Congratulations, you made it to the end of January! That’s an accomplishment no matter what the snowfall amounts or temps have been like.
We also have BIG NEWS this week – our new church website is now online. Visit uuhoulton.org and check it out. This is phase one of our website launch but it has most of the basic information and FAQs about who we are and what we are about (and plenty of photos!). Karen Klahr and Christoph Leibrecht headed the website project with consulting and research assistance from Bruce Glick and others. We still have more work to do but we’re excited to have the website active and available for use.
It’s interesting to watch how certain fashions, consumer products and fads come and go in popularity and then over time they unexpectantly come back again with a new generation. I’m always amazed when I see this occur because in my opinion, often times, one time was enough. In this week’s Sunday Service we take a look at why we’re so interested in what’s trending now and the inevitable follow-up; if you wait long enough it will probably trend again. Ideas and philosophies trend in a similar way. The big ideas keep coming back around as we explore new ways to apply them to the current events of our day.
The title of the talk is “Trending Now…” and we also have the Ghost of Paul Revere from one of their concerts on the sanctuary stage.
Have a great week-end everyone and we hope you can join us!
Info about our UU Study Issue:
One of our group members suggested a UU study topic that we could possibly explore this winter. After discussion about it several weeks ago during our Zoom coffee hour we decided to use part of our time each week during Zoom coffee hour to share our thoughts on the topic. (We watched the trailer and started an initial discussion last week.) Netflix has a recent documentary on the dangers and concerns regarding social media sites titled “The Social Dilemma” directed and written by Jeff Orlowski.
Here is a brief description of the film found on Wikipedia:
The film features interviews with many former employees, executives, and other professionals from top tech companies and social media platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Apple. These interviewees provide their first-hand experiences of working in and around the tech industry. They state that social media platforms and big tech companies have been instrumental in providing positive change for society; they also note that such platforms have also caused problematic social, political, and cultural consequences. These interviews are presented alongside scripted dramatizations of a teenager’s social media addiction and a primer on how a social media algorithm powered by artificial intelligence may work.
If you would like to view a trailer of the film on YouTube a link is listed below. And if you don’t have a Netflix account there is also a great interview with Katie Couric and a panel of participants from the film on YouTube. That link is also included. We’ll chat more about it during Zoom on Sunday at 11AM.
Trailer for the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaaC57tcci0
Interview with Katie Couric on YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGi2YKZZNFg
Here is a poem sent in by Bruce Glick relevant to the topic. Thanks Bruce!
All This and MoreBY MARY KARRThe Devil’s tour of hell did not include
a factory line where molten lead
spilled into mouths held wide,
no electric drill spiraling screws
into hands and feet, nor giant pliers
to lower you into simmering vats.
Instead, a circle of light
opened on your stuffed armchair,
whose chintz orchids did not boil and change,
and the Devil adjusted
your new spiked antennae
almost delicately, with claws curled
and lacquered black, before he spread
his leather wings to leap
into the acid-green sky.
So your head became a tv hull,
a gargoyle mirror. Your doppelganger
sloppy at the mouth
and swollen at the joints
enacted your days in sinuous
slow motion, your lines delivered
with a mocking sneer. Sometimes
the frame froze, reversed, began
again: the red eyes of a friend
you cursed, your girl child cowered
behind the drapes, parents alive again
and puzzled by this new form. That’s why
you clawed your way back to this life.
The recorded service will be available to view at 10AM on Sunday morning and archived so it can be watched later at your convenience. I will send out the service link to YouTube later today and the link will be live on Sunday morning at 9:45AM (in case you want to come to the service early). If you subscribe to our YouTube channel you can locate it automatically on your YouTube home page under subscriptions.
The 10AM service will be followed by a Zoom coffee hour and check-in at 11AM for those who are interested in discussing the service or just want to check in. I’ll send the Zoom links out today. Have a great week-end everyone!
Practice patience and kindness.
In Ministry,
Dave
Lyrics to The Ghost of Paul Revere song in this week’s service:
“As We Know”
Golden was the dayI turned to walk awayBut never got too farAll alone with my eyes out to seaAll the while thinking of where I should beAnd myEyes out to sea
Foolish is the mouthAnd words that it lets outGo rarely understoodOnward nowBut my heart’s in the pineOnward howTo get back to that timeWhen myHeart’s in the pine
As we knowAs we knowAs we know
Lonely is the dawnAnd the river, it rolls onThe sun follows the moonThe summer’s gone too soonThe waves will find the shoreThe boots will find the floorAs we knowSo it goes
Virtual Offering Plate
If you would like to send in your pledge or donation (we still have to pay the bills) simply drop an envelope in the mail. The address is listed below. Thank you for your support!
