February’s Ministry Theme is Embodying Resilience

Join us in-person and online on Sundays at 10:30 am. All are welcome! We as Unitarian Universalists in Santa Monica look forward to being with you.

Masks are optional, but always acceptable and welcome. If you or someone in your household is not feeling well or has tested positive for COVID, please stay home; you can still join us via our Facebook or YouTube live-stream worship. 

Parking at the UCLA parking structure at 1311 16th St. is available to people attending Sunday services. The entrance is from 16th St. between Santa Monica Blvd. and Arizona Ave., on the SE corner of Arizona and 16th; ask the attendant for a free UUSM parking permit to place on your dashboard. For those with a handicap parking tag, several spaces are also available onsite, via the alley west of 18th St., as well as in the UCLA structure.

Worship Online: We livestream our service from the sanctuary. Join us by clicking the WATCH NOW button above where the video is live every week beginning at 10:20 am, or watch on YouTube or Facebook. You don’t need to have a YouTube or Facebook account, or be logged in, to watch the service. You do have to be logged in to comment and chat with other members of the congregation. 

Explore past services on our Sermons page, available 24/7. Tune in anytime to catch up and worship with your community. We encourage you to light a chalice or candle at home, meditate, and sing along. 

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Generous Congregation Recipient: Equal Justice Initiative

Our practice here at UUSM is to dedicate half of our non-pledge Sunday offerings to support the life of our church and the other 50% to nonprofit organizations doing work in the world that advances our Unitarian Universalist principles. This month we’ll share our Sunday Offering with the Equal Justice Initiative.

Founded in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson, a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer and bestselling author of Just Mercy, EJI is a private nonprofit providing legal representation to people who have been illegally convicted, unfairly sentenced, or abused in state jails and prisons. The organization challenges the death penalty and excessive punishment and provides re-entry assistance to formerly incarcerated people. Working with communities that have been marginalized by poverty and discouraged by unequal treatment, EJI is committed to changing the narrative about race in America. 

Thank you for your generous support of our beloved community and the Equal Justice Initiative. To give $10 right now, text “$10 GCC” (or another amount) to 844-982-0209. (One-time-only credit card registration required.) Or visit uusm.org/donate.

 

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February 2026 Theme: Embodying Resilience

Our theme this month invites us to consider our world, our community, and our lives in the light of the practice of Embodying Resilience. What do we carry within our bodies that guides us, helps us endure, heals us, or that gets in our way? In our hearts and minds? What relationships, practices, vistas, music, art, foods, readings, or activities give us hope and strength when we are grieving or outraged, struggling or spent? Which of these can we lend or share with others? Which can we accept from others? How is resilience like and unlike renewal? 

Poem: Heavy
That time I thought I could not go any closer to grief without dying I went closer, and I did not die… Then said my friend Daniel… “It’s not the weight you carry but how you carry it… So I went practicing. Have you noticed? Have you heard the laughter that comes, now and again, out of my startled mouth?… ~ Mary Oliver  Full poem 

The Work That Takes Time
We kindle this light for the work that takes time: the seed’s unseen rooting, the tide’s patient carving, the small turning of heart toward open ground. We look towards what is slow and true, the steady flame that sustains our days. ~ Rev. Michelle Collins

Life’s reality is that we cannot bounce back. We cannot bounce back because we cannot go back in time to the people we used to be. The parent who loses a child never bounces back. The nineteen-year-old who sails for war is gone forever, even if he returns. You know that there is no bouncing back. There is only moving through… What happens to us becomes a part of us. Resilient people do not bounce back from hard experiences; they find healthy ways to integrate them into their lives. ~ Eric Greitens, Resilience, book and video

The Strength of Water
The strength of water takes on many, many forms — just as each of you has a unique and necessary strength that you bring to our community and to the work of love. Take a moment now to drop down into the deep wellspring of your own spirit and bathe yourself in the strength that is the groundwater of your person.
Are you a roaring fall wearing rock away with sheer force of will?
Are you a tiny drop of water in a crevice, breaking it open slowly, steadily?
Are you buoyant, like a great salt lake, practiced at holding others aloft?
Are you tenacious like the mountain stream,
finding your way down and around every obstacle you face?… ~ Jamila Batchelder & Rev. Molly Housh Gordon, Full piece 

The Wisdom that Hums Beneath
We light this flame for the wisdom that hums beneath thought in our heartbeat, our breath, the subtle flutter that says: you are still here. We light this chalice to remember resilience begins in the body’s quiet language, whispering us along. ~ Rev. Michelle Collins

A Survival Meditation
i am aware of my pain.
breathing out
i am aware that i am not my pain.
breathing in. 
i am aware of my past…   ~ Rev. Nathan C. Walker, Full meditation 

 

Our service in the world continues.