January’s Ministry Theme is Story
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.
COVID Update May 2023: The congregation’s Pandemic Policies and Protocols were adopted specifically in response to the pandemic. Given that the state of emergency has been lifted, they are no longer in effect. 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 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.
Sunday Worship: Wheels on My Suitcase
Sanctuary 1260 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA, United StatesChaplain Michael Eselun, preaching; Karen Hsu Patterson, worship associate. We all carry around our own unique burdens—“our baggage,” if you will. Join us to look at what might be “the wheels” on that particular suitcase that we drag around. What are the ways we can make it all a little easier to maneuver and manage—particularly in these uncertain and challenging times?
Sunday Worship: Storytelling for Wholeness
Sanctuary 1260 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA, United StatesThe Rev. Jeremiah Lal Shahbaz Kalendae, preaching. The stories we receive, share, and tell ourselves help to define who we are as people and as a religious community. The art of storytelling is fundamental to all congregations, and it helps us to know our wholeness. What are your stories, the stories of this community, of this tradition? Join us for this service reflecting on this month's ministry theme of "Story."
Sunday Worship: Martin Luther King, Jr. Multi-generational Celebration
Sanctuary 1260 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA, United StatesJessica TenHave-Place M.Div., preaching. We strive to be a diverse multicultural Beloved Community where all thrive. We covenant with all other UU congregations to dismantle racism and all forms of systemic oppression. Let's enjoy this special multi-generational service celebrating the prophetic life and ministry of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Sunday Worship: Liberating Love
Sanctuary 1260 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA, United StatesThe Rev. Jeremiah Lal Shahbaz Kalendae, preaching; John Hart, worship associate. The newly adopted purpose statement of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations declares: "The UUA will actively engage its members in the transformation of the world through liberating Love." Join us for this service meditating on liberatory love as a motivating power of our liberal faith. How exactly does love liberate? How might we generate, sustain, and share such a Love?
Generous Congregation Recipient: Westside Food Bank 
Our practice here at UUSM is to dedicate half of our non-pledge Sunday Offering to organizations doing work in the world that advances our Unitarian Universalist principles; the other 50% of the offering is used to support the life of our church. This month, half of our Sunday Offering will go to the Westside Food Bank, whose mission is to end hunger in our communities by providing access to free nutritious food through food acquisition and distribution, and by engaging the community and advocating for a strong food assistance network. Our congregation has enjoyed a long relationship with the Westside Food Bank: volunteering, donating food, providing labor, and raising money. Your support this month will help keep our vulnerable neighbors food secure.
Thank you for your generous support of our beloved community and the Westside Food Bank. 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.
January 2025 Theme: Story
Our theme this month invites us to consider our world, our communities, and our lives in the light of Story and Storytelling. Some stories can hold us in a soft light, or help us be brave right now. Others can help us clarify what truly happened in the past. False stories can limit us and lead us astray. And telling important stories can bind us together as we move forward.
In the soft light of this flame may our lives shimmer anew.
May we notice new possibility in those relationships that seem lost.
May the turning of year give birth to a dream.
May the emerging light pull a new story into view. ~ Rev. Scott Tayler, For New Year’s
When we deny our stories and disengage from tough emotions, they don’t go away; instead, they own us, they define us. Our job is not to deny the story, but to defy the ending—to rise strong, recognize our story, and rumble with the truth until we get to a place where we think, Yes. This is what happened. This is my truth. And I will choose how this story ends. ~ Brené Brown
I think that the past is all that makes the present coherent, and further, that the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly. ~ James Baldwin
At some point we have to understand that we do not need to carry a story that is unbearable. We can observe the story, which is mental; feel the story, which is physical; let the story go, which is emotional; then forgive the story, which is spiritual, after which we use the materials of it to build a house of knowledge.” ~ Joy Harjo
Our (American) culture generally lives the myth of the heroic and self-sufficient ego rather than the collaborative community. We unconsciously act out the heroic story in our dealings with the world by conquering adversaries, actualizing personal potential, and practicing self-reliance. ~ Shaun McNiff
Listening to both sides of a story will convince you that there is more to a story than both sides. ~ Frank Tyger
Storytelling [and telling multiple kinds of stories] is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary… We will not know our own injustice if we cannot imagine justice. We will not be free if we do not imagine freedom. We cannot demand that anyone try to attain justice and freedom who has not had a chance to imagine them as attainable. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin
A family is essentially a field of stories, each intricately connected. Death does not sever the connection; rather, the story expands as it continues unwinding inter-dimensionally. ~ Joy Harjo
Story shields against arbitrariness and against chaos’s companion, despair. And story, like all forms of concentration, connects. It brings us to a deepened coherence with the world of others and also within the many levels of the self… Story remains a basic human path toward the discovery and ordering of meaning and beauty. ~ Jane Hirshfield
Can you hear the whispers of the ancestors?
We remember.
Their stories are in these walls, in our bones… ~ Rev. Lynn Gardner
May we have the courage to speak or write the stories within us that need to be told – the stories that make up our lives. May we listen with a loving mind and heart to the stories of others’ lives – others here in this church, and others in our wider community and world. ~ Rev. Shari Woodbury
Our service in the world continues.