UU Church of Houlton61 Military StreetHoulton, ME 04730
Resilience: Self-Care for Tough TimesBY SHAUNA SHAPIRO| JANUARY 26, 2021 THE LION’S ROAR MAGAZINE
Shauna Shapiro explains how to face difficult emotions, re-center, and find calm.
All of us can feel the impact of these uncertain and challenging times on our hearts and in our nervous systems. While there are parts of our current crisis that we cannot control, that doesn’t mean we’re powerless.
When we’re up against change, uncertainty, and stress, resilience is the key to navigating life and emerging with more happiness and satisfaction.We can cultivate resilience through the practices of mindfulness and compassion. This is the miracle of neuroplasticity—what you practice grows stronger. We can carve out pathways of greater clarity, courage, and compassion through practice.
The five steps below help us face difficult emotions, re-center, and find calm. These steps don’t have to be done perfectly. Think direction, not destination. The key is practice.
Meditation
1. NAME IT TO TAME IT
It’s helpful to remember that our emotions are here for a reason. They often serve as a smoke alarm, letting us know about an impending fire. When we ignore or repress our emotions, it can lead to bigger problems.
Mindfulness teaches us a different way to manage difficult emotions—to acknowledge and name what we feel. This is called “name it to tame it.” Research shows that when we acknowledge and name our emotions it allows the body to physiologically calm down. Naming an emotion puts the brakes on your reactivity, down-regulates the nervous system, and allows you to see clearly.
2. WELCOME YOUR EMOTIONS
Emotions have a limited time span, typically lasting for only thirty to ninety seconds. They arise, do their dance, and pass away, just like waves in the ocean. When we remember that this painful feeling will not last forever, it becomes more manageable.
Through practice, we can learn to welcome all of our emotions with an attitude of kindness and curiosity. This involves becoming interested in the emotion and the felt experience in the body. For example, you may feel sadness as a tightening in your throat, or fear as a contraction in your belly. All emotions have a signature in the body.
3. BE KIND TO YOURSELF
Self-compassion is not our typical response when we’re facing a challenge, have made a mistake, or are in pain. All too often, instead of kindness, we judge, shame, and criticize ourselves. But self-judgment and shame aren’t helpful. They actually shut down the learning centers of the brain and inhibit our ability to heal, change, and grow.
The antidote is self-compassion, learning to bring kindness to our pain. The easiest way to practice it is to treat ourselves as we would treat a dear friend facing a similar situation. The willingness to face the pain in ourselves and in life takes great courage. As we practice self-compassion, we learn not only to grow from our own struggles and sorrows, but also to connect with the suffering of others.
4. RECOGNIZE OUR COMMON HUMANITY
It’s natural to be feeling fearful and overwhelmed at this time. We’re not alone in our feelings. There are many others right now all over the world who are also frightened and overwhelmed. As we recognize our common humanity, our isolation begins to lessen, and we understand that we’re all in this together. It can be helpful to send compassion to both yourself and everyone else who is suffering.
5. PRACTICE, NOT PERFECT
The fifth step is to realize that you won’t do any of the first four steps perfectly. This isn’t about perfection. It’s about practice. Small changes lead to big shifts. In fact, one of the most important discoveries in brain science—neuroplasticity—shows that the brain has the ability to make new neural connections throughout life. This is a very hopeful message because it means that all of us have the capacity to change, heal, and grow. Perfection isn’t possible, but transformation is.
Shauna Shapiro, PhD, is a professor at Santa Clara University. Her most recent book is Good Morning, I Love You: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Practices to Rewire Your Brain for Calm, Clarity, and Joy.
New Battery
For Electric Car Makers, This Battery Breakthrough Could Change Everything
A full charge in five minutes? Goodbye range anxiety.
DAMIAN CARRINGTON
Batteries capable of fully charging in five minutes have been produced in a factory for the first time, marking a significant step towards electric cars becoming as fast to charge as filling up petrol or diesel vehicles.Electric vehicles are a vital part of action to tackle the climate crisis but running out of charge during a journey is a worry for drivers. The new lithium-ion batteries were developed by the Israeli company StoreDotand manufactured by Eve Energy in China on standard production lines.
StoreDot has already demonstrated its “extreme fast-charging” battery in phones, drones and scooters and the 1,000 batteries it has now produced are to showcase its technology to carmakers and other companies.
Daimler, BP, Samsung and TDK have all invested in StoreDot, which has raised $130m to date and was named a Bloomberg New Energy Finance Pioneer in 2020.
The batteries can be fully charged in five minutes but this would require much higher-powered chargers than used today. Using available charging infrastructure, StoreDot is aiming to deliver 100 miles of charge to a car battery in five minutes in 2025.“
The number one barrier to the adoption of electric vehicles is no longer cost, it is range anxiety,” said Doron Myersdorf, CEO of StoreDot. “You’re either afraid that you’re going to get stuck on the highway or you’re going to need to sit in a charging station for two hours. But if the experience of the driver is exactly like fuelling [a petrol car], this whole anxiety goes away.”“A five-minute charging lithium-ion battery was considered to be impossible,” he said. “But we are not releasing a lab prototype, we are releasing engineering samples from a mass production line. This demonstrates it is feasible and it’s commercially ready.”
