December 21, 2025: Cultivating Sanctuary Within

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray
We often think about sanctuary as a place or an act of providing protection, but there is also power in being able to create a sense of peace, safety and sanctuary in our own spirits. How can this practice help us find rootedness and peace amid tumult and uncertainty?

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Sermon Text

Cultivating Sanctuary Within

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray

UU Church of Bloomington

December 21, 2025

READING

“The Buddha's Last Instruction” by Mary Oliver

“Make of yourself a light,”

said the Buddha,

before he died.

I think of this every morning

as the east begins

to tear off its many clouds

of darkness, to send up the first

signal -- a white fan

streaked with pink and violet,

even green.

An old man, he lay down

between two sala trees,

and he might have said anything,

knowing it was his final hour.

The light burns upward,

it thickens and settles over the fields.

Around him, the villagers gathered

and stretched forward to listen.

Even before the sun itself

hangs, disattached, in the blue air,

I am touched everywhere

by its ocean of yellow waves.

No doubt he thought of everything

that had happened in his difficult life.

And then I feel the sun itself

as it blazes over the hills,

like a million flowers on fire --

clearly I'm not needed,

yet I feel myself turning

into something of inexplicable value.

Slowly, beneath the branches,

he raised his head.

He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

SERMON Cultivating Sanctuary Within

Last spring, I was honored to be invited by Carrie Newcomer to join a conversation with Carrie and Parker Palmer on their podcast, The Growing Edge. I was a little intimidated - as Carrie's music and writing is such an inspiration to me and I have been a devoted fan of Parker Palmer's since I read his book, To Know and Be Known, in my first year of seminary. I have read many of his books and writings since.

And, as I thought about our service for today, it was Carrie's writing this week in her substack that reminded me of Mary Oliver's poem, “The Buddha's Last Instruction.” But I digress. So, last spring, during this conversation with Parker and Carrie, I shared the framework that I have been using to understand our work and ministry in these days. You've heard me say this before - that our most critical work in this community is three-fold:

#1 - To be a community of courage and resistance - speaking out and organizing to defend democracy and push back against the dismantling of civil and human rights.

#2 - To be a community of sanctuary - embodying community that welcomes all, that provides care and protection for those most targeted by the policies and rhetoric of cruelty and inhumanity.

And #3 - To be a community of imagination - sewing seeds for what is possible through art and music, beauty, and modeling other ways of being - beyond greed and exploitation - to mutuality, shared investment, and collective care.

This month, we are exploring in more depth #2 - what it means to be a community of sanctuary.

At its essence, sanctuary means a place or feeling of safety, protection, and welcome. Sanctuary reminds us of how it is important to create spaces of care for what we love, what we value, what is worthy.

We witness the creation of sanctuary when we gather in inclusive religious community - welcoming all into warmth and care. Sanctuary can describe how we tend to our homes, our children, our loved ones - seeking to ensure they have the love and care they need. Sanctuary is the term we use for houses of worship because here we tend to what is of highest value - our humanity, our neighbors, what is holy, what is good and true in humanity. In his sermon here many months ago, Scott Sanders spoke of Noah's Ark as a metaphor of creating sanctuary to protect what is of most worth in the midst of storms and danger.

The idea of sanctuary brings a feeling of peace and gentleness, but it can also require acts of courage, moral resolve, and resistance. We witness people trying to defend sanctuary and community when they do what they can to protect their neighbors, their family members, their communities from the cruel and increasingly lawlessness of ICE arresting people without warrants, disappearing people from their homes, their places of work, their neighborhoods. This may not seem like sanctuary but through these non- violent acts of video taping, warning neighbors, shouting for ICE to leave their neighborhoods, and offering non-violent direct action at ICE centers, they are reminding us that sanctuary - protecting our neighbors, the peace of our communities, and our humanity - matters - it is faithful resistance in an inhumane time.

Creating sanctuary is faithful resistance in an inhumane time. It is a reclaiming of care and humanity in resistance to the death-dealing ways of the state. It is why it is so important for religious communities to remember and prioritize the faithful work of creating sanctuary.

And, there is another dimension to sanctuary too. In that podcast conversation on The Growing Edge, after talking about how we create sanctuary for one another, Parker Palmer named the importance of cultivating a quality of sanctuary within ourselves. We long for that day when everyone might know peace and safety. When all lives are valued and treasured and none need feel afraid. But the truth is we have too many examples of how far we are from this reality. And perhaps for some, they have never really experienced a sense of safety in their physical lives. And so it matters that we learn to create an internal experience of sanctuary. It is crucial to nurturing our own well being and survival - and it too is an act of faithful resistance.

