The Power of Acceptance

Sermon: February 15, 2026 . Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito

Our news feeds are full of stories and reports that we don’t want to accept. Like many of you, when I hear about what is happening in our country right now, I am appalled, saddened, afraid, and angry. All these emotions flood my system and make me want to reject what I’m hearing with a resounding “No.” Everything in me tells me that what’s happening is wrong and unconscionable. It’s not okay… When I hear about some of this nation’s history I have similar feelings of discomfort and disillusionment and I understand why many people shut off and reject these sources of information because they don’t want to experience the feelings being faced with reality provokes. It can be easier to plug our ears and sing a tune to drown out the incoming despair. “La, la, la… I’m not listening!” 

And for those of us who are listening, how do we keep from getting swallowed up into the black hole of empathetic melancholy? How do we brush ourselves off and move forward with continued hope and the kind of energy that can affect real change? How do we embody resilience when things look so painfully bleak?

It begins with acceptance. This may seem counterintuitive to many, for how can we possibly accept what is going on out there? But acceptance isn’t agreement. Acceptance is merely acknowledging that something is, and it’s the first step toward resilience. 

Sometimes reality can really bite you in the rear. Each time that happens we are delivered a sharp lesson: Reality doesn’t care whether you accept it or not, it still is. Reality is reality. As UUs, we are all on our own individual journey toward truth. We claim that’s what we want and we actively seek it, but sometimes when faced with the truth, we don’t want to accept it because it can be painful and it might cause us to reflect on ourselves in a negative way. Why don’t we want to accept the real history of our nation? Because it brings us shame, even if we weren’t the ones who owned slaves or slaughtered natives. But many of us are currently benefitting from a society built by those who did do those things and that feels uncomfortable. Being a resilient country feels like a monumental task, after all we’re working against 400 years of historic trauma. Isn’t it easier just to forget it happened and move on?

No, it’s not. Things don’t just go away if you don’t accept them. They fester and rot. One of my very favorite sayings I saw in a dentist’s office years ago. It said, “Ignore your teeth and they’ll go away.” So, if acceptance is necessary to move forward and heal, how do we accomplish that as a country? As individuals?

I have begun a practice I call mental time traveling, which I do when faced with many challenges in life, but as a practice of resilience, it is particularly helpful.

When faced with hearing news that I might not want to accept, I take a moment to remember that whatever I’m about to hear, the truth of that news already existed before I heard it. For example, when I once awaited a serious medical diagnosis, in the moments before the doctor told me the news, I told myself, “If you have cancer, then you have it, and you have had it for hours, days, months. Nothing that the doctor will say in the next minute will change reality and it doesn’t have to change how you feel.”

This practice also got me through the moment my son told me that he was trans. For clarity, I wasn’t upset that he was trans, but as a mother, my mind was immediately flooded with concern for the possible pain, trauma, or struggle that he would experience moving through this world as a trans person. Because I had been given no time to prepare to receive the news, no time to mentally time travel to prepare, I masked any concern that I may have had and told him “you know I love you and will always love you exactly the same as I always have.” What I thought in that moment was “he is the exact same person as he was five minutes ago when I didn’t know this. My knowing does not change his reality, nor should reality being revealed to me change how I feel about his situation.”

When these possibilities for future negative consequence happen in my life, such as negative emotional reactions (as in the case of my son) or actual physical consequences (as in a cancer diagnosis), my resiliency relies on my understanding that whatever I’m about to learn already exists and has existed during times when I have felt happy and at peace. If a negative reality can exist simultaneously with me feeling fine, then that can happen again, even after I learn of something unfortunate. Being on the other side of knowing doesn’t have to change my emotional landscape. 

I also do this practice in a forward thinking manner. If I’ve been given some bad news, I think to myself, how will I feel about this in a year? In 5 years? In 10 years? If I will be okay in 10 years time about this moment in my life, then I can be okay now. This practice that I consider mental time traveling is really a method of acceptance. If I immediately accept what is shown to me as merely the revealing of a truth that already is, then I am able to process that reality without reactivity or resistance. 

This concept is rooted in Buddhist principles. Buddhists know that suffering is a part of life, of being alive, and resilience is built on the foundation of fully accepting this fact. From our Call to Worship today, buddhist Hahn Niem says “When you embrace everything as is, including whatever may come to be, you free yourself.”

This thought is echoed in other religions as well. In the Bible, John 8:32 says, “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Whether you believe in Jesus or not, the “truth” spoken about in this passage is a reference to reality. Accepting reality will set you free from guilt and “sin.” 

Muslims believe in the concept of Tawakkul (Tuh-WAH-kel) or putting your complete trust in Allah. A more modern Christian version of this concept is to “Let go and Let God.” Early Muslim scholar Imam Al-Shafii said "What is meant for you will not miss you, and what misses you was never meant for you." This kind of faith, whether Buddhist, Christian, or Muslim all points to the same thing: the knowledge that reality is, whether you want it to be or not. So there is no need to let it negatively affect your spiritual, emotional, or mental health. However, one cannot simply “Let go and Let God.” We must continue to learn and grow and create the future we want to have. Even the prophet Muhammad tried to teach the difference between blind faith and reasonable action according to a hadith that shares the story of a Bedouin man who walked away from his camel without tying it down. Muhammad asked him why he didn’t tie it. The man answered, “I put my trust in Allah.” The prophet replied, “Tie your camel first, then put your trust in Allah.” Muhammad knew that reality dictates that we don’t need to fret or worry about things, but reality also dictates that camels wander off.