Existing Li-ion batteries use graphite as one electrode, into which the lithium ions are pushed to store charge. But when these are rapidly charged, the ions get congested and can turn into metal and short circuit the battery.The StoreDot battery replaces graphite with semiconductor nanoparticles into which ions can pass more quickly and easily. These nanoparticles are currently based on germanium, which is water soluble and easier to handle in manufacturing. But StoreDot’s plan is to use silicon, which is much cheaper, and it expects these prototypes later this year. Myersdorf said the cost would be the same as existing Li-ion batteries.
“The bottleneck to extra-fast charging is no longer the battery,” he said. Now the charging stations and grids that supply them need to be upgraded, he said, which is why they are working with BP. “BP has 18,200 forecourts and they understand that, 10 years from now, all these stations will be obsolete, if they don’t repurpose them for charging—batteries are the new oil.”Dozens of companies around the world are developing fast-charging batteries, with Tesla, Enevate and Sila Nanotechnologies all working on silicon electrodes. Others are looking at different compounds, such as Echion which uses niobium oxide nanoparticles.
Tesla boss Elon Musk tweeted on Monday: “Battery cell production is the fundamental rate-limiter slowing down a sustainable energy future. Very important problem.”
“I think such fast-charging batteries will be available to the mass market in three years,” said Prof Chao-Yang Wang, at the Battery and EnergyStorage Technology Center at Pennsylvania State University in the US. “They will not be more expensive; in fact, they allow automakers to downsize the onboard battery while still eliminating range anxiety, thereby dramatically cutting down the vehicle battery cost.”
Research by Wang’s group is being developed by the company EC Power, which he founded. It carefully increases the temperature of the battery to 60C, which enables the lithium ions to move faster, but avoids the damage to the battery usually caused by heat. He said this allowed a full charge in 10 minutes.
Wang said new research published in Nature Energy on Monday showed this battery could be both affordable and eliminate range anxiety. “Finally we are achieving parity with gasoline vehicles in both cost and convenience. We have the technology for $25,000 electric cars that race like luxury sport cars, have 10-minute rechargeability and are safer than any currently on the market.”Wang noted that fast charging must also be repeatable at least 500 times without degrading the battery to give it a reasonable life and that the EC power battery can do so 2,500 times. Myersdorf said the StoreDot battery could be recharged 1,000 cycles while retaining 80% of original capacity.
Anna Tomaszewska, at Imperial College London, UK, who reviewed the fast-charging batteries in 2019, was more cautious about the speed of their rollout. “I think technologies [like StoreDot’s] could start entering the market in the next five years or so. However, since they will be more difficult and expensive to manufacture, we’re likely to initially only see them in niche markets that are highly performance-driven and not as price-sensitive as electric vehicles,” she said.
Joys & Concerns
When one of us is blessed we are all blessed.When one of us experiences sorrow we all feel the pain.
A BIG THANK YOU to Karen Klahr and Christoph Leibrecht for their work on the new church website! Karen originally designed our website almost twenty years ago and has steadily maintained the site since then. She has been key in the transfer to a new web host and service provider.
Christoph brings his skillset to our project and will serve as our webmaster as we move forward. Kudos everyone!!
Bernie waiting for a hot cup of coffee…(photo-shopped by Fred Griffith)
photo taken at last week’s zoom coffee hour; Donna and Christoph with some much needed civil-tea…drink deep and slow.
The UUHoulton annual pledge drive is still under way. Your pledge card or donation for 2021 can be mailed to 61 Military Street. Your support is greatly appreciated!
The UUChurch of Houlton is looking for a new treasurer in the new year. If you are interested in finding out more about the position please contact our good moderator, Leigh Griffith at griffith@mfx.net We’d like to express our thanks and appreciation to our outgoing co-treasurers Mary Blocher and Barbara Erickson for their excellent years of service to the organization.
THANK YOU!
Please continue to send in joys and concerns during the week to revdav@mfx.net and I will post them on the Support Page.
The joy or the sorrow of one is shared by all. May our hearts be as one on this day. Let us carry each thought or concern expressed in our heart and may the light of our love and compassion transform suffering into non suffering and ease the difficulties of life. We radiate love and the light that we are. Blessed are we all.
Prayer List distributed via personal email.
The Four Limitless Ones Prayer
May all sentient beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.May we be free from suffering and the root of suffering.May we not be separated from the great happiness devoid of suffering.May we dwell in the great equanimity free from anger, aggression and exclusion.
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