A generous estimate of the annual salary for a farmworker, restaurant worker, or retail clerk on the Coastside is $35,000/year, and the salary for a first-year teacher in the Cabrillo Unified School District (CUSD) is $58,000 a year. Yet the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Mateo County is over $2700 per month. To afford that one bedroom apartment and stay within 30% of income, an individual would need an annual income of $94,545. Both new housing and rental protections are desperately needed on the Coastside!

You can learn about two proposals to address these critical needs for affordable housing. First, CUSD is sponsoring a community meeting to share information about their proposed workforce housing for district teachers and employees on Thursday, October 5, in the Cunha Library, 600 Church Street, 6-7:30pm. For background information on this project, click here. No registration is needed for this in-person meeting.

Second, Faith in Action Bay Area is sponsoring a community meeting on the proposed Tenant Protection Ordinance for San Mateo County on Thursday, October 12, 7pm.  Here is the link to register for the Zoom meeting on October 12. 

The Touchstones Theme for October is Love. On October 1, we warmly welcome Rev. Stefanie Etzbach-Dale to the UUCC pulpit with a sermon entitled "Love Exposed." The power of Love can be hard to trust, to give or to receive, when we feel vulnerable, exposed, or unsafe. What might we learn about this dynamic from the Jewish holiday of Sukkhot? Beautiful music will be provided by Diedrik and Kaj Edholm and Vera Vanderschalk. Plus, look forward to some rousing hymn-leading from Tom Devine.

Rev Stefanie Etzbach-Dale is affiliated with the UU Church of Palo Alto. Most recently she served as Pastoral Care Minister for UU San Mateo, while offering creative Torah study sessions at Congregation Beth Jacob in Redwood City. In her Spiritual Direction practice she focuses on “building spiritual courage, resilience, and joy through private spiritual direction sessions, group retreats and workshops, public speaking, and art. (To find out more, please visit her website at TendingSpirit.com.)

This live in-person service takes place at Odd Fellows Hall, 526 Main Street, Half Moon Bay, CA, 94019. Mask wearing is no longer mandatory but we strongly encourage this added protection as a courtesy to some of our elders. Odd Fellows Hall is quite spacious for social distancing and includes a new high-circulation air ventilation system. An option to watch from home is also available below.

For the Order of Service, click here

UUCC Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/6617755196

or Meeting ID: 661 775 5196 Password: 416762

Please join us at 11:00 am Pacific, 2pm Eastern

On Sunday, October 22, we warmly welcome back Verna Barrientos to talk to us about the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos in a sermon entitled "Out of the Shadows and Into the Light—A Day of the Dead Tradition."

In our culture, death and grief are not talked about enough. Even though grief and loss are some of the challenges that we all will find ourselves at some point dealing with, all too often they are stigmatized and shoved into the shadows. Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a tradition where the dead come out to play and are brought into the light within the hearts, minds, and on the altars of many. Come learn more about this time-honored tradition during this service. Also, feel free to bring a photo, memento, or a picture in your head of a gone but not forgotten beloved family member, friend, loved one, or pet.

Following the Gallery View Third Sunday format, this is a Zoom-only service.

At the beginning of this month, Tom Devine presented to UUCC the elegant service “You Could Make This Place Beautiful": Owing Beauty to the World. And now you can rewatch this wonderful presentation at UUCC's YouTube channel. Alternatively, you can drink in solely his 17-minute sermon.

Diedrik Edholm's solo performance of Yiruma's "River Flows in You" is also well worth its 3 minutes of beauty.

Please join us for our first "Politics and Pizza Movie Night" at the Heavlin home in El Granada on Friday, September 29th, 5:30pm, as we watch "Cartel Land" by filmmaker Matthew Heineman. This film gives us front-seat access to a real, and shocking story about an inescapable web of violence, corruption and exploitation within drug cartels. You can watch the trailer for Cartel Land here. Many Mexican, Central Americans, and Latin American immigrants are escaping the violence around drug cartels and here's an opportunity to understand their struggles better. Please RSVP to Noreen so we know how many pizzas to bake.

Now that we are meeting in person on First Sundays, we need help in different ways. Can you commit to helping out in any of the following ways?

• Photograph our October 1st Service
• Bring flowers!
• Greet people as they come in
• Set up chairs before, and/or put them away after, the Service
• Help unload and load video equipment for hybrid service
• Assist with setting up video equipment for hybrid service
• Pass out the orders of service and distribute hymnals
• Clean up of the hall before closing

To tell us how you can help our Beloved Community come together again, please contact us at uucoastside@gmail.com. And thanks to all who have or continue to volunteer!