Beyond Sunday: The UUCSB Blog
Reflections, Sermons, and the Monthly Newsletter
Rev. Lori: Can You Be A Wild Blueberry?
“I had forgotten the wild blueberries. The joy and gratitude they inspire. It is such a short season and I almost missed it. This became a metaphor instantly to me of the short seasons we miss when we get caught in the swirls. A metaphor for the amazing and awe inspiriting gifts that can make us smile and find joy in less than joyful moments.”
The Messenger: August 2026
This month’s edition is packed with goodies: Upcoming Summer Services; Messages from Rev. Lori, Ellie R. on musical news and events, and Randa T. with an update on the Board of Trustees; News on the upcoming School Street Coffeehouse Season; UUCSB in the News; A sneak peak at our new opening page video with the updated UUCSB mission; And MORE!
Our Extraordinary Faith Meets Extraordinary Times
I remember starting the new year with a service called Gird Your Loins…..well this week I am circling back to that statement and those sentiments. The ways we create safe space are tantamount right now. Art is resistance. Peaceful gathering and creating sanctuary is resistance. Supporting community based organizations and operations is resistance. Even if it is resistance to despair, it is in fact resistance that is named by spiritual leaders of all shapes and sizes as the resistance that will transform the world.
Rev. Lori on Love
“As a UU, Love is my name for what others call God. While love can be a feeling, for me the “feeling” is only a small part of the fullness of the word. Because it is also a verb and at the center of decision making and right relation. For ourselves and others. And it often means choosing the gifts and wellness in our life and the enormous web of our creation that we have been given.”
Rev. Lori on Living at the Pace of Gratitude
“In our busy lives, we often measure ourselves by what we produce. But creation itself offers another rhythm. Trees are not anxious about growing. Rivers do not rush toward the sea. They simply become more fully what they were created to be. If you remember the concept of “church time”. In theory our regular year and our regular Sundays should remind us that spiritual work is on its own clock. But the church of summer does that even better because that is summer's spiritual lesson.”
The Messenger: July 2026
“Reports have reached me that there has been a reasonable amount of rain happening in Maine. Ironic that I have come to the rain forest in rainy season and it is quite dry. Rain has a way of changing our plans. It can slow us down. It might send us indoors. It interrupts picnics, delays ballgames, and dampens carefully laid schedules. We often speak of rainy days as inconveniences, wishing instead for clear skies and endless sunshine.”
Rev. Lori on The Ministry Outside the Pulpit: What Do You Do To Take Care of Our Community?
“There is a temptation to think of church as something that simply happens on Sunday morning—a service prepared, a building opened, coffee brewed, music sung. But a thriving congregation is not built by one voice, one leader, or one committee. It flourishes because many hands and many hearts quietly, faithfully, lovingly say: I will help carry this. To flourish together is to recognize that ministry belongs to all of us.”
The Messenger: June 2026
“June’s theme is Flourishing Together! And we certainly are. It has been a year of growth, joy, some pain, stretching and love! We have tried things that have stuck and some that haven’t. We have taken risks in service of growing a more loving and hopeful community internally and for the world. I am so proud of you and to be a part of this community that holds one another through it all! Not perfectly, but in the spirit of love at our center!”
Rev. Lori on The Importance of Curiosity
“Ted Lasso is a popular series on Apple TV, starring Jason Sudekis, as an amateur coach being hired to lead a British football team. Hired to set the franchise up to fail with his rudimentary skills as a coach. However this feel good series and character turns the narrative around with Ted Lasso being super positive and spinning all or most of his challenges with a mantra of “Be Curious, Not Judgmental” which in someways feels like a little toxic positivity, to be honest. ”
Rev. Lori on Mother’s and Mothering
“Mother's Day can be tricky for a lot of people for a lot of reasons. The essence of the day is the essence of our faith tradition. Love is at the center of our life. It brings us forth and nurtures us and sustains us. As we all know, it doesnt look the same for everyone. Mothers and mothering take many shapes, genders, gender expressions. In this community we mother each other in both the best and sometimes the not so best ways. It grows our community, our connection to one another, and to the wider world.”
Rev. Lori on Navigating Change
“Change is rarely gentle. Even when we know a new way is needed, something in us clings to what is familiar—old habits, old stories, old comforts.The path toward right relationship with one another, with the earth, and with our own deepest values asks courage not just once, but again and again. It asks us to keep choosing love when resentment would be easier, truth when silence would be safer, and responsibility when avoidance would be more comfortable.”
The Messenger: May 2026
“May is a month of change. Planting, budding, sprouting are all words of change that symbolize the spring and symbolize our time now at UUCSB. New life abounds in the activities and new faces we are seeing in our halls and sanctuary. Awakening curiosity is our theme for the month of May. It is a beautiful and apt theme for this month with all the vibrant activity we have planned! We have an intergenerational event, our canvas begins, we have a mother’s day celebration, coffee house, and a new member celebration. All symbols of new life and growth and challenge.”
Rev. Lori Is Asking Questions
“Your question this week.
What is my biggest discomfort when it comes to the issue of homelessness and the unhoused population? ”
Rev. Lori on Taking Responsibility for Finding What is Sacred For You
“There is an invitation and a responsibility for you to define what is sacred to you. You are invited and supported while you explore it in the ways that you do explore it or don't explore it. There is freedom and there is responsibility.”
Easter Sermon: Rolling Away the Stone-The Courage To Begin Again
The Easter story begins in grief.
It begins in fear, in loss, in the sense that hope itself has been sealed away.
The stone is not just across the tomb—
it is across the future.
And yet—
the story does not end there.
In the UU tradition, we don’t ask whether the resurrection happened literally.
We ask:
Where is resurrection happening now?
The Messenger: April 2026
“This month's theme is embracing possibility. It is a perfectly placed theme given all of the holidays and seasonal changes taking place. April invites us into a season where possibility is not abstract—it is visible everywhere. Buds swell on branches, light lingers longer in the evening, snow hopefully has permanently melted for the season, and traditions across cultures remind us that transformation is always underway. This month holds a quiet but powerful invitation: to trust that change is possible, even when the world feels uncertain.”
Rev. Lori: Are We Listening People?
“In a world where everyone seems to be speaking, listening can be a spiritual practice.
Hearing is easy; listening takes intention. It asks us to pause, to quiet our own voices, and to make room for someone else’s truth. Our Unitarian Universalist tradition invites us into that deeper listening—to one another, to the wisdom of many traditions, and to the quiet voice within.”
Rev. Lori on the The Wayside Pulpit in our Modern Age
“I invite you to think about how and where and how much you tap into social media. What do you look at? Consider how it impacts you. Consider how it impacts people younger than you. Consider how it impacts kids. Positive messages promoting love and right relationship must be sent out into the webosphere. It is a pulpit. Another version of a wayside pulpit.”