This week we are taking a look at what it takes to get through difficult times, to get the job done (whatever that may be) and still maintain a semblance of holding it together when everything appears in danger of falling apart around us. This week’s talk is titled “Times of Courage” and tackles the current climate of living in a period of unsettled details and intimidating challenges. What is going to happen next? What will be be our response to unsolicited danger, unprecedented circumstances and anxious times of peril? This week’s support page also includes an article by Maurizio Valasania, Professor of History at the University of Torino. During last week’s zoom coffee hour we were discussing the role of civic responsibility in times of divergent public opinion and wanted to follow up with this article. The service will be available at 10AM on our YouTube Channel followed by Zoom check-in and coffee hour at 11AM. You’ll find the links listed below. Have a great week-end everyone and Happy Halloween!
Practice patience and kindness.
In Ministry,
Dave
HERE IS THE SERVICE LINK FOR THIS WEEK’S SERVICE(Please note it won’t be active until 10AM on Sunday morning)
https://youtu.be/avvosS51Ybo
HERE IS THE ZOOM LINK FOR SUNDAY:
David Hutchinson is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: UU check-in and coffee hourTime: Oct 31, 2021 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Every week on Sun, until Nov 7, 2021, 2 occurrence(s) Oct 31, 2021 11:00 AM Nov 7, 2021 11:00 AMPlease download and import the following iCalendar (.ics) files to your calendar system.
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Meditation for Interconnectedness
Sylvia Boorstein shares a meditation for deepening our sense of interconnectedness.
Here’s a practice that directly evokes the truth that there is no separate and enduring self, meditated on in the context of interconnectedness. Read these instructions and then sit up or lie down with your spine straight and your body relaxed so that breath can flow easily in and out of your body. Close your eyes. Don’t do anything at all to manipulate or regulate your breathing. Let your experience be like wide awake sleeping, with breath coming and going at its own rate.
Probably you’ll be aware of your diaphragm moving up and down as your chest expands and contracts. Of course you cannot feel that the exhaling air is rich in carbon dioxide and the inhaling air is rich in oxygen, but you probably know that. You also probably know that the green life in the world—the trees and vines and shrubs and grasses—are breathing in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen back into the environment. The green world and your lungs, as long as they both are viable, are keeping each other alive.
Without any volition on your part, your body is part of the world happening, and the world is part of your body continuing. Nothing is separate. Your life is part of all life. Where is the self?
ABOUT SYLVIA BOORSTEIN
Sylvia Boorstein is a psychologist and leading teacher of Insight Meditation. Her many best-selling books include Pay Attention, for Goodness’ Sake and Happiness Is An Inside Job.
The American founders didn’t believe your sacred freedom
means you can do whatever you want
by Maurizio Valsania, Università di Torino
President Joe Biden has mandated vaccines for a large part of the American workforce, a requirement that has prompted protest from those opposed to the measure.
more than a dozen businesses’ being fined for flouting the rules.
The basic idea behind the objections: Such mandates, which also extend to requirements to wear masks and quarantine if exposed to COVID-19, are a breach of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which states that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”
The objectors ask: Aren’t mandates un-American?
As a scholar who has spent decades trying to unravel the hurdles that mark the beginning of this nation, I offer some facts in response to that question – a few very American facts: Vaccination mandates have existed in the past, even though they have similarly sparked popular rage.
No vaccination foe, no latter-day fan of the Gadsden Flag’s “DONT TREAD ON ME” message, would ever gain the posthumous approval of the American founders.
George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and the rest of the group cultivated different visions about America. But they agreed on one principle: They were unrelenting on the notion that circumstances often emerge that require public officials to pass acts that abridge individual freedoms.
Keen sense of civic duty
Most of the founders, to begin with, were slave owners, not especially concerned about trampling over and abridging the rights of the persons they held in bondage. But even when they dealt with those they deemed to be their peers, American citizens, their attitude was rather authoritarian – at least by today’s standards.
