Note: We had some issues uploading feature pictures and illustrations and apologize for these omissions
Life is rarely predictable or clean-cut. It’s more likely to be a random assortment of uncertainty, messiness and nuance where you end up with more questions than you have answers. Ambiguity is creative space that can hold the chaos and tumult. In these uncertain times a little ambiguity could be a helpful option. Please join us for this week’s service on ambiguity and a musical selection from The Ghost of Paul Revere from one of our sanctuary concerts. The lyrics to the song are included below.
We are also being joined by the Midcoast UU Fellowship of Damariscotta via YouTube. The last Sunday of each month their congregation “visits” another UU group from somewhere in another part of the state to share worship. They will also be joining us for zoom coffee hour at 11AM for a casual chat and getting acquainted session.
Have a great week-end everyone and I hope you can join us for the UUHoulton weekly service.
Mountain Song
Ghost of Paul Revere
I have been chained to the land I am from
Destined to work all my days
Still you ask me to give all my blood and my bones
Just to pray to your beautiful ways
But I can not be yours
There’s blood, sweat, and tears in these fields I have toiled
Mountain sing your song
And call your children home
I can remember a time before time,
When Giants they walk through the land
But these places I’ve known and these faces have grown
All withered and beaten by sand
I was a king fallen from grace,
Cast from the Mountain at night
Now I’m a poor man, dreaming of birds
Wishing that I could take flight
Songwriter: Griffin William Sherry
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 later today.
Practice patience and kindness.
In Ministry,
Dave
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 Houlton
61 Military StreetHoulton, ME 04730
| Hope in the Midst of Uncertainty By Sharon Salzberg |
| It can be frightening to hope. On the one hand, here in the United States, with vaccinations increasing and Covid deaths decreasing, we all want to feel hopeful. Hope encourages us to look forward toward a brighter future ahead. On the other hand, all of us are scarred by the last year, and many uncertainties remain. We don’t want to have our hopes dashed yet again. We have also seen continued acts of violence against Black and Asian people in this country, casting a shadow on this otherwise hopeful time. So many people feel torn. I’ve found one insight from my Buddhist tradition to be very helpful in navigating this. Buddhists tend to be a little skeptical of hope, or perhaps it’s better to say, we hold hope lightly. The reason is that hope is often about how we want the world to be. Life would be perfect if only you could get that thing, person, experience. Or if the world were better in this or that way. One can get lost in this craving, which only increases separation from the world as it is. So, in this tradition, we try to see the world with equanimity instead of craving and fixation. Equanimity — the balance that is born of wisdom — reminds us that what is happening in front of us is not the end of the story, it is just what we can see. This, too, shall pass. This leads to a different kind of hope, one that resides not in specific outcomes but in the way things actually are. Personally, I have found a healing sense of hope in three places that are not attached to demanding a particular outcome. First, there is hope in remembering that, over the course of my life and even over the course of the last year, things have been bleak. Yet I am strong and there is much within me that responds well to adversity. There is hope in that confidence. Second, hope can be nourished by the ordinary activities that can help us sustain our energy and optimism—if we actually do them. A few years ago, I was teaching a stress-reduction workshop with women who work in domestic violence shelters. We asked the women to write down their sources of stress in one column and what they did to handle stress in the second. Many women said they handled stress by being in nature or pursuing a hobby. Yet they could not remember the last time they had done these things. That realization made a connection for all of us, those conducting the workshop as well as the women who worked at the shelter. We may know what could help move away from feelings of hopelessness or fear, but we often don’t do them unless we are reminded to do so by being with others in the same situation. Finally, there is hope in the well-known distinction between what we can and cannot control. Before the pandemic, my friend Willow used to go swimming five days a week to reduce stress. Afterward, she’d often rest in the Jacuzzi with the other swimmers. One day, she found three people there talking about the topic that had dominated her mind during her swim: caring for elderly relatives in various states of decline. Willow at first was too shy to join the discussion. Eventually, the water worked its magic and she felt comfortable enough to speak. “I feel terrible about him all the time,” she told her companions. “I feel like I’m doing so much and also that I’m not doing enough.” One of the women shook her head kindly. “No, don’t think that. You’re doing exactly the right thing,” she told Willow. “You come here every day and you leave it in the water.” The idea of leaving what we can’t control in the water speaks to my idea of hope. Do the best you can. Live according to your values and intentions, while knowing that you may not always succeed in your aspirations. Feelings of fear or loss are part of the human condition. And when you find community with others, you know that you are doing the best you can with what you have. The rest you can leave in the water. A towering figure in the meditation world, Sharon Salzberg is a prominent teacher & New York Times best-selling author. She has played a crucial role bringing mindfulness and lovingkindness practices to the West. She is the author of nine books, including her most recent, Real Change. |
In keeping with Earth Day this past week I think this op-ed by eco-philosopher Joanna Macy articulates a message (a hard yet hopeful message) that global citizens need to hear.