So, I don’t want you to confuse this practice with an attitude of “anything goes” when it comes to progressive social justice. As I said before, acceptance is not agreement. Acceptance is the acknowledgment of reality without passing judgement on it. Agreement follows assessing reality against your values, not as an emotional reaction, but as a process of deduction and reason, which one can’t do effectively from a reactive emotional state. 

There is also a difference between accepting individuals and accepting society. If individuals show you who they are, believe them. They are showing you their reality. Individuals can change if they want to. You have little to no control over others. Not accepting who someone else is is a practice in futility. By contrast, society can change if you want it too. Societies, like governments, are systems and systems are malleable. They can be redesigned, adjusted. Laws can be passed or revoked. Societies are flexible and always changing. They move and bend with the engagement of people’s wills. If your frustration lies with society or a group of people, then ask yourself, what system is allowing this to happen? What system can I help change?

When faced with individuals we are in conflict with, it is quite easy to reject what they are showing us, as though our rejection of what we’re seeing helps us maintain control over reality or our emotional reactions. However, the opposite is true. Acceptance keeps us calm and grounded, because it asks us to relinquish the illusion of control we think we have over reality in the first place. This relinquishing allows space for us to let go of judgment and resistance. Once we accept our situation without judgement or resistance, we can then move forward with clarity. 

That doesn’t mean approving of what’s happening and it doesn’t mean giving up, but it does mean we should figuratively stop banging our heads against a brick wall for long enough for our vision to clear so that we can see the doorway through the wall just beside us. The phrase I’ve been using with myself recently, which I like because it’s short and sweet, is “accept, adjust, advance.” Those from my generation might remember the video game Frogger. If you don’t know the game, it’s very simple, you play as a frog jumping across a river that has logs and things floating across your path. Your goal is to jump forward across the river by jumping onto logs or the backs of turtles that float by at different speeds. If you miss a jump and land in the river, it’s game over. So sometimes you jump forward, sometimes you drift to the side, sometimes you jump back to find a better route or perhaps wait for better timing when the logs will line up. It’s a very simple and non-existential example of the importance of remaining flexible during our attempts to make progress.

Acceptance may seem simple, but there are, of course, a few challenges. The first is that it starts with doing nothing. Allowing time and space for clarity can be hard, especially if you feel that your efforts don't have time to spare. However, the clarity you receive as reality reveals itself to you will save you significant time, effort, and tears in the future. The more you practice acceptance, the less time the process takes and eventually you can live there, in a place of acceptance, peace, and thus resilience. 

The second challenge is to not pass judgement on the revealed reality. There’s an ancient Chinese parable about a horse that begins when a farmer’s horse runs away. His neighbors, knowing how hard it is to run a farm without a horse, send their condolences his way. He responds with, “Who knows what is good and what is bad?” The neighbors think that’s a strange reply until his horse unexpectedly returns to the farm with a group of wild horses. The neighbors now congratulate the farmer on his good fortune and he says, “Who knows what is good and what is bad?” Soon thereafter the farmer’s son tries to break in one of the wild horses and is thrown off, breaking his leg badly in several places, and forcing him to live the rest of his days with a cane. The neighbors again send their condolences and the farmer responds with “Who knows what is good and what is bad?” Shortly after that a war breaks out and it is the farmer’s son’s injured leg that keeps him from being drafted and sent to war. The moral of the story of course is that nothing in life is good or bad, things just are. And when you form a relationship with reality in this way, when you stop judging things and merely accept what is, you become more resilient.

Psychological research out of the University of Iowa in 2023 points to the benefits of what’s called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in the resilience of patients with lingering effects of Covid-19. The research shows that Acceptance is the first step toward psychological flexibility. All the steps are: acceptance, cognitive defusion, contact with the present moment, self-as-context, values, and committed action. That process seems like a lot to digest, but is really a more descriptive way to explain the “accept, adjust, advance” model. The research goes on to describe the attributes of psychological inflexibility, which are: experiential avoidance, cognitive fusion, lack of contact with the present moment, self-as-content, lack of contact with values, and inaction. This research into resilience and how it affects quality of life will continue to shape mental health practices into the foreseeable future. Interestingly, our religious predecessors from thousands of years ago seem to have already tapped into the potential spiritual and emotional benefits of acceptance and conveniently left the message in a variety of sacred texts. I guess it is taking us humans a long time to accept the idea of acceptance. 

I’m going to close today’s message with these words by psychologist Barry Winbolt “Fighting and complaining about a problem only wears you down and makes the problem seem worse. Accepting it, on the other hand, allows you to direct your energy towards goals and solutions. Refusing to accept is simply fighting with reality, it’s tiring and you won’t win.”

May we all learn to embrace reality with true acceptance, knowing that the best start on the path of resilience is knowing what we’re dealing with so that we can act accordingly. May we find that acceptance supports our goals of making real, lasting change in the systems under which we struggle. And regardless of what comes our way, may our method of “accept, adjust, and advance” help us navigate this often upsetting world with ease of spirit and with peace. May it be so. Amen.

OTHER READINGS FOR REFLECTION:

Hanh Niem; ThePracticalBuddhist.com

"All of our suffering stems from our memory of past experiences. And these memories impact us here and now by affecting how we respond to situations we encounter in the present and how we think about our future. Embracing the past and present is an essential part of accepting life as it is at this moment, without which there is no peace. We don’t need anything to be a specific way to be at peace and happy; When you embrace everything as is, including whatever may come to be, you free yourself of internal struggle; this is your natural state."

Eckhart Tolle:

“Acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it brings something entirely new into this world… The moment that judgement stops through acceptance of what it is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace.”