth liaison to the board, and I went to youth conferences and district gatherings, sleeping on church floors, staying up way too late. 

In many ways, I was seen and celebrated. I was proud to be UU, and I believed in the values we proclaimed. But being known is not the same as being held. 

Over time, I began to feel a dissonance I could not name. We spoke of justice, but did not always act when the cost was high. I was praised for asking questions, but few adults seemed eager to follow those questions into uncomfortable places. I longed for spiritual depth, for language that reached my soul and stayed there.

So I began to look elsewhere. I turned to Pagan and occult spaces where ritual was treated as real, entering circles of queer, disabled, and justice-rooted communities, searching for something that could reach the roots of who I was.

But I knew that without a deeper belonging, that kind of growth would not last. The fact is, as much as I am grateful to have been raised UU, being raised UU gave me a vantage point to see problems that others might have missed. Our history is marked by places where we let justice work slip through our fingers. We were slow to affirm queer families, tying queerness to medical and psychiatric diagnostic standards.

We have struggled with racial justice. Our congregations still center whiteness in leadership, culture, and comfort. We draw on the theology of Black leaders but too often, when Black, Indigenous, and people of color point the way toward transformation, we hesitate.

And we have often overlooked disabled voices. When services moved online in 2020, beloveds who had been historically excluded by inaccessibility suddenly found themselves able to participate fully. And yet, as soon as restrictions lifted, we were quick to speak of being “back to normal,” as though those beloveds were not still with us, are not still with us. 

I was a justice-oriented kid. As an adult, I describe myself as a “rules Autistic”: I love rules, I want to know the rules so I can follow them, and I want those rules to make sense. Part of the reason so many autistic people stand at the center of intersectional justice work is that our black and white thinking cannot understand why there are rules for some and not for others, why masses of people are expected to follow them while leaders break them without consequence. I grew up hearing adults tell me that the planet is a shared responsibility, while watching the world burn. My brain could not square that, and my heart could not either.

This is one of the reasons I remain grateful for being raised UU: because that justice-oriented part of me was not silenced. And yet, as much as my questions were tolerated, they were not always truly heard. The longing for a justice that was not conditional was met with nods, with polite affirmations, but not always with transformation. The gap remained.

The great movements for justice in this country have so often been led and sustained by people of faith, whose private spiritual systems became public practices of liberation. The Civil Rights Movement found its heartbeat in the Black church, where leaders like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy turned prayer meetings into organizing centers and gospel songs into declarations of hope and resistance. 

In the labor movement, Catholic and Jewish leaders brought their traditions into the struggle for dignity. Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, rooted her activism in Catholic social teaching and Samuel Gompers, a Jewish labor organizer, helped establish organized labor as a force for fairness.

The Black Lives Matter movement continues that legacy. Founders Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi have spoken openly about the spiritual dimensions of their work, drawing from practices of ancestor reverence, healing circles, and collective ritual.

When I left UU spaces in my early 20s, I did not yet understand how many Unitarian Universalists had stood within those same liberatory currents. It was only later, as I began to find my way back to the tradition, that I learned the names and stories that had been largely absent from my religious upbringing. I read about Rev. James Reeb and Rev. Clark Olsen, who were attacked in Selma after responding to the call from Black civil rights leaders. I learned the story of Viola Liuzzo, a laywoman and mother of five, who was murdered by white supremacists while driving Black marchers to safety. These were Unitarian Universalists whose faith called them not toward comfort, but toward risk and solidarity. They were not alone. There were youth and elders, clergy and laypeople, who answered the call to justice not as a side endeavor but as an expression of their deepest theological commitments.

Those stories were not always emphasized when I was growing up, and their absence shaped how I understood the faith. I believed in the values of Unitarian Universalism, but I did not always see them reflected in the choices our congregations made. Learning those stories showed me that there had always been UUs who knew justice was at our very center. 

Today, I think of people like Dr. Sofía Betancourt, whose ministry brings liberation theology, ecological ethics, and care for the margins into our institutional heart. I think of Black, Indigenous, and other leaders of color who have worked to make the 8th Principle a call to spiritual integrity, not just congregational policy. I think of disabled leaders within our movement who insist that we are all inherently worthy, and that belonging must include every body. 

For over a decade, whenever someone asked about my childhood faith, I would say that I had not stopped being a UU just because I stopped going to a UU church. On the surface, it sounded like a way to honor my roots and claim a consistent identity. But underneath, I knew something else was true. The values of Unitarian Universalism had always resonated with me. The theology still lived in my body. The commitment to justice and freedom still mattered. But the congregational spaces I knew did not always reflect those commitments in practice. The gap between our ideals and our embodiment shaped my journey for many years.

We are going to skip ahead a little. I’m in my late 30s, and I am helping to organize Seattle’s 2021 Trans Day of Remembrance, and we had no location. I remembered that the UU church in Seattle was only a few blocks from me. Why not ask if they could host us? 

When I walked through those doors, something shifted. The water I had been seeking for so long began to flow again. This time, it came not only in words, but in the way people listened, the way they were willing to be changed. It was as if the roots I had almost given up on found new ground, as I found myself not only welcomed but drawn into conversation about the 8th Principle. They were thrilled to host us, and the Seattle TDOR event still takes place there today. For the first time, I felt that UU spaces were wrestling with the same commitments that had long been on my heart, the commitments to racial justice, to disability justice, to queer and trans belonging that had always felt sidelined when I was younger. It felt like coming home.

For so long I could not square why our principles said one thing while our practice fell short. Why justice was preached but not always embodied. In talking about the 8th Principle, I saw a community willing to align itself with fairness, willing to be unsettled, willing to let the rules of justice actually rule us. 

It took courage for me to walk back into a UU church after so many years away, and it took courage for that congregation to say a resounding yes. That is the work we share, the work of making room wide enough for all of us to breathe, the work of closing the gap between what we proclaim and what we practice.

A rose cannot thrive without water. And neither can we.

Belonging is not something we achieve once and then possess. It is the ongoing work of showing up with courage, of choosing connection, again and again, even when it is hard. It is how we root ourselves in community and how we create the conditions for each person to open, to bloom, to be sustained.

That was not always the Unitarian Universalism I was raised in, but it’s the Unitarian Universalism I believe in, and that keeps me coming back. A faith where water moves freely and nourishes what is real. A faith that holds space for healing and also calls us toward accountability. A faith that says every person matters, not in theory, but in practice, in policy, and in presence.

This is the garden we are tending. A place where no one is asked to stay open while parched. Where the rose continues to bloom not because it can survive neglect, but because we choose to water it. 

Let us become a people who choose courage over comfort, presence over politeness, transformation over familiarity. May the work of belonging continue in us and through us, not just today, but every day that we dare to love this world and one another more deeply.

Amen, and blessed be.