Entering the Bardo
by Joanna Macy
FROM EMERGENCE MAGAZINE
In this op-ed, eco-philosopher and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy introduces us to the bardo—the Tibetan Buddhist concept of a gap between worlds where transition is possible. As the pandemic reveals ongoing collapse and holds a mirror to our collective ills, she writes, we have the opportunity to step into a space of reimagining.
WE ARE IN a space without a map. With the likelihood of economic collapse and climate catastrophe looming, it feels like we are on shifting ground, where old habits and old scenarios no longer apply. In Tibetan Buddhism, such a space or gap between known worlds is called a bardo. It is frightening. It is also a place of potential transformation.
As you enter the bardo, there facing you is the Buddha Akshobhya. His element is Water. He is holding a mirror, for his gift is Mirror Wisdom, reflecting everything just as it is. And the teaching of Akshobhya’s mirror is this: Do not look away. Do not avert your gaze. Do not turn aside. This teaching clearly calls for radical attention and total acceptance.
For the last forty years, I’ve been growing a form of experiential group work called the Work That Reconnects. It is a framework for personal and social change in the face of overwhelming crises—a way of transforming despair and apathy into collaborative action. Like the Mirror Wisdom of Akshobhya, the Work That Reconnects helps people tell the truth about what they see and feel is happening to our world. It also helps them find the motivation, tools, and resources for taking part in our collective self-healing.
When we come together for this work, at the outset we discern three stories or versions of reality that are shaping our world so that we can see them more clearly and choose which one we want to get behind. The first narrative we identify is “Business as Usual,” by which we mean the growth economy, or global corporate capitalism. We hear this marching order from virtually every voice in government, publicly traded corporations, the military, and corporate-controlled media.
The second is called “The Great Unraveling”: an ongoing collapse of living structures. This is what happens when ecological, biological, and social systems are commodified through an industrial growth society or “business as usual” frame. I like the term “unraveling,” because systems don’t just fall over dead, they fray, progressively losing their coherence, integrity, and memory.
The third story is the central adventure of our time: the transition to a life-sustaining society. The magnitude and scope of this transition—which is well underway when we know where to look—is comparable to the agricultural revolution some ten thousand years ago and the industrial revolution a few centuries back. Contemporary social thinkers have various names for it, such as the ecological or sustainability revolution; in the Work That Reconnects we call it the Great Turning.
Simply put, our aim with this process of naming and deep recognition of what is happening to our world is to survive the first two stories and to keep bringing more and more people and resources into the third story. Through this work, we can choose to align with business as usual, the unraveling of living systems, or the creation of a life-sustaining society.
Over the last couple of years, a number of us involved in this work have recognized that, given the pace of the Great Unraveling, we are heading toward economic and, indeed, civilizational collapse. Our thinking was aided by the Deep Adaptation work of Jem Bendell, which seeks to prepare for—and live with—societal breakdown. I’d also like to acknowledge the earlier contributions in French-speaking Europe of Pablo Servigne and Raphael Stevens—whose prescient work focuses on collapse and transition and is only just now coming out in English.
Since the present world economy has been unable to cut greenhouse gas emissions by even the slightest fraction of a degree, it now seems obvious that we cannot avoid climate catastrophe. Many of us had assumed that the Great Turning could forestall such disintegration, but now we have come to recognize the Great Turning as a process and a commitment to help us survive the breakdown of the industrialized growth economy. The motivation and skills we gain by engaging in the Work That Reconnects provide the guidance, solidarity, and trust needed to make our way through this inevitable breakdown.
