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Sermons

This is a full list of sermons presented at UUCCSM since mid-1999. Links to sermon texts are included when made available by their authors. Audio recordings are also available for most sermons presented after September, 2007 by our staff ministers and others directly affiliated with our church (just click the speaker icon next to each sermon where it's available*). Audio from guest speakers is posted only when we have their permission to share it.

Hard copies of sermons by Rev. Jeremiah Kalendae are available in the church office. Contact office assistant Sibylla Nash at office@uusm.org if you have a request.

"Leaving Room for Hope: Sermons for Uncertain Times," a book of Minister Emerita Judith Meyer's sermons, is available here.

**Please Note: Video recordings are available for sermons with a small TV icon showing at the bottom of the sermon listing. Just click the icon to watch the service.**

October 30, 2016
Day of the Dead
Monthly Theme: Healing
Rev. Rebecca Benefiel Bijur, Kathleen Hogue and Dr. Zanaida Robles
Inspired by Mexican, indigenous, and homegrown traditions surrounding Day of the Dead/Dia de los Muertos, our services will include building an ofrenda and blessing the memories of those we love who have passed away.
 
Please bring a framed photo of a loved one who has died to add to our ofrenda memorial altar on Sunday, October 30. You may drop off pictures at the church during office hours or on Sunday before the services. If you would like your photo returned, please label the back with your name and contact information.
 
[NOTE:  No audio recording is available for this service.]
 
October 23, 2016
Bodies, Blessings and Bucket Lists
Monthly Theme: Healing
Rev. Bill Schulz
Join us for a special Sunday in which we celebrate the 90th Birthday of our Minister Emeritus, Rev. Ernie Pipes, with distinguished guest Rev. Bill Schulz. Bill gave the inaugural Ernest D Pipes Lecture in 1991 and joins us now 25 years later with more wisdom to share both on Sunday morning and as he delivers the Pipes Lecture at 3pm on 10/23. Rev. Judith Meyer will also join us on Sunday morning via a recorded video tribute to Ernie.
 
Bill Schulz, recently retired from full-time ministry and from the presidency of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, will reflect on the how each stage of our life journeys require of us different religious disciplines.  Bill is a senior fellow in human rights at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and an affiliated minister at Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago.

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October 16, 2016
Perfect Strangers
Monthly Theme: Healing
Michael Esalun
Church member 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.”
 
Michael Eselun, a certified chaplain, serves as the chaplain for the Simms-Mann/UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology.   He is also a co-founder and chair of a non- profit, volunteer anti-homophobia speakers bureau called GLIDE, Gays and Lesbians Initiating Dialogue for Equality. Over the last 20-plus years, Michael and his fellow speakers have spoken to an audience of over 200,000 students, teachers, and other various groups and agencies in the LA area about homophobia.  He has a TED talk available on-line via You Tube, called “It’s Magic” and you can find out more about him at www.michaeleselun.com.

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October 9, 2016 - 5:00pm
Heart and Soul: A Contemplative Worship Service
Kikanza Nuri-Robins, Joyce Holmen, and Karen Hsu Patterson

In consultation with our minister, we are continuing the Heart and Soul services, now led by Kikanza Nuri-Robins, Joyce Holmen, and Karen Hsu Patterson. With singing and instrumental music, statements and questions, silence and sharing, we’ll explore these themes:

October 9 — A Community of Healing
November 13 — A Community of Story
December 11 — A Community of Presence (a virtual service: we’ll send resources by email)

October 9, 2016
You, Me and Intersectionality
Monthly Theme: Healing
Rev. Rebecca Benefiel Bijur

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October 2, 2016
Stitches, Staples, Glue
Monthly Theme: Healing
Rev. Rebecca Benefiel Bijur

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September 25, 2016
Beginning Again
Monthly Theme: Covenant
Rev. Rebecca Benefiel Bijur
We'll welcome back our choir and (we hope!) launch our RE programs for the coming year.
 

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September 18, 2016
When E'er You Make a Promise (Santa Monica)
Monthly Theme: Covenant
Rev. Kikanza J. Nuri Robins
Our congregant and board member, the Rev. Dr. Kikanza Nuri-Robins, is an organization development consultant.
Ordained by the Presbyterian Church, she is a transtraditional minister who serves pastors, congregations and
spiritual organizations, including metaphysical, atheist, and the national UUA offices. She has studied UU history and culture at Starr King School for Ministry and helped design our Heart and Soul evening services.
 
Note that while Rev. Nuri-Robins will be preaching in Santa Monica, this is also our church weekend at Camp de Beneville Pines...and there will be a Worship in the Pines service there, led by Camp Dean Jacki Weber.
 

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September 11, 2016
Memory and Hope
Monthly Theme: Covenant
Rev. Rebecca Benefiel Bijur
As religious scholar and theologian Walter Bruggemann counseled on September 12, 2001, in the wake of this act of terrorism, four things were required: that the people might grieve, that the people might be comforted, that the people might confront cosmic evil, and that the people might demand social analysis. Fifteen years later, have we yet done what is required of us to come to terms with September 11?
 

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September 4, 2016
Bread & Roses: a Buddhist Meditation for Labor Day
Monthly Theme: Covenant
Rev. James Ford
Our visiting minister, Reverend James Ishmael Ford is a Zen Buddhist priest who has also served as a Unitarian Universalist minister for twenty-five years. Today he will reflect on what Buddhism might bring to our liberal religious concerns for a more just and equitable world.
 
Rev. Ford is the minister-emeritus of the First Unitarian Church of Providence, in Rhode Island. He was recently invited to affiliate as community minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Long Beach, where he and his spouse are members. Reverend James is also a Zen Buddhist priest, and the guiding teacher at the Blue Cliff Zen Sangha, which meets at the Long Beach church. He is the author or co-author of several UU pamphlets, for several years an online columnist for the UU World, and is the author of several books, the most recent "If You're Lucky, Your Heart Will Break: Field Notes from a Zen Life."
 

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