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Rev. Carrie Holley-Hurt
March 8, 2026
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

What do you do when the onslaught of bad news floods our nervous system and causes us to feel shaky in our faith? Rev. Carrie explores that question and leads us through a practice of lament.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

GOOD GRIEF
– by Andrea Gibson from You Better Be Lightning

Let your
heart break
so your spirit doesn’t

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Reading

YOU ARE NOT WRONG
by Rev. Julián Jamaica Soto

I need you to know
that there is nothing wrong with you.
if you find the world congealed and unwieldy.
You were never meant to serve money.
to give loyalty to unprincipled power,
to spend your joy
frantically soothing yourself
in order to tend wounds of being
constantly dehumanized.

I need you to know
that your sense of injury and anger is not overdeveloped
You are meant for love and beauty
You belong where you are known
and where your future is not just a resource,
but a promise,
which you begin to fulfill
by being unmistakably,
irrevocably yourself.

Sermon

Whew… Well, I’ll just be honest I am missing hell something fierce these days.

For those of you that don’t know, I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian – a religious perspective that over-indexed on the eternal lake of fire. I have been deconstructing and reconstructing for decades.

It has taken so long to finally let go of the trauma of hell.

But now, that as I am waking up to daily heartbreak, I find myself missing hell. And that doesn’t feel great.

It makes my faith, my values feel a little shaky.

Any one else? Anyone else finding its a bit hard to center love?

Am I losing my religion?…..I mean do we really believe in the inherent dignity and worth of everyone?

Of everyone?

Those who violently dehumanize and try to erase trans people.

Those who are terrorizing and brutalizing immigrants or any one that “looks like they could be an immigrant.”

Those who perpetuate Genocide in
Gaza
Sudan
Congo

Those on the Epstein list

Those in power whose silence is deafening on it.

And then Iran!

Iran! We are in another unjust war propped up by lies.

It’s the worst kind of de jeja vu

The anger, rage… and frankly loss of control I feel has got me missing the certainty of hell.

Which goes against all of my values and beliefs. Everything that I have deconstructed.

Hell is the antithesis of my Unitarian Universalist values and faith.

But it sure is enticing to think that people who might never get their comeuppance on this side of the dirt will on the other…..

Ugh, Universalism is hard!

All that we are experiencing and seeing has our nervous systems Swinging from fight to freeze.

Making it hard for us to stay grounded in our values.

But as a people who believe in justice, in a better world for everyone That truly do believe in the power of centering love To be ground in our values. To regulate ourselves as best we can is important.

Its important for our health and wellbeing For our relationships Its important for what we are called to do in this world.

In their poem, Wellness Check, Andrea Gibson writes

In any moment
on any given day,
I can measure
my wellness
by this question:

 

Is my attention on loving,
or is my attention on
who isn’t loving me?

Where is my attention?
…is loving 
or is my attention on all that is in direct opposition to love.

 

What a refocusing

It’s not a pollyanna statement. It’s not a dismissing of the harm, the violence the injustice.

But rather helps us to put our heart and our minds on those who are being harmed and on the type of world we work for – the beloved community.

But to do this kind of wellness check we need to tend to our heart. To our spirits. And the only way I know to do that is to get grounded in our spiritual practices.

Because our spiritual practices

  • Give our nervous system a rest
  • They helps us to connect to our core self, where the spark of the divine resides
  • They give us resilience that we need to do the work of justice and the beloved community. To keep from having our spirits broken

And ultimately they help us to connect to others, to see others. even those who do great harm… as the beloved children of the universe that they are.

 

Now if that last bit seems like a bridge too far…I think it’s good to have aspirations and to know when you haven’t gotten there just yet.

A helpful phrase for me is “I know God or their mama loves them.. I’m still working on it.”

Spiritual practices are so nourishing because they help us to see our own and others humanity in a way that is more loving.

They help us to see those feelings and call them love as Andrea Gibson taught us.

Gibson told their friend

“Open your heart to love. Everything that you are feeling right now, if its fear or sadness…everything that you are feeling… name it love.”

What I am feeling… what many of us are feeling… is love, even my misdirected desire for the certainty of eternal damnation comes from love. My deep grief, pain, and anger I feel at all the violence, violation, and pain is love. Is there because of love.

 

I just wasn’t putting my attention on love but rather on those that are acting without love.

But just because I name it love, doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Earlier this week I was seriously considering just sitting on these steps and saying

“I don’t even know. I’m so sad, mad, and exhausted.”

Thankfully, I realized, as uncomfortable as those feelings are, sad, mad, and exhausted are the expressions of love. But I can’t just know it, I need to give voice to it. I need to lament.

 

TO LAMENT. Means to weep, to wail, to moan.

And the way its used in the Hebrew bible, especially in the book of Psalms is moan to God. To cry out and say dang it, this is wrong and I’m angry and I am going to need you to fix this.

The laments in Psalms are so powerful because these people living in a complete different context and time from us are also saying… what is happening isn’t right and I demand change. And my faith is strong enough that I can yell about it. That I can do some holy complaining about it.

Lament has been and is a powerful spiritual practice for the kind of pain we are all facing today.

So let’s, in this sacred space with this holy community, lament.

So that we can take our values, our faith.. our religion that might feel a little shaky and remember that it is hearty.

That to pull love into the center of our lives is to be aligned with who we are and the impact we want to make in this world.

SO LET’S WRITE OUR LAMENT.
We are going to go through 6 steps.

1) Address
Think about who or what we are going to address.
Some of us might just use God… its a good shorthand for the mystery or the divine. Spirit of life, God of many names… Goddess.
Or something else entirely.

If god language doesn’t resonate with you, speak directly to the systems or ideas that are letting you down… like democracy.

2) Your Complaint.
Name the grief, the anger, and how you are feeling about it..
Lay it all out.
Name all your emotions. You may want to just focus on one aspect or one issue.. goodness knows we have a lot to contend with.
You can always do this again later… as many times as you need.

3) Confession of Trust.
This is where we reground in our faith and values. It’s saying what should be while also acknowledging that it isn’t.
Rev. Diana Smith wrote:

“This doesn’t mean giving a too-soon declaration that you have hope or optimism. Rather, it’s about noticing and writing down what inspires you to keep going or what helps you imagine something better.”

4) Petition:
What are you seeking?
What do you want to happen?
It doesn’t have to be something that is realistic, allow the beautiful liberatory part of your imagination free.

 

For example, I want everyone to have access to safe shelter, healthy food, and abundant love.

5) Hope
What would happen if your petition is met?
What would the world or people’s lives look like if that petition was met?

6) Gratitude.
Rev. Diana Smith writes:

“Sometimes you might not be feeling gratitude in the midst of your pain, and that’s okay and normal. This [part is] about remembering the deep sources of gratitude that we hope to connect with again.”

And now you have your lament.

 

You can turn it into a booklet and place it on your alter or meditation area if that is part of your spiritual practice. Or maybe in your journal or besides your bed. I will put mine in my god box.

Or you may want to give it back to the elements by burning or burying it. Just be careful.

The pain, the anger, the grief we are experiencing… are completely valid responses to the horrors that we are seeing. That we are learning about and that some of us are facing.

It is normal to feel those thing… and we can name it love.

We can let our religion, our faith, our values hold us in that love.

Hold us so it can make us resilient.

Resilient enough to live in this world… that so often crushes our heart

Resilient so that we can allow our hearts to break so that our spirit remains unbroken.

Extinguishing the Chalice

We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.

Benediction

May you be held
May you be held in your joy
May you be held in your heartbreak
May you name it all love
So that when your heart breaks
You can let it mend and mend again.

Go in peace

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