Survivors of life threatening illnesses or circumstances are given the opportunity at a second chance. Our healing, our renewed life is a gift that allows us to look at existence with fresh eyes. How does healing impact our lives, so we can take the lessons and grow? What does survival teach us about living? During the first service, we conducted our Child Dedication, where we celebrated the gift of new life in our beautiful CVUUF children.
After the horrific shooting in Las Vegas this week and the many tragic events happening around the country and in our own lives, we look at how we might find comfort and healing amidst all the heartbreak. Where do we find solace amidst life’s great brokenness? Join us to gather for a service focused on healing and loving kindness.
Each of us has times in our life when we feel under siege by challenges and hard times. Speaking about and to these experiences can be difficult. Yet, doing so is what brings us the care and support we need to find healing and return to a sense of wholeness. Join Lora Barnett, a Hospice Chaplain and aspiring UU Minister, as she explores the possibility of speaking our way to wholeness through the saving power of community. Lora has been serving as Acting Minister at the San Luis Obispo Fellowship this summer and before that served as the Intern Minister for the Live Oak congregation in Goleta.
Forgiveness can be the path to profound personal and collective transformation, but it must be considered carefully and done with intention. Honoring the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we look at the transformative practice of asking for and offering forgiveness.
CVUUF is an extraordinary congregation filled with gifts of member’s time, treasure and talent. This Sunday we explore what transforming our world together might look like through our commitment to the Fellowship and the community beyond. What difference can we make as thoughtful, progressive, radically welcoming Unitarian Universalists both within and beyond our walls?
As we all come back together for our Ingathering and the new church year, we also welcome back Reverend Dr. Betty Stapleford, our Minister Emerita, into our community as a member. How does being in community transform us? Can we allow the crucible of community to teach us how to be wiser human beings in our relationships with one another? Join us for this celebratory service honoring our community and the possibilities for transformation that lay within.
Continuing an annual tradition at CVUUF and borrowing a title from a poem by Marge Piercy, “To Be Of Use”, members of CVUUF – Erica Escalante, Andrea Steffan, Anahi Quiroz and Jason Hall – will speak of work they have found meaningful. Please join us as we celebrate Labor Day.
For many, poetry is their sacred scripture. Whether we think of Rumi, Hafiz, the Psalms or Mary Oliver, poetry has the ability to move, instruct and transform us. For others, writing poetry is their spiritual practice – a way to express their deepest thoughts and questions. Join Rev Nica and poets from our congregation to explore the use of poetry as spiritual practice and sacred art.
On this day before a rare solar eclipse we are going to honor nature and our relationship with it. Do you find spirituality in nature? You have probably heard people say that nature is their church. We will explore this thought in a sensory and music-rich worship service, growing out of Frances Pardee’s purchase of a sermon topic at this year’s auction. She, Katie Morgan, Rick Wells, and Thelma Williams also participated.
Popular guest speaker and UCLA Oncology Chaplain, Michael Eselun will explore our relationship to strangers. We are often told from a young age, “Don’t talk to strangers,” only to find that sometimes such encounters might be “perfect.”
