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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Rev. Lori: Wake Up!
“There are many kinds of sleep. There is the sleep that comes at night, when our bodies finally release the day. But there is another kind of sleep that can last for years. The sleep of routine.The sleep of numbness. The sleep of believing that nothing can change—not in us,not in the world. We move through our days on autopilot. We answer the same emails. We worry the same worries. We rehearse the same stories about who we are. And we call it being awake.
But every spiritual tradition, in its own way,
whispers the same invitation:
Wake up.”
Rev. Lori on Our Quaker Forebears and The Gift of Silence
“Open and affirming, liberal, environmentally focused (especially here) and justice focused, everyone is equal….and here is the theology part, everyone is understood to have their own unique experience of the Divine that informs them how to live their life.’”
Rev. Lori on the Intersection of Love and Truth
“Love without truth can become sentimentality. Truth without love can become cruelty. But where love and truth meet, something holy happens.’”
Rev. Lori on Gathering Together In Community ~ An Act of Resistance & Resilience
“As it is said every Sunday, ‘When we gather together as a community, we bring the gifts of ourselves, our hearts and spirits, our time and energy, our talents and skills, to support the work of this church here within our walls and out in the larger community.’”
Rev. Lori on The Light of Resistance and the Blessings of Imbolc
“I began noticing this week how it gets lighter earlier in the morning and stays light later. In spite of the bitter cold temperatures I feel some encouragement by the addition of the minutes. I feel like light is also returning on in other areas of my consciousness. As hard and sad as things can feel these days, the light of effective resistance is shining. Small wins are popping up in the nation and in our community.”
Rev. Lori: Don’t Stay In Your Seats!
“We are a faith community, even if we come from different faiths or no faith. We walk together and support one another on our own individual spiritual journeys. Faith without action is incomplete. Spiritual journey without witness is vacant. It is important to practice our spirituality in the ways that nourish ourselves and our community. And our spirituality also requires we look outward.”