There is Always a Way to Resist

Sermon: January 4, 2026 . Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito

My father once told me a story about a time he and his twin brother were small and riding in the back seat of the family car. My grandfather, a Baptist minister, was driving. It was a normal day in the late 1950’s and they wound through the neighborhood streets of Alameda, a suburb of San Francisco. Suddenly, my grandfather pulled the car over to the side of the road and jumped out. There was a commotion in the front yard of a home, a husband beating his wife. In panic, my father and his brother ducked down in the back seat and peeked out the window as my grandfather strode across the lawn and into the middle of the domestic dispute. He stepped in front of the wife and turned to the husband with his arms out in calm reassurance. My father couldn’t hear any words exchanged and he wondered what my grandfather could have said to the struggling strangers who the rest of the neighborhood seemed to be conveniently ignoring. Several minutes later, my grandfather got back in the car and they drove on. My father watched the husband and wife get smaller and smaller and eventually disappear in the rear window. The last time he saw them they were talking calmly. Although my grandfather said nothing about this encounter to his kids after returning to the car, it made a lasting impression on my father. When he recounted this story, I asked him how he felt about it now, all these years later. He said, “I feel shame.” I was surprised, thinking he meant he was embarrassed by my grandfather’s actions, but he continued, “I feel ashamed that I hid in the back seat.” He was a child. But looking back on it years later, he wishes fear hadn’t kept him from getting out of the car and standing with my grandfather. 

Resistance takes many forms. It can look like running into the middle of a conflict, being a companion for those who do, cheering and supporting from the sideline, writing letters of support, dismantling systems, building better ones, learning and growing to be a better person, and modeling what you want to see in the world. It can be a significantly large act with lasting change, or it can be something subtle, something only one other person notices. Different times in our lives allow us the space and energy to do what we can, when we can. This ebb and flow of action is a tide that we each must follow as our individual lives allow. While many of us practice resistance through religious organizations and social action groups, how many of us consider it a spiritual practice? 

Many faiths are full of stories of prophets and other individuals resisting the systems of oppression of their time. Jesus resisted the strict social order of the Pharisees. Mohammad resisted the polytheism of the Quraysh tribe. Since many fundamental religions and dogmas insist on themes of conversion, conservatism, and a general sense of obeying others who hold power, any movement toward freedom from such restrictions is an act of spiritual resistance against that which constricts us. When we take this theme to a societal level, supporting anyone seeking freedom from societal constrictions can also be a spiritual practice and is an echo of those who came before us and pushed against cultural and societal norms that were defined by spiritual and religious beliefs. Just because our American society is supposed to have a separation of church and state doesn’t mean that pushing for societal and governmental norms to change isn’t a spiritual practice. Our values guide and are reflected in the work we do. If our shared values inspire us to take action, then that action is spiritual in nature, even if it wears the cloak of humanism. 

Edward W. Said, a professor of literature at Columbia University said “Humanism is the only - I would go so far as saying the final- resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.” It appears that all the wars waged in the name of religion hasn’t created the peaceful reality that was intended. It turns out that you can’t force people to change to be more like you. Instead, you have to believe in the possibility that they will change on their own, if given the chance, the education, the support, and the opportunity for honest self-reflection. To resist, to believe in change, is to believe in humans, to believe that they are essentially good and that nature bends toward justice and freedom the same way it bends toward water and light. Finding meaning and awe in humans, nature, and science, is a spiritual practice.  

So, if our spiritual practice, our humanism, calls us to resist, how do we entertain the notion of resistance when many Buddhists believe resistance leads to suffering and our work is to accept what is? First of all, we need to define the difference between personal emotional resistance and resistance as an act of compassion for the world. We all know how it feels when things don’t go our way. It could be something fairly inconsequential like trying and failing to make a new recipe for dinner or something much more devastating. In any case, feelings of frustration or anguish can send us into a state in which we resist reality, which can cause great suffering. Buddhist spiritual practices encourage pausing during times like these, so that we can decide how we will respond to them. The habit of pausing offers you the time to ask yourself “Am I inviting this situation to change me?” As you ponder that, you may feel a softening in yourself and can then choose the course of action that best represents what you actually want. Yoga practitioner Amy Nobles Dolan speaks of emotional resistance this way: “Rather than armoring up to go into battle against yet another of life’s twists and turns, wouldn’t it be easier (and dare I ask, more fruitful) to allow life to change you? Can you imagine the incredible relief of setting down that heavy armor and that mighty sword? What is your armor made of? Old patterns. Habits of behavior you might have begun forging when you were also learning to walk and talk. Assumptions about the way life is ‘supposed’ to go. Judgments of what you deem ‘good’ and ‘bad’. This lightness can be yours. It’s all in what you do after you take that wise pause.” 

Resistance in the sense we are talking about is also about not accepting life as it is and pushing against reality, pushing for change. It can also be accompanied by feelings of frustration and grief and can feel very personal. When empathy sends you into a dark pit of despair for those who are suffering, give yourself a moment to question your emotional reaction, and ask, “Do I want this to change me? And if so, how?”, then proceed with clarity and do the work that can affect change while not destroying your own sense of peace. There will be times when you realize that this is not the battle to fight, that the personal costs or the costs to your community are too great, and other times you will choose to pick back up the sword and put the armor back on, this time with a renewed sense of clarity, focus, and determination. 

