This week we take a look at the polarization in our society that is seemingly pulling us in two different directions endangering our common bond as one people and one nation. How can we hold it all together when we have so many differing opinions and varied interests while at the same time trying to make it through an ongoing pandemic?
Incivility and anger are two of the predominant traits of these stressful times. The title of today’s service offers a different suggestion, “Times of Compassion.”
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!
Practice patience and kindness.
In Ministry,
Dave
This week’s “Times of Compassion.” Sunday from10:00am service Link: https://youtu.be/04HibUSFNSs
HERE IS THE SERVICE LINK FOR THIS WEEK’S SERVICE
(Please note it won’t be active until 10AM on Sunday morning)
The link will come later in the day in a separate e-mail
HERE IS THE ZOOM LINK FOR SUNDAY:
David Hutchinson is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: UU Check-In and Coffee HourTime: Nov 14, 2021 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Every week on Sun, until Dec 26, 2021, 7 occurrence(s)
Nov 14, 2021 11:00 AM Nov 21, 2021 11:00 AM Nov 28, 2021 11:00 AM Dec 5, 2021 11:00 AM Dec 12, 2021 11:00 AM Dec 19, 2021 11:00 AM Dec 26, 2021 11:00 AM
Please download and import the following iCalendar (.ics) files to your calendar system.
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Take Three Conscious Breaths
BY PEMA CHÖDRÖN
Pema Chödrön teaches us pause practice, a simple technique we can use anytime we need a break from our habitual patterns.
Our habits are strong, so a certain discipline is required to step outside our cocoon and receive the magic of our surroundings. Pause practice—taking three conscious breaths at any moment when we notice that we are stuck—is a simple but powerful practice that each of us can do at any given moment.
Pause practice can transform each day of your life. It creates an open doorway to the sacredness of the place in which you find yourself. The vastness, stillness, and magic of the place will dawn upon you, if you let your mind relax and drop for just a few breaths the story line you are working so hard to maintain. If you pause just long enough, you can reconnect with exactly where you are, with the immediacy of your experience.
When you are washing up, or making your coffee or tea, or brushing your teeth, just create a gap in your discursive mind.
When you are waking up in the morning and you aren’t even out of bed yet, even if you are running late, you could just look out and drop the story line and take three conscious breaths. Just be where you are! When you are washing up, or making your coffee or tea, or brushing your teeth, just create a gap in your discursive mind. Take three conscious breaths.
Just pause.
Let it be a contrast to being all caught up. Let it be like popping a bubble. Let it be just a moment in time, and then go on.
Maybe you are on your way to whatever you need to do for the day. You are in your car, or on the bus, or standing in line. But you can still create that gap by taking three conscious breaths and being right there with the immediacy of your experience, right there with whatever you are seeing, with whatever you are doing, with whatever you are feeling.
ABOUT PEMA CHÖDRÖN
With her powerful teachings, bestselling books, and retreats attended by thousands, Pema Chödrön is today’s most popular American-born teacher of Buddhism. In The Wisdom of No Escape, The Places that Scare You, and other important books, she has helped us discover how difficulty and uncertainty can be opportunities for awakening. She serves as resident teacher at Gampo Abbey Monastery in Nova Scotia and is a student of Dzigar Kongtrul, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, and the late Chögyam Trungpa. For more, visit pemachodronfoundation.org.
I’m Not O.K., You’re Not O.K.—and That’s O.K.
When we read the news, we might find ourselves overwhelmed with “non-OK-ness,” but Sylvia Boorstein says there are ways we can work with that feeling.
I heard on the BBC World News that a supermarket chain in Great Britain now provides chaplains in their stores, available to meet with customers when they are shopping. In Leeds, the position is shared by a Buddhist nun, a Congregationalist and an ex-Hell’s Angel/now Methodist minister. There are, the report said, rabbis and imams in Jewish and Muslim neighborhoods.
I did not know whether to rejoice or despair. I thought, “Sure, that makes sense. Everyone shops, and everyone needs someone to talk to about what is meaningful to them, what touches their heart, what troubles them.” But I also thought, “What has become of us?” Are we, as Wordsworth said, “laying waste our powers” by doing nothing apart from “getting and spending” and never leaving the shopping mall? Or have we, more sadly, forgotten how to talk to the people we know? Have we all forgotten how to listen to each other, or even to ourselves, in a way that is meaningful?
I think there is a clue to listening in a way that makes communication meaningful. That clue, I believe, holds true in psychotherapeutic situations, in relationships with a spiritual teacher and in mindfulness meditation. I think it is a universal clue. It works everywhere. I have a story that points to this clue:
I was reading the morning newspaper on a recent trip to New York City from Philadelphia on the Metroliner express train and I found myself suddenly so overwhelmed by sad and frightening situations all over the world that I turned to the young woman next to me and said, “I need to take a nap now. Will you wake me in twenty minutes, please?”
“Yes, of course,” she said. Then she said, “Are you O.K.?”
“I’m O.K.,” I replied. “Are you O.K.?”
“No,” she said. “I’m not.”
Suddenly, my sleepiness was gone and she could tell I was alert and listening. “I read the news earlier,” she said, indicating the newspaper in my lap. “And I’m scared.” We talked. We talked some about politics, but mostly we talked about how hard it is to carry on in life as if you are fine when actually you are feeling frightened or hopeless. The more we talked, the more revived I felt.
Then, as I thought the conversation was ending, she said, “I’m worried about my job, too.” She had recently accepted a position she saw both as a validation of her skill level and a challenge to it. “I think I can do it. But this is a big deal, this meeting in New York. A lot could go wrong. I’m worried about not doing it well.”
I just listened. I didn’t need to be knowledgeable about her job. I just needed to listen. I thought about how we all have concerns for the world and concerns for ourselves, simultaneously. After we parted at Penn Station, I realized we’d never told each other our names. It didn’t matter. By connecting, we had consoled. It was enough.
The clue is, Are you O.K.?
None of us is. The Buddha explained that as the truth of suffering. Having been born, we are all subject to the pain of loss, of grief, of sadness or even plain disappointment. Life is difficult. Even our joys, in their temporality, remind us of impermanence. Like the French poet Villon, we lament, wistfully, “Where are the snows of yesteryear?” We know that all the yesteryears are gone.
Psychologists would also reassure us of the appropriateness of our “non-O.K.-ness.” Each of us carries the gifts of our heritage, our family and our culture, as well as its wounds. It can’t be otherwise. A psychologist friend of mind once said, “If you wanted it perfect, you came to the wrong planet.” I am imagining this understanding, tacit or spoken, as the cornerstone of all healing relationships.
“Are you O.K.?
“No. Not really. How about you?”
“Not me, either. But I’m O.K. to talk about it. It makes the journey less lonely. Let’s talk.”
And, we can talk to ourselves kindly. I tell mindfulness practitioners to listen to the tone their inner voice uses to comment on their experience. I ask them to consider whether, if they had a friend who spoke that way, they would keep that friend. The moment in which people discover they are not holding themselves in compassion, not speaking kindly, is often startling and always sad. That awareness is sometimes enough to cause the critic’s voice to soften, and the soother’s voice to be heard.
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.
As the COP26 conference wraps up in Glasgow, Scotland, here is the latest solar project in Houlton, Maine.(next to the Maine State Police Barracks on Route 1)
Please send in joys and concerns during the week to dave@backwoodsblog.com and I will post them on the Support Page.
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 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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