In 1777, during the American Revolution, Washington had his officers and troops inoculated against smallpox. The procedure was risky. But for Washington, the pros outweighed the cons. It was an order, an actual mandate, not an option that individuals could discuss and eventually decide.
“After every attempt to stop the progress of the small Pox,” Washington explained to the New York Convention, “I found, that it gained such head among the Southern Troops, that there was no possible way of saving the lives of most of those who had not had it, but by introducing innoculation generally.”
During the summer of 1793 an epidemic of yellow fever struck Philadelphia, then the American capital. It shattered the city’s health and political infrastructure. Food supplies dwindled; business stopped. Government – federal, state and municipal – was suspended. Within just three months, 5,000 out of nearly 55,000 inhabitants died of the infection.
Public hysteria took off. Philadelphians at first pinned the outbreak on the arrival of refugees from the French colony of Saint-Domingue who were escaping that island’s slave revolution.
But there was also heroism. Black clergymen Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, for example, tirelessly transported the sick, administered remedies and buried the dead.
Urged on by Gov. Thomas Mifflin, the Pennsylvania state Legislature imposed sweeping quarantines. And almost everyone complied.
Henry Knox, then the U.S. secretary of war, didn’t object. Knox had fought during the Revolution. He had risked his life on many battles. He had developed a keen sense of what “civic duty” means: “I have yet six days quarantine to perform,” he wrote to President Washington, “which of the choice of evils is the least.”
‘Without a flinch’
The epidemic didn’t abate as quickly as expected. By September 1794 the yellow fever lingered in Baltimore, where it had spread from Philadelphia. In 1795 it reached New York City.
One John Coverdale, from Henderskelfe, Yorkshire, England, wrote President Washington a long letter. He advocated more drastic measures, including three weeks of quarantine and policemen strategically placed in every corner to hinder people from passing from zone to zone; and he wanted people “to carry with them certificates either of their coming from places not infected or of their passing the line by permission.”
In other words, a quarantine, lockdown and vaccine passports.
No politician we know of at the time considered such measures un-American. In May of 1796, Congress adopted, and President Washington signed, the first federal quarantine law. There wasn’t much controversy. In 1799, Congress passed a second and more restrictive quarantine law. President Adams signed it without a flinch.
‘Ambition’ vs. public good
So apparently it’s not certificates, quarantines and vaccine mandates that are un-American, as some maintain today.
The argument that individual rights trump the greater good is un-American, or at least out of step with American tradition. It’s an attitude that the founders would have put under the encompassing banner of “ambition.”
“Ambition” comes when individuals are blinded by their little – or large – egotisms and personal interests. They lose track of higher goals: the community, the republic, the nation. In the most severe cases, ambition turns anti-social.
Ambitious individuals, the founders were sure, are persons stripped of their membership in a community. They choose to relegate themselves to their solitary imagination. They have become slaves to their own opinions.
Alexander Hamilton was tired of being turned into the butt of endless accusations: “It shall never be said, with any color of truth, that my ambition or interest has stood in the way of the public good.”
When facing a quarantine, a mandate, or similar momentary abridgments of their liberties, many Americans today react the same way Hamilton did. Like Hamilton, they look beyond themselves, their opinions, their interests. They don’t lose sight of the public good.
Others remain ambitious.