If we look to history, it’s the stories of those who resist from a place of groundedness, who carry with them a sense of calm that resonates with those who chose to follow and remember them. There is great strength and power in pausing, pondering, and choosing. Being fueled by the winds of passion can fire up a group of protestors, but long lasting change is enacted by those whose feet are steadily planted. Rosa Parks will forever be remembered for being “too tired” to move her seat on the bus. Later she remarked that it was true, she was too tired, but not physically. She was tired of being told where she could and couldn’t sit. She had paused, reflected, and made a choice. 

So, at what level can we make real change? In the case of Rosa Parks, she made a decision in her immediate community that resonated through the country and the decades. And her resistance was physical. She used her body to carry a message. Not all of us will be given the same opportunity. Some of us will use our voices, our words, our thoughts, or our pens. 

One of my favorite quotes is in the Author’s Preface of a very well known 19th century novel written by someone using the pseudonym Currer Bell. It states: “Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.” I understand this as encouraging us to not confuse what is normal with what is morally right, that we must continue to question the systems we have in place, for they may not be serving us as well as we think. This quote, which appears in the middle of the Author’s Preface to the book, seems like a comment on the contents of the story itself, which focuses on a heroine who pushes the boundaries of feminism further than a normal reader in 1847 might be comfortable with. However, it was secretly a comment about the resistance of the author themself, since Currer Bell was not the author’s actual name, but the male name that allowed Charlotte Bronte to be published. Her acts of resistance continue to echo from her pen with a centuries long call to action for gender equality. 

Whether you use your words or your actions, finding a crack in the system in which you can embed yourself like a dandelion seed can help create the lasting effects you seek. Charlotte Bronte wrote a story of feminist thought and commented on the immorality of conventionality using the very same conventionality of the period. She didn’t stand on the grounds of inequality and insist on being published under her true identity. She found the crack and nestled in for the long haul. Rosa Parks sat on a bus. Harriet Tubman found places for people to hide. Gloria Steinem started a magazine. Greta Thunberg organized a school strike. Gandhi stopped eating. My grandfather pulled over the car. The cracks in the system are there if you look for them and often they are right here in your own community.

In “Woman on the Edge of Time”, author Marge Piercy says “There’s always a thing you can deny an oppressor, if only your allegiance. Your belief. Your co-opting. Often even with vastly unequal power, you can find or force an opening to fight back. In your time many without power found ways to fight. Till that became a power.”

And once you nestle into a crack in the system, as your roots are ready to expand and slowly push the sides of that system apart, remember that the best way to crumble a system is to build a better one. The only reason we gave up the horse and buggy was because we had the automobile, we gave up the radio for the television, our landline phones for cell phones, monarchy for democracy, slavery for freedom… The best way to enact change isn’t to yell the loudest about how unfair something is, it's to offer something better. What can you offer? Whether it's through actions or words, every little bit counts, every seed can make a difference, especially when planted in front of the eyes of those who will inherit this world. Just as my father watched my grandfather interrupt domestic abuse on an American front lawn in the late 1950’s, the children of today are watching us now. What we say, the clothes we wear, what we eat, what we buy, how well we listen… our movements through this world can be rich with small and significant acts of resistance. 

As we move forward into this new year full of hopes and dreams for what tomorrow can be, may we pause, reflect, and choose to resist from a place of grounded peace. May we plant seeds, may we speak up when voices are needed, and may we show our children and our children’s children, that growth and change is always possible. May we build our dreams with such inspired optimism that systems of oppression have no choice but to crumble away in their wake.

OTHER READINGS FOR REFLECTION:

Ullie-Kaye:

“I talk to animals

I smile at clouds

I listen to raindrops as they hit the pavement.

I guess how old trees are

I believe in gratitude

I save ladybugs from certain death.

And I look for things in nature that remind me of myself.

Like a flower breaking through where it wasn’t supposed to grow.” 

"Inspired by the Resistance of a Dandelion Seed" by Rev. Michelle Collins

There is a crack in the world where light finds its way through.

Not wide, not welcoming. Just enough.

The seed arrives on wind, lands in darkness between stone and stone,

and begins its work in secret.

Roots press downward through grit and shadow,

seeking moisture in places meant to be barren.

They do not ask permission.

They do not apologize for their hunger or their being.

Slowly, the green crown pushes upward, meeting resistance at every fraction of an inch.

The concrete does not yield willingly.

It groans. It cracks infinitesimally. But the stem continues.

What emerges is not delicate in the way we imagine delicacy.

It is yellow and honest, opening its face to the sun despite the hardness all around.

Cars pass. Feet land nearby.

The flower remains, making its small declaration:

that life persists even where it is told it cannot.

That softness breaks what hardness cannot bend.

That beauty grows not in spite of the cold and unrelenting pavement,

but directly through it, transforming a barely visible crack into a doorway.

When the blossom fades, it does not disappear.

It transforms into a constellation of possibilities.

Each seed carries the memory of stone splitting,

the knowledge that what seems permanent can be challenged and broken through.

The wind rustles. The next crack waits.

The work continues in a thousand directions at once,

patient and relentless.