This week we continue our eight-part series on “The Book of Hope” co-authored by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams. We are looking at Jane’s third reason for hope and hopefulness in our changing and challenging world, the power of young people. While we adults may grow weary of the work and become sometimes cynical, the energy and optimism of youth provides a good infusion of hope.
We are also conducting our first of two group discussions about the book series during zoom coffee hour this Sunday.
There is also a workbook available that we will being using to structure our conversation. You can find it on Amazon if you’d like to order it. (See supplemental material from session one for more information about the workbook on the January 15 Support Page.)
We invite you to join us and share your comments about the topic.
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 good week-end.
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/2ffR1IGpTO8
HERE IS THE ZOOM LINK FOR SUNDAY:
David Hutchinson is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: UUHoulton coffee hour and check-inTime: Jan 30, 2022 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/83783793362?pwd=U2hiK0VsYm5qRjNQbStGVWhyYnFLQT09
Meeting ID: 837 8379 3362Passcode: 198275
Virtual Offering Plate
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UU Church of Houlton, 61 Military Street, Houlton, ME 04730
Session Three Supplemental Material
The Book of Hope (part 3)The Resilience of Nature
Today we are looking at Jane Goodall’s second point in her four point outline of hopeful reason’s for encouraging news in the turbulent years to come. Point Number two is “The Resilience of Nature.” To get things started, On page 80 of the book, (and I hope many of you have your own personal copy so you can follow along,) Jane shares a moving image of the nature’s resilience.
There’s a kind of built-in resilience – as when spring brings forth leaves after a bitter winter of snow and ice, or the desert blooms after even a tiny amount of rain falls. And there are seeds that can germinate after lying dormant for many years. They contain that tiny spark of life just waiting for the right conditions to release its power. It’s what Albert Schweitzer – one of my heroes – called the will to live.
Once again we are using a couple of Q&As from the book to structure today’s session.
Question #1.
Question: You say resilience of nature gives you hope – why?
Answer: I think I can answer your question best with a story.
(Doug had noticed that Jane often answered questions with stories, and he mentions that to her.)
On page 71 she says,
Yes, I’ve found that stories reach the heart better than any facts or figures. People remember the message in a well-told story even if they don’t remember all the details.
I remember a really bad bush fire at Gombe that swept through the open woodlands above the forested valleys. Everything was charred and black. Yet within a couple of days after one little shower of rain, the whole area was carpeted with the palest of green as new grass pushed up through the black soil. And a little later, when the rainy season began in earnest, several trees that I had been sure were completely dead started pushing out new leaves. A hillside resurrected from the dead.
Question #2 (from page 72)
Question: You still say you have hope in nature’s resilience. Honestly, the studies and projections about the future of our planet are so grim. Is it really possible for nature to survive this onslaught of human devastation?
Answer: Actually, this is exactly why writing this book is so important. I meet so many people, including those who have worked to protect nature, who have lost all hope. They see places they have loved destroyed, projects they have worked on fail, efforts to save an area of wildlife overturned because governments and businesses put short-term gain, immediate profit, before protecting the environment for future generations. And because of all this there are more and more people of all ages who are feeling anxious and sometimes deeply depressed because of what they know is happening.
Then Doug mentions a report that he had read by the American Psychological Association:
The report found that the climate crisis can cause people to experience a whole range of feelings including helplessness, depression, fear, fatalism, resignation, and what they are now calling eco-grief or eco-anxiety.
Jane adds,
Fear, sadness and anger are all very natural reactions to the reality of what is happening. And any discussion of hope would be incomplete without admitting the horrible harm we have inflicted on the natural world and addressing the real pain and suffering people are feeling as the witness the enormous losses that are occurring.
