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Sermon: February 1, 2026 . Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito I want you to imagine that there are three versions of yourself, your past self, your present self, and your future self. What kind of relationship do you have with those three versions of yourself? Let’s start with your present self. That should be the easiest since you are most familiar with who you are right now.  How do you feel about yourself? Do you believe you are kind and helpful? Do you beli

Sermon: January 25, 2026 . Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito We gather together today to celebrate a wonderful homecoming after being displaced by construction for 25 weeks. We’re back on the familiar benches, under the umbrellas, in the open air, among friends who we care about. Not only is this our first service back in our beloved amphitheater, but our staff are now using our remodeled administration building, and our library is once again becoming a center

Poetry: November, 2025 Part I Death came into my father’s hospital room for a visit. He slinked into the room like a wisp of fog that snakes around rocks and hovers above the pond. His black eyes observed my father with watchful understanding and patience. His slender fingers floated through the air as if they themselves could sense my father’s readiness like a barometer predicts an incoming storm. He floated, intent on my father as though no one else was in the room, and we

Sermon: June 8, 2025 . Pilgrim United Church of Christ Many of you know that I grew up in this church. My father was the choir director and I sat in these pews Sunday after Sunday, listening to Pastor Jerry Stinson as he pushed boundaries by proclaiming that all people were welcome. Although I must have heard many of his sermons, I only remember one. It was a sermon about how to get to heaven and he essentially said that no religion was “wrong.” Religions were merely differe

Sermon: January 4, 2026 . Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito My father once told me a story about a time he and his twin brother were small and riding in the back seat of the family car. My grandfather, a Baptist minister, was driving. It was a normal day in the late 1950’s and they wound through the neighborhood streets of Alameda, a suburb of San Francisco. Suddenly, my grandfather pulled the car over to the side of the road and jumped out. There was a commot

Sermon: December 28, 2025 . Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito Many of you may have noticed that my email signature begins with “In Hope,” then there’s my name and contact info, and it ends with this quote from one of my favorite books, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “What makes the desert beautiful, is that somewhere it hides a well.” This idea, that even in the harshest of conditions, even in the most dire of circumstances, beauty exists beca

Sermon: December 21, 2025 . Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito Today is the Winter Solstice, the day the Northern Hemisphere experiences the least amount of light, thus the longest night of the year. Celebrations reach around the world on this day as cultures look toward the return of light, of warmth, and in many ways life itself as we wind our way toward spring and the rebirth of plants and animals that sustain us through the year. Many traditional celebratio

Sermon: November 30, 2025 . Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito "GRATITUDE IS A RIVER.  If you live in it, your heart and, soul grow supple.  You flow with life.  If you leave gratitude’s river behind, everything you are grows hard, rigid, suffering.  Your body, your spirit, your relations, your life. Stay in the river, Revolutionary.  Especially as you work to heal and unpeel the countless layers of oppression that shape your life and the world.  Identify your

Sermon: November 23, 2025 . Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito In recent years, we have been inundated with the message that perhaps we shouldn’t be happy on Thanksgiving. As we awaken to the realities and lasting effects of the colonization of the land the native people here lived on, we realize they were forever negatively affected by the actions of our white supremacist forefathers. The movement toward Thanksgiving enlightenment that started in the 1970’s ha