History reminds us that there are those who lived through violence, war, authoritarianism, and tyranny - and didn't lose their humanity, their compassion, their integrity. This requires creating a space within oneself within our hearts, our minds, our souls - where we protect what is true, good, and beautiful in life and in our own humanity. Despite the horrors and losses that violence and tyranny create - this ability to create a sanctuary in ourselves - a center that can hold in the storm - is a mechanism of survival - for not losing ourselves.

An example from our own history is Norbert Capek, the Unitarian minister who along with his wife, Maja, created the first flower communion ritual. The flower communion is a ritual now celebrated in Unitarian Universalist congregations and communities around the world. The Capeks created it to represent the beauty of the diversity of humanity and how we all accept one another as brothers and sisters and kin regardless of the differences of race, of religion, of class, of nationality, of any difference that may seek to

divide us.

Capek's faith was rooted in love and a belief in the goodness of God and the goodness possible in humanity. Capek preached this message and led his church of over 3,000 Unitarians in this spirit, amid the increasing attacks on Jews in his country of Czechoslovakia and the rise of Nazism. Eventually, he was arrested by Nazi SS agents and sent to Dachau where he died by poison gas. And yet, it is clear that this faith sustained thousands during the horrors of Nazi occupation. And survivors of the concentration camp in Dachau who knew him spoke of his heroism, his equanimity, and his commitment to humanity even in the camp.

May no one experience this horror again.

Many people are experiencing the pressure to compromise what they believe to keep their jobs - to remove language and teaching, to scrub websites and grant proposals of specific words, to close down areas of work. I long for the day when we are all in the streets - the general strike we need to say, “No more!” and demand an end to the damage being done. One day - I think we all need to be getting ready for that day. I hope it will come before too much is lost.

But, in the meantime, we also have to create places - externally in community and internally within ourselves - where we protect and nurture what is of utmost importance.

In Mary Oliver's poem, she reminds us of the Buddha's last teaching - a good teaching for all of us - “Make of yourself a light.”

Buddhism teaches that every person has within them a buddha nature - the capacity for enlightenment and the seed of compassion and loving kindness. This is related to something we say in Unitarian Universalist congregations when we light the chalice. We remember that the flame is a symbol of the divine spark that burns in every human heart.

All of us have an innate capacity for compassion, for goodness, for loving kindness, but we need to nurture it - give it oxygen and room to grow. “Make of yourself a light” is a reminder that we all have this capacity and that no matter our surroundings or circumstances, we can nurture this power within us. And it matters that we do.

I love these lines from Mary Oliver's poem:

“An old man, he lay down

between two sala trees,

and he might have said anything,

knowing it was his final hour.”

Then she continues describing the power and beauty and majesty of the sun:

“And then I feel the sun itself

as it blazes over the hills,

like a million flowers on fire-

clearly I'm not needed,

yet I feel myself turning

into something of inexplicable value.

Slowly, beneath the branches,

he raised his head.

He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.”

“Make of yourself a light.”

This image reminds us of our humanity and our humility. We humans are not needed to make the sun rise each day - we are not the light of the world. And yet, the light reminds us of something in us, as Mary Oliver says “clearly I am not needed, yet I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value.” That treasure worth protecting, in need of nurture and care and sanctuary is within us - that light of creation within us. “Make of yourself a light” reminds us of our power and value as human beings to to be a light, bring a light - the light of truth, the warmth of community, and the fire of commitment in our world.

In reflecting on Mary Oliver's poem, Parker Palmer writes, “In times of deep darkness, we not only need light - we need to be light for one another. That's a message we must take to heart as we find ourselves lost once again in the all-too-familiar darkness of America's culture of violence…”

So how do we do this? How do we “Make of ourselves a light?”

A couple weeks ago, I shared this meditation practice of American Buddhist teacher Spring Washam, to give ourselves loving kindness. This can be a good method for nurturing sanctuary within. Spring invites us to close our eyes, put a hand over our heart, visualize ourselves sitting in front of us. Imagine you are inhaling peace and exhaling kindness. Inhaling peace. Exhaling kindness. Then offer a blessing for yourself, something like, “May I be filled with loving kindness. May no harm come to me. May I know peace in my body and spirit.” You can make your own blessings. This is one practice of cultivating that space of sanctuary within.

Of course there is not just one way to nurture sanctuary within - finding one that works for you is what matters. The key is creating time in your day - in your weeks - to do something that you can feel feeding your soul, feeding the light and strength within you.

Whatever it is. It matters. For these are challenging days. And alongside the shorter hours of sunlight - which definitely can impact our well-being, there is much in our world weighing on us, seeking to break our hope, our light. And so all of our lights are needed.

As UU minister Mark Belletini writes, “No matter how weary we get, no one of us is without embers to kindle a light. Each of us can be bringers of light. And together we can make a radiance.”

Or in the last teaching of the Buddha, “Make of yourself a light.”