Beyond Sunday: The UUCSB Blog
Reflections, Sermons, and the Monthly Newsletter
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.”
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.”
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!”