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