Lists several specific areas of the world and their stories
Then Doug tells a story about Ashlee Cunsolo, an environmental researcher working with the Inuit peoples in Nunatsiavut, Labrador, Canada who were struggling with the impacts of climate and cultural change. As her work continued she began experiencing radiating nerve pain in her arms and hands. the pain was so severe that she couldn’t type or work. When she went to medical specialists they could not find anything wrong and were perplexed by her case. Finally she went to one of the Inuit elders and he told her, ‘You’re not letting go of your grief.. Your body is stopping you from typing because you are intellectualizing it, not feeling it. Until you get it out of your body, your body won’t function.’ He told her she had to make space for her grief and speak it. And she also had to find awe and joy every day. So, she went into the forests. She immersed her hands in an ice cold river and asked the water to take away the pain. She apologized to the land for the harm that she an others were doing. It was a reckoning. Consolu told me that she had been able to find awe and joy in the forest. She said that there is always beauty, even when there’s pain and suffering. She learned not to hide from the darkness. She learned to not get lost in it. After two weeks of immersion in nature, crying, and letting the grief flow out of the body, the nerve pain was gone.
Then Jane tells a story about when she was recovering from some unknown illness and feeling weak and somewhat depressed as she struggled to keep her demanding schedule.
I visited a medicine man of the Karuk tribe in California and he performed an ancient healing ceremony. At the conclusion of the ceremony as he gently brushed the sweet-smelling smoke over my whole body with a feather. My fatigue was gone. Since then he makes the sacred smoke and prays for me every morning at dawn. He told me if the smoke rises straight up he knows I’m fine. I also have two other Native “American friends who pray for me each morning. No wonder I am still so healthy!
In this chapter on “The Resiliency of Nature” I’ve selected two main points for us to focus on today. The first one being longevity or time-frame.
- Longevity (time-frame)
Typically when we look at an issue it is as a snapshot of a current event. We may add some historical background and larger perspective, but overall, the scope of focus is rather limited. When it comes to nature, the evolution of life on our planet and its relation to rest of this vast and expanding universe, 14.5 billion years thus far, the time-frame expands quickly and each issue we investigate needs to be placed into this expanded model to see how it fits. This is especial relevant when we start to discuss issues that effect us, our planet, and the futures that we will share together, now and into the coming millennia.
Doug asks Jane, “What does the longevity of nature say to you about resilience?
Jane replies, “It merely says what many people are saying – that we need nature, but nature does not need us. If we restore an ecosystem in ten years, we feel we have made a big success. It it takes fifty years, it is hard to feel hopeful – the time scale just seems too long and we are impatient. But it helps if we believe that in the end, even though we probably won’t be around, nature will deal with the destruction we have caused. Nature plays the long game…
The second point of our two point outline on resiliency is adaptability.
2. Adaptability
Doug’s Question: So nature is extremely vibrant and strong, and it can adapt to the natural cycles that take place on the planet, but can it recover from all the harm we are doing to it?
Jane’s Answer: Well, one really important quality of resilience is adaptability – all successful forms of life have adapted to their environment. The species that have been unable to adapt are the ones that have failed to make it in the evolutionary sweepstakes. It’s our extraordinary success adapting to different environments that has allowed humanity – and cockroaches and rats! – to spread across the world. So the big challenge faced by many species today is whether or not they can adapt to climate change and human encroachment into their habitats.
Several weeks ago we did a service titled “Times of Resilence,” not knowing we would be revisiting the topic as part of this book series, and you may remember that we used the Weeble, a classic children’s tour from the 1970s as an example of bouncing back from unexpected adversity. The legless, egg-shaped toy keeps standing back up every time you knock it down, no matter how many times you knock it down – six times down, seven times up.
Shortly after that service there was a Weeble outbreak in various UUHoulton homes as someone, we don’t know exactly who, started mailing weebles to various members. Here is mine and it has found a home right here in my office.
And as we wind down for today a few concluding remarks from Jane on page 104
Not only are we part of the natural world, not only do we depend on it – we actually need it. In protecting these ecosystems, in rewilding more and more parts of the world, we are protecting our own wellbeing. There’s lots of research proving this – but it is something that is incredibly important to me. I need time in nature – even if it’s just sitting under a tree our walking in these woods or hearing a bird’s song – to give me peace of mind in a crazy world!
And then in closing this poetic expression of hopeful reverence from Jane herself…
There are times when I lie on my back in some quiet place and look up and up and up in the heavens as the stars gradually emerge from the fading of day’s light. And I see myself, a tiny speck of consciousness in the enormity of the universe…Now do you understand why I dare hope?
On this day I send you hope. Look to nature this week. Spend time in nature and feel it’s restoring energy. We and nature are resilient each day.
