Let's Celebrate

Sermon: August 23, 2026 . Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito

Today is our annual end-of-summer beach bash. For those of you who are new to our community, this traditional gathering began as a birthday celebration for one of our longtime members Betsy Gilpin. She threw the party for herself and when she grew weary of the yearly organization Christie Turner took it over. Now, it has evolved into an all-fellowship beach party where people swim, eat good food, chat, and bid farewell to these hot summer days. And the end of summer seems like a fine reason to celebrate. Many of us might be celebrating a summer well spent, the fun trips and adventures we’ve had, our children’s long awaited return to school (yahoo!), or perhaps just that we’re alive and can welcome autumn at all. Despite the reason, celebrating the end of summer as a community feels right. 

There are times, however, when celebrating doesn’t feel right, when the weight and weariness of the world is too much and we struggle to participate, to dance, laugh, or even smile. Some of us may find it difficult to justify experiencing joy during difficult times. It can feel selfish and self-indulgent. UU Minister Tony Lorenzen says “It’s very easy to be discouraged right now with so much that we hold dear and so many people that we hold dear under philosophical, if not physical, attack by our own government. Levity seems out of place lately, almost disrespectful of the fear and anxiety some are experiencing.” 

So how do we celebrate at our annual beach bash today when ICE activity continues to separate families, detain and deport individuals, and violate basic human rights within our own community? In May, KPBS reported that in San Diego County, a total of 16,368 people were apprehended between Jan. 20, 2025 and April 1, 2026. That’s an average of 1,091 people a month; 38 people a day. Up to 38 families in San Diego county are being ripped apart and traumatized every day. How can we justify a celebration? 

Peace Catalyst International, a group of Christian peace builders, writes “For those insulated by privilege, joy often becomes a fragile comfort—relief from stress or guilt. But for the wounded and the weary, joy is a defiant act of faith, the refusal to let oppression define the limits of their imagination.” This group of religious leaders, among others including psychologists, educators, activists, and coaches, are calling us now in this societal climate to reframe joyful celebrations as an act of active resistance.

Ingrid Fetell Lee, author of the book “Joyful” outlines the ways in which joy and celebration actually sustain activism. First, she says “joy is a propulsive force.” If you look at nations that have banned forms of joy like music and dance, you can see totalitarian governments attempting to squash anything that gathers and channels the energy needed to bring instability to a dictator bent on controlling a population. Christian colonizers in many countries have forbidden native music and dances. Among the Namaqua (Nama) people of South Africa, the local expression for someone who converted to Christianity is “one who has given up dancing.” 

Back in her 1978 essay “The Uses of the Erotic”, Audre Lorde states, “In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change.”  The notion of restricting celebration as a tactic to control populations hasn’t changed over time. Social justice educator Mandeep Lakhan says that “activism requires a continuous source of energy to sustain the momentum necessary for meaningful change.” And celebration can certainly provide that source of energy. It’s why agencies choose large celebrations in which to show up and demonstrate their power. Fear of exactly that is what caused the County of Los Angeles Department of Parks and Recreation to postpone and cancel several 4th of July celebrations in 2025. When celebration is leveraged against you, and its restriction is used to dehumanize you by taking away your right to assemble and commune, it becomes an act of resistance to gather and celebrate. 

Adrienne Maree Brown reminds us to “recognize that pleasure is a measure of freedom… Part of the reason so few of us have a healthy relationship with pleasure is because a small minority of our species hoards the excess of resources, creating a false scarcity and then trying to sell us joy, sell us back to ourselves.” When joy feels like it is in short supply, when it feels as though it is being stolen from us through fear tactics or legitimate demonstrations of power, it is our sacred duty to create it. 

In her article, Ingrid Lee goes on to state that joy can also create unity and provide shared experience to hold a group together. It can encourage bonding as tensions are smoothed and barriers are removed. It can break down hierarchy, since even your boss chats with you about the weather while drinking a soda at the company picnic. It can even move us toward more cohesion on a physical level. When choir members sing together, their heart rates can synchronize and their brain waves line up. These unconscious connections in community create a group of people who are kinder to each other and Lee says they “are more willing to sacrifice their own needs for the good of the group.” 

Joy also disrupts expectations, which can disarm detractors. “Things clad in joy lessen the threat,” Lee says. One example of this kind of joyful activism was a New York city project called “Trash: Any Color You Like” in which bright pink polka-dotted trash bags were used along the streets of NY city, lighting up the curb like a circus parade of trash bags. Not only did people get a kick out of seeing the happy looking bags, but their bright, popping color, contrasted against the drab streets of New York, was a gentle, playful reminder that we are producing way too much trash. 

Not only does joy and celebration promote resilience and hope, but it can also be a sacred act. 

Alex Aguas is a priest from Restoration Abbey in San Marcos, a church that assists asylum seekers and hosts the Universidad Popular sponsored Posada Comunitaria Festival during the Christmas holiday. That traditional Christmas event reenacts the pilgrimage of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem before Jesus’ birth. This last Christmas, the celebration highlighted the plight of “strangers seeking welcome.” Priest Aguas said, “Based on the changing political climate, that work takes on different meaning and resonance.” Celebration isn’t only an opportunity to experience joy, but it can also be sacred work; it can also be a form of worship. 

Katherine Wolf is an author who experienced a severe stroke in her late 20’s and considers herself “a living survival guide and truth-teller to suffering souls.” She states, “Celebration isn’t so different from worship. This is where the line starts to blur between party and pulpit. Our worship can be celebratory, so our celebrations can be worshipful. And they are because we’re all worshiping something—ourselves, our futures, our pasts, the outcomes that give us more of what we think will make us happy. But worship in its purest form doesn’t happen when everything comes perfectly together; it’s most powerful when everything is falling apart.”

Joy and celebration are most needed during these times because joy isn’t merely the denial of sorrow, but the transformation of energy from something that drains us to something that fuels us. Peace Catalyst International says “Joy is the sound of survival - the insistence that love and purpose still remain.” Celebration is not a selfish act, it is an act of connection, strength, and reclaiming our humanity.

In closing, I leave you with an anonymous quote once attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche, but now having an unidentified author: "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." May our celebrations be rich with the music of acceptance, compassion, and love.

OTHER READINGS FOR REFLECTION:

Gitanjali 70 by Rabindranath Tagore

Is it beyond thee to be glad with the gladness of this rhythm? To be tossed and lost and broken in the whirl of this fearful joy?

All things rush on, they stop not, they look not behind, no power can hold them back, they rush on.

Keeping step with that restless, rapid music, seasons come dancing and pass away. Colors, tunes, and perfumes pour in endless cascades in the abounding joy that scatters and gives up and dies every moment.

Dan Savage:

“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.”