Beyond Sunday: The UUCSB Blog
Reflections, Sermons, and the Monthly Newsletter
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.”
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.”
The Messenger: March 2026
“Paying attention means waking up to the new possibilities that come in and from strife. It is in March that the clocks springs ahead, when we hopefully see more green on the ground thats white, when the sap starts running and when there is an earthy smell in the air from the mud emerging. It is inviting our senses and bodies to wake up. To wake up to the new possibilities that we have yet to even imagine. Every moment we are living in holds the collapse of the illusions of our past. Choose joy and peace that can be found in taking care of one another and taking care of the earth!”
The Messenger: February 2026
“It is February 2026. The theme for our month is Embodying Resilience. I believe that is perfect after the January we have experienced and the calls to resist in the many ways we can and do! Resilience is an ultimate act of resistance and it is our task and our study this month. We will live our resilience by eating together, worshipping together, saging together, singing together, kit making, and working side by side. We will celebrate our volunteering, and each other and we may even squeeze in a game night….Stay tuned for that. There is also an ecumenical/interfaith service in the works for early February.”
The Messenger: January 2026
“The theme for January is practicing resistance. We will explore and highlight our history and focus on the ways resistance shows up for us in in our lives and the life of the community right now. Resistance is often imagined as loud, confrontational, or defiant. And sometimes it must be. But more often, the most enduring form of resistance is quieter, steadier, and rooted in love. That is our mantra after all. What is love calling us to do in this moment and in all things.? To practice resistance through love is to refuse the stories that tell us we are alone, powerless, or disposable. It is to stand beside one another when fear would have us turn away. It is to show up—again and again—for those whose voices are dismissed, whose lives are made harder by systems that prize profit or power over people.”