There are many dimensions to this work that address the psychological and spiritual issues of the time, and I have found a fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and postmodern science: much of the Work That Reconnects has been informed by Buddhist teachings. I now think of the Great Turning as somewhat like bodhicitta, the intention to serve all beings. This is the mind state of the bodhisattva—the being who, in their great compassion, delays nirvana in order to address the world’s suffering. I remember my Tibetan teachers telling me that bodhicitta is like a flame in the heart, and often I can feel it there.
COVID-19 reminds us that apocalypse—
in its ancient meaning—connotes
revelation and unveilingC
It can seem pretty clear now who is holding up Akshobhya’s mirror—it is COVID-19. The coronavirus has come upon us fast. We knew nothing of it just a short while ago. First it made us pause so we could take in what the mirror is reflecting. We’ve been so busy and distracted in our different versions of the rat race that we haven’t been able to pay attention to our actual situation. We had to cease our rushing about in order to see who, what, and where we are.
COVID-19 reminds us that apocalypse—in its ancient meaning—connotes revelation and unveiling. And what has it unveiled? A pandemic so contagious that it immediately revealed our failed health care system and our utter interdependence. The need to prioritize the collective nature of our well-being dramatically rose to the surface, especially within our country, which is the most hyper-individualized country in the world. As Malcolm X put it, “When we change the ‘I’ for the ‘We,’ even Illness becomes Wellness.”
The patterns of contagion then cast a spotlight on what we most need to see: nursing homes, where old people are warehoused; the meatpacking industry, so dangerous to the crowded workers, so cruel to the animals, so costly to the climate; prisons, where millions are locked away, now becoming petri dishes of contamination; the fault lines of racial inequality in our society, now laid bare in the pandemic’s disproportionate impacts on Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. Sixty percent of the cases are African-American—thanks to pre-existing conditions fostered by inequities in health care and environmental racism.
On top of that, the killing of George Floyd has not only revealed the racism and brutality of our police culture, but aroused unparalleled protests, sweeping the country and calling for the defunding and even abolition of police departments and unions.
Globally as well as in the US, many of us are discovering a new solidarity in our determination to move beyond the sick racism we’ve inherited. In this Uprising, I am inspired by the courage, creativity, and perseverance of those engaging in public demonstrations, who are influencing many civil servants to take action—members of city councils, agencies, and even police departments. It is no wonder that the bardo represents a place where the unknown, even the inconceivable, can happen and where we who enter are profoundly changed.
When we dare to face the cruel social and ecological realities we have been accustomed to, courage is born and powers within us are liberated to reimagine and even, perhaps one day, rebuild a world.
Do not look away. Do not avert your gaze. Do not turn aside.
Here is a new feature on the Support Page that we launched a couple of weeks ago. During zoom coffee hour people often share interesting movies, books or music they’ve recently discovered so we thought we would provide space to post one selection (or two) a week.
Disk Jockey Turntable
This week’s DJ: Dave
A young cello player, Sheku Kanneh-Mason (age 22) just showed up only music radar recently. You may recognize him from his performance at the Royal Wedding in 2018. He is the third of seven children all classically trained and they are known throughout England for their family band. He is a child prodigy who has been in the spotlight for years now, although I am just finding that out.
Here is Sheku playing the Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah.” There are plenty more performances on YouTube if you’re interested in checking them out.
https://youtu.be/RLd9PcZW5PQ
Joys & Concerns
When one of us is blessed we are all blessed.When one of us experiences sorrow we all feel the pain.
It’s World Tai Chi Day today! (Saturday, April 24)Take a few minutes to breathe and move in a relaxed manner.One World – One BreathWe all share the same planet.
Here’s a shot of the under-appreciated side of the church with remnants of snow on the roof. One person noted that it looked like a telephone line behind the building…
(photo by Dave)
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
For those recovering from COVID-19 in the state of Maine
Local emergency personnel and hospital staff
For our state and national leaders as they respond to the current coronavirus crisisFor those working for social justice and societal change
Pray for peaceful action and democratic process in our nation
Pray for the victims and their families of the mass shootings in Georgia and Colorado
Prayers for Asian-American communities in our country
Pray for peace and resolution of the protests in Armenia and Myanmar
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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