Maurizio Valsania, Professor of American History, Università di Torino
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
Justice, Justice Shalt Thou Pursue
ABBY ZIMET October 27, 2021
Marking the three-year anniversary of the day a hate-filled madman shot and killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue “because they joined together as Jews to pray to God, read and study Torah, and celebrate Shabbat,”Pittsburgh residents gathered Wednesday near a grove of trees planted in tribute to those lost – “It is a tree of life for those who hold fast to it” – to “remember the incredible power in being stronger together” and, echoing their determined mantra, “stronger than hate.” The Oct. 27, 2018 massacre, the deadliest attack against Jews in American history, prompted a huge wave of diverse support for a community that, even as it worked to heal, vowed they would henceforth go forward to, “Remember. Repair. Together.” In honor of the day, Joe Biden issued a statement recalling “a peaceful Shabbat morning” whose violence “stole the lives of 11 souls in prayer.” The assault, he said, “was a reminder that hate never goes away, it only hides; and if we give hate oxygen, it can consume.” Eleven people from three congregations holding services – Tree of Life/Or L’Simcha, New Light and Dor Hadash – were killed. They were Rose Mallinger, 97, Melvin Wax, 87, Sylvan and Bernice Simon, 86 and 84, Joyce Fienberg, 75, Daniel Stein, 71, Irving Younger, 69, Jerry Rabinowitz, 66, Richard Gottfried, 65, and brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal, 59 and 54. May their memories be a blessing.
From Michael Simms, a poet who lives in Pittsburgh:
| When the young man wearing a yarmulke Asks Excuse me sir are you Jewish? I want to say yes I’ve studied history and know Something about suffering But that’s not what he means. He’s trying to find ten men For a minyan At Rodef Shalom down the street And when the young man carrying a bible Asks Have you heard the Good News? I want to say Yes! The cherry trees are blossoming! And when he asks Have you been saved? I want to say Yes! I’ve been saved by poetry From a childhood of abuse And humiliation — That’s a kind of miracle Isn’t it? But I know He wants to know Whether I’ve accepted Jesus Into my heart and there’s the rub Because my heart is so small And Jesus is so big When I walk into a cathedral My heart sings, when I walk Into a forest the trees sing And when I walk down the street The homeless man on the sidewalk Puts his whole heart into the ukulele Oh Susanna we are saved It is springtime in Pittsburgh And in America My friend Rashid is an atheist Because his mother was killed by a bomb. His father died unhappy and his sister Has moved to Australia. Rashid blames All his tragedies on religion And he may be right. We all have our tragedies And maybe God is to blame. What do I know? Well, I know this much: Anyone who has grown a garden, raised a child Or looked at the sky far from a city Knows the truth. So, yes, I’m a believer In the Big Dark, the Ur-unknown, The sense that my little mind Is part of the Big Mind I’ll never know But I have to say God, like a lazy cop, Never seems to be around When you need Him Somewhere a soldier is beating a boy For throwing stones. Somewhere A priest is raping a child. Somewhere a girl in a marketplace Has a bomb strapped to her chest. My friend and her mother Were in the Tree of Life synagogue When a man who hated immigrants Pushed through the door of their faith With an automatic rifle. You know the rest. For Arlene Weiner and Philip Terman Michael Simms is the founder and editor of Vox Populi. His latest collections of poems American Ash and Nightjar are both published by Ragged Sky. Copyright 2020 Michael Simms. Festival of SamhainHappy Halloween! photo by Leigh Griffith Fred carved this pumpkin for our UUHoulton Samhain service on October 31st. Unbeknownst to Fred and Leigh we had already pre-recorded the service the week before, but we did get these photos when they dropped by during their surprise visit. Thanks Fred! Samhain is a pagan religious festival originating from an ancient Celtic spiritual tradition. In modern times, Samhain (a Gaelic word pronounced “SAH-win”) is usually celebrated from October 31 to November 1 to welcome in the harvest and usher in “the dark half of the year.” Here is a recording of “The Snow Hare” for Samhain.posted by Leigh Griffithhttps://youtu.be/k_neToYHdJA |
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 crisis
For those working for social justice and societal change
Pray for peaceful action and democratic process in our nation
Prayers for the heat wave in the American West and wide spread drought conditions
Prayers for the people of Haiti
Prayers for the people of Afghanistan Pray for the refugees from Haiti arriving at the Texas border and the immigrationofficers coping with the influx
Prayers for the missionaries kidnapped in Haiti recently
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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