Sunday Service

It can be overwhelming to witness/experience/take in all the injustices of the moment; the good news is that they're all connected. So if your little corner of work involves pulling at one of the threads, you're helping to unravel the whole damn cloth.

~ Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

You are not required to save the world. But you are required to save your corner of it.

~ Joan Chittister

After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was.

~ Terry Eagleton

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

~ Albert Camus

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

~ Audre Lorde

As a rule, it was the pleasure haters who became unjust.

~ W.H. Auden

Joy is not justice… I look at joy as a splint, as a cast that's holding that broken bone in place so that it can heal properly. But the healing really comes from justice. Joy is meant to help on the way. Joy is there so that you don't quit.

~ Kellie Carter Jackson

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

~ Archbishop Desmond Tutu

You can’t be neutral on a moving train.

~ Howard Zinn

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

~ Martin Luther King Jr

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Practicing Resistance')

Change is never painful. Only resistance to change is painful.

~ Unknown

Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile than to create inner resistance to what is? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.

~ Eckhart Tolle

There is no controlling life. Try corralling a lightning bolt, containing a tornado. Dam a stream and it will create a new channel. Resist, and the tide will sweep you off your feet. Allow, and grace will carry you to higher ground. The only safety lies in letting it all in.

~ Danna Faulds

Suffering = Pain x Resistance

~ Shinzen Young

When you experience resistance, you find the lessons that you are meant to learn.

~ Jon Gordon

Don’t prepare. Begin. Our enemy is not lack of preparation. The enemy is resistance, our chattering brain producing excuses. Start before you are ready.

~ Steven Pressfield

Our resistance is not predicated on how likely it will be to alter the conscience of the oppressor. We resist to retain our own conscience. And to awaken all others who are still in possession of their own souls.

~ Cole Arthur Riley

Once a reporter asked A.J. Muste, “Do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night in front of the White House with a candle?”

Muste replied softly: “Oh I don’t do this to change the country. I do this so the country won’t

change me.”

~ Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

Revolution is not, ultimately, a political calculation. It is a moral one. It is grounded in a vision of another world, another way of being. It is driven, in the end, by a moral imperative, especially since many of those who begin a revolution do not survive to see its fulfillment. Revolutionaries know that as Immanuel Kant wrote: “If justice perishes, human life on earth has lost its meaning.” And this means that, like Socrates, we must come to a place where it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.

~ Chris Hedges

You are only as safe as the people you are willing to protect.

~ Samara Powers

Fascism’s most effective tool is that it makes you think there’s time, that you can speak up in a bit, not quite yet. You know, when it gets bad enough… by which time, of course, it’s too late. Much like that frog in the proverbial warming pot of water.

~ Sarah Wilson

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2026 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Practicing Resistance’)

January 1, 2026

This list of questions is an aid for deep reflection. How you answer them is often less important than the journey they take you on.

So, read through the list of questions 2-3 times until one question sticks out for you and captures your attention, or as some faith traditions say, until one of the questions “shimmers.” Or as we like to say, “Read over them until one of the questions picks you.”

Then reflect on that question using one or all of these questions:

●       What is going on in my life right now that makes this question so pronounced for me?

●       What might my inner wisdom be trying to say to me through this question?

●       How might this question be trying to wake me up or get me to realize something through this question?

●       How might Life or my inner wisdom be trying to offer me a word of comfort or challenge through this question?

1.     As a kid, did you resist the rules, or did you follow them? How might you see an echo of that earlier self in your life today?

2.     Of all the moments of your life where you found the courage to accept change instead of resist it, which one are you most proud of?

3.     Is there a time from your past where you wish you would have found a way to resist the fear of failure?

4.     Have you been following the path of least resistance for so long that you no longer notice?

5.     Is it time to heed the warning that “What you resist, persists”?

6.     Has joy ever been an “act of resistance” for you?

7.     Has your resistance to change grown or eased as you’ve gotten older?

8.     How might resistance be calling you to rest?

9.     What song, book or movie has inspired or supported your resistance efforts?

10. Our self-focused culture is not designed to encourage activism and other-centered resistance. Who do you have to thank for you becoming someone who counter-culturally cares about and works for needs greater than your own?