Remembering Thich Nhat Hanh (1926-2022)
Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and founder of the Engaged Buddhism movement, died January 22 in his home country of Vietnam. He was 95.
One of the great Buddhist teachers of our time, Thich Nhat Hanh died today at Tu Hieu Pagoda in Vietnam, the Buddhist temple where he was ordained at age sixteen. Following his stroke in 2014, he had expressed a desire to return to his homeland, and, in October 2018, moved back to his home temple. There, he spent the last years of his life surrounded by his close disciples and students.
The International Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism released a statementannouncing Nhat Hanh’s passing, followed by a schedule of live-streamed memorial ceremonies honoring their teacher to be broadcast through the week from Hue, Vietnam and Plum Village, France.
Nhat Hanh, affectionately referred to as “Thay,” by his students, has often been referred to as “the father of mindfulness.” In his 95 years, he made a global impact as a teacher, author, activist, and the founder of the Engaged Buddhism movement. His simple yet deeply profound teachings led countless people towards a life of mindfulness, joy, and peace.
Nhat Hanh suffered a brain hemorrhage in November 2014 and spent four-and-a-half months at a stroke rehabilitation clinic at Bordeaux University Hospital, after which he returned to Plum Village in France, where he was able to enjoy being “out in nature, enjoying the blossoms, listening to the birds and resting at the foot of a tree.” In July of 2015, Nhat Hanh traveled to the United States for intensive rehabilitation at San Francisco’s UCSF Medical Center. In January 2016, he returned again to Plum Village, France to be with the sangha, as shared in an update on his 92nd birthday.
In 2016, two months after his 90th birthday, Nhat Hanh expressed a wish to travel to Thailand to be closer to his homeland of Vietnam. He spent nearly two years at Thai Plum Village. In October 2018, Thich Nhat Hanh traveled to Vietnam to spend the remainder of his days at his root temple.
Nhat Hanh was born Nguyen Xuan Bao in Hué, Vietnam in October of 1926. Interested in Buddhism from an early age, he entered the monastery at Tu Hieu Temple in Vietnam at sixteen. There, he worked with his primary teacher, Zen master Thanh Quy Chan That. In 1951, Nhat Hanh was ordained as a monk after receiving training in Vietnamese Mahayana and Thien Buddhist traditions. It was then that he received the name Thich Nhat Hanh.
As Lindsay Kyte reported for Lion’s Roar in “The Life of Thich Nhat Hanh,” Nhat Hanh was sent for training at a Buddhist academy but was dissatisfied with the curriculum, wanting to study more modern subjects. He left for the University of Saigon, where he could study world literature, philosophy, psychology, and science in addition to Buddhism. He went on to begin his activist work, founding La Boi Press and the Van Hanh Buddhist University in Saigon. He also founded the School of Youth for Social Service, a neutral corps of Buddhist peace workers who established schools, built healthcare clinics, and rebuilt villages in rural areas.
Nhat Hanh accepted a fellowship to study comparative religion at Princeton University in 1960 and was subsequently appointed a lecturer in Buddhism at Columbia University. He had become fluent in English, Japanese, Chinese, Sanskrit, Pali, and English.
In 1963, a U.S.-backed military coup had overthrown the Diem regime, and Nhat Hanh returned to Vietnam to continue initiating nonviolent peace efforts. He submitted a peace proposal to the Unified Buddhist Church (UBC), calling for a cessation of hostilities, the establishment of a Buddhist institute for the country’s leaders, and the creation of a center to promote nonviolent social change. The founding of the Engaged Buddhism movement was his response to the Vietnam War. Nhat Hanh’s mission was to engage with the suffering caused by war and injustice and to create a new strain of Buddhism that could save his country. In the formative years of the Engaged Buddhism movement, Nhat Hanh met Cao Ngoc Phuong, who would later become Sister Chan Kong. She hoped to encourage activism for the poor in the Buddhist community, and worked closely with Nhat Hanh to do so. She remained his closest disciple and collaborator for the remainder of his life.
In 1966, Nhat Hanh returned to the U.S. to lead a symposium at Cornell University on Vietnamese Buddhism. There, he met with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and asked King to denounce the Vietnam War. Dr. King granted the request the following year with a speech questioning America’s involvement in the war. Soon after, he nominated Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize. “I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of [the prize] than this gentle monk from Vietnam. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity,” he wrote.