11. How is your corner of the world calling you to help save it?

12. What small step could you take in the next month or two to make your resistance more radical?

What’s your question? Your question may not be listed above. As always, if the above questions don't include what life is asking from you, spend the month listening to your days to find it.

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2026 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Practicing Resistance')

...it starts when you say We

and know who you mean, and each

day you mean one more.

– Marge Piercy, from The Low Road

Out of all our themes this year, resistance is among the most complex. But it also may be the most simple.

Let’s start with the complexity.

Sometimes resistance involves bravely picking up a picket sign; other times it asks us to courageously put down our masks and allow who we really are to see the light of day. Sometimes it involves defeating the enemy; other times it’s a matter of noticing that treating “them” as the enemy defeats us all. Often the path of resistance asks us to stay in it for the long haul, but just as often it’s about taking that first tiny step. Most of the time it requires us to fight to the bitter end, and yet there are many moments when we need to stop resisting and let go. Resistance certainly takes the form of speaking the truth to power, but often what the world needs even more is for us to speak the truth in love.

Bottom line: practicing resistance is tricky business and takes multiple, even contradictory, forms.

But beyond this complexity lies the simplicity of Marge Piercy’s words. In all cases, she reminds us, practicing resistance starts when we say “We!” For instance, the power of our picket sign resides in the fact that it hangs alongside those of others. Being who we are usually begins with another person loving us for who we are. Both the long haul and our first courageous step are made possible by reaching out to receive a helping hand.

It’s all one big reminder that none of us resist alone.

Or maybe what really needs to be said this month is that none of us have to resist alone.

Yes, we certainly need pushed and prodded this month. But maybe what we need most is to be reassured. Reassured that when the road gets too treacherous and the forces against us grow too big, others will be by our side. Maybe it’s not more courage that is required, but more connection. Maybe what we really need to hear is not simply “Resist!” but “I will resist with you!”

Maybe it is as simple as that.

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Practicing Resistance')

Ask Them About Resistance

One of the best ways to explore our monthly themes is to have conversations about them with people who are

close to you. It’s also a great way to deepen our relationships! Below is a list of questions to guide your conversation. Be sure to let your conversation partner know in advance that this won’t be a typical conversation.

Remember to also answer the questions yourself as they are meant to support a conversation, not just a time of quizzing them.

Resistance Questions

●       As a kid, did you resist the rules, or did you follow them? How might you see an echo of that earlier self in your life today?

●       How did your parents’ acts of social justice resistance shape you?

●       Has your resistance to change grown or eased as you’ve gotten older?

●       Of all the moments of your life where you found the courage to accept change instead of resist it, which one are you most proud of?

●       Is there a time from your past where you wish you would have found a way to resist the fear of failure?

●       Do you have a life story that exemplifies the saying, “What you resist, persists”?

●       Is it possible that the form of resistance life is calling you to right now is rest?

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Practicing Resistance’)

Photograph Resistance for a Week

The instructions for this exercise are simple: For each day of one week, take 1-2 pictures of “resistance.”

Don’t overthink it. Don’t predetermine what counts as “resistance.” Just keep your eye out for whatever seems to be announcing itself to you as a form of resistance. So one minute you might find yourself taking a picture of the TV screen as the news reports on a protest. But an hour later, it might be a flower pushing itself through a crack in the sidewalk. And then a day later you may find yourself taking a picture of your dog refusing to take a bath or of your wife’s tattoo which she got to resist the stereotypes of what Grandmas should and shouldn’t do.

And for the final step: At the end of the week, go through all the pictures you took and look for common themes. Let those common threads tell you how your definition of resistance seems to be growing in ways you didn’t fully realize!

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Practicing Resistance')