In June of that year, Nhat Hanh presented a peace proposal in Washington urging Americans to stop bombing Vietnam, emphasizing that he and his followers favored neither side in the war and wanted only peace. In response, Nhat Hanh was exiled from Vietnam. He was granted asylum in France, where he became chair of the Vietnamese Buddhist Peace Delegation.
Nhat Hanh was the head the Order of Interbeing, a monastic and lay group that he founded in 1966. In 1969, he also founded the Unified Buddhist Church, and later in 1975, formed the Sweet Potatoes Meditation Center southeast of Paris, France. As the center grew in popularity, Nhat Hanh and Sister Chan Khong founded Plum Village, a vihara (Buddhist monastery) and Zen center, in the South of France in 1982. In 1987, he founded Parallax Press in California, which publishes his writings in English. He established Deer Park Monastery in Southern California, his first monastery in America, in 2000. Since then, many dharma centers across the US, serving tens of thousands of lay students, have been established as part the Order of Interbeing.
After negotiations, the Vietnamese government allowed Nhat Hanh, now a well-known Buddhist teacher, to return to Vietnam for a visit in 2005. He was able to teach, publish four books in Vietnamese, travel the country, and visit his root temple. Although his first trip home stirred controversy, Nhat Hanh was allowed to return again in 2007 to support new monastics in his Order, organize chanting ceremonies to heal wounds from the Vietnam War, and lead retreats for groups of up to 10,000.
“We gauge the greatness of spiritual teachers by the depth, breadth, and impact of their teachings, and by the example their lives set for us. By all these measures, Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the leading spiritual masters of our age,” writes Lion’s Roar editor-in-chief Melvin McLeod in his introduction to The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh.
In his lifetime, Nhat Hanh authored more than 100 books, which have been translated into 35 languages, on a vast range of subjects — from simple teachings on mindfulness to children’s books, poetry, and scholarly essays on Zen practice. His most recent book, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, was published by HarperCollins in October 2021. His community consists of more than 600 monastics worldwide, and there now exists more than 1000 practice communities attended by his dedicated sangha across North America and Europe.
It is estimated that Nhat Hanh created over 10,000 works of calligraphy in his life, each sharing unique, simple messages: “Breathe, you are alive”; “Happiness is here and now”; “Present moment, wonderful moment”; “Wake up; It’s now”; “This is it”. His life itself was a meditation in action, creating peace with every step.
In a newsletter to the community, Plum Village shared that starting Saturday, January 22, the global community is invited to come together online to commemorate Thich Nhat Hanh’s life and legacy. Plum Village will broadcast five days of practice and ceremonies live from Hue, Vietnam and Plum Village, France. More details can be found on their website.
“Now is a moment to come back to our mindful breathing and walking, to generate the energy of peace, compassion, and gratitude to offer our beloved Teacher. It is a moment to take refuge in our spiritual friends, our local sanghas and community, and each other,” Plum Village writes.
In his book, At Home in the World, published in 2016, Nhat Hanh addressed his inevitable death. He wrote:
This body of mine will disintegrate, but my actions will continue me… If you think I am only this body, then you have not truly seen me. When you look at my friends, you see my continuation. When you see someone walking with mindfulness and compassion, you know he is my continuation. I don’t see why we have to say “I will die,” because I can already see myself in you, in other people, and in future generations.
Even when the cloud is not there, it continues as snow or rain. It is impossible for the cloud to die. It can become rain or ice, but it cannot become nothing. The cloud does not need to have a soul in order to continue. There’s no beginning and no end. I will never die. There will be a dissolution of this body, but that does not mean my death.
I will continue, always.
Here’s a little open water on a mostly frozen river…
Grateful for shovels snow blowers and helpers with snow ploughs we’re all digging out from this weekend’s blizzard, lets be mindful, safe, and keep your hands and feet warm!
Prayer List
For everyone helping clearing the snow from this weekend’s epic snow storm.
Responders 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 refugees in Eastern Europe, Central America and for those along our southern border
Concerns regarding the new covid variant Omicron
Prayers for those who have lost their homes in the recent Colorado fires
Prayers for those who died in the apartment fire in the Bronx and their grieving families
Prayers for the easing of tension on the Ukrainian border
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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