Our traditional flower communion service will be held “in-person” in the sanctuary on Sunday, June 5th at 10AM. The service includes special music for the occasion, welcoming new members, our flower communion and a light luncheon in the parlor following the service. Please bring a fresh cut flower to contribute to the ritual. This Unitarian tradition originated in 1923 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Dr. Norbert Capek asked his parishioners to bring and receive flowers as a symbol of their shared life as a spiritual community.
We are especially excited to welcome seven new members to UUHoulton. Please come and join us for this special service. Hopefully it will be a nice enough day to mingle on the church front lawn and soak up some sun.
With covid numbers still high in our area we ask that everyone please wear a mask during the service (masks will be available at the door) and practice safe distancing. For those not attending the in-person service, the event will be recorded and available to view on our YouTube Channel the following week. Our spiritual community of long-time and new friends is a marvelous garden of variety and beauty. Although circumstances have kept us physically apart at times and prompted us to come up with new and creative options, our commitment to each other remains strong. Each one of us has a place in the garden.
This week’s online YouTube Service is titled “Singing in the Dark” and features material from Delia Owens’ best-selling novel “Where the Crawdads Sing.”
In these dark times right now, when uncertainty seeps into (seemingly) every little crack of our life and culture, this is a time when we need to be able to find a song in the darkness and sing it the best we can, by ourself and with others. Please join us for one of the services this weekend.
Have a good week-end everyone.
In Ministry,Dave
HERE IS THE SERVICE LINK FOR THIS WEEK’S YOUTUBE SERVICE
(Please note it won’t be active until 10AM on Sunday morning)
https://youtu.be/jLfARFhztLUHERE IS THE ZOOM LINK FOR SUNDAY COFFEE HOUR:
David Hutchinson is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: UUHoulton zoom coffee hour and check-inTime: Jun 5, 2022 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/85394513760?pwd=VmgvZ2Z0c3lVcTJUMEdMd3p3bzZ3QT09
Meeting ID: 853 9451 3760Passcode: 215771
Virtual Offering Plate
If you would like to send in your pledge or donation simply drop an envelope in the mail. The address is listed below. You can also send your donation electronically with our new payment system on the church website. Simply go to uuhoulton.org and click “Donate” on the menu and it will explain how the system works. You can set up a regular monthly payment plan or donate in single transactions. Thank you for your generous support!
UU Church of Houlton61 Military StreetHoulton, ME 04730
The Garden Path
It takes root; it grows; it blooms. Cheryl Wilfong on how meditation practice is cultivated like a garden.
A friend who works on an organic farm brought home two trays of lettuce seedling six-packs. The so-called seedlings were not only ready to be transplanted, they were ready to be eaten. That made gardening easy—transplant the lettuce and begin harvesting immediately.
We might find ourselves wanting do the same thing with our spiritual practice, eager to transplant it into our already-too-busy lives so we can harvest the fruits of practice right now. “I should really do yoga every day,” we think. Or we might give ourselves a pep talk, saying, “I could sit every morning and every evening for twenty minutes.”
When trying to transplant a spiritual practice, however, we first need to clear a space in which to sow the seeds of mindfulness. Taking care of a burgeoning Garden of All the Things We Want to Do requires rushing. Our lives might feel more like a loudly babbling stream than a still forest pool. We can try to maintain a way-too-big Garden of Busyness, or we can tend only as much as our tender hearts can open to.
Nowadays we have an extensive stress reduction menu to choose from: meditation, yoga, tai chi, qigong. Or, if we’re chasing the endorphins of exercise, we might take up jogging or Pilates, or start working out at a fitness club. Basically we think, “If I just add one more thing to do, I can reduce my stress.” Question this belief. Racing to the gym or meditating with one eye on the clock runs counter to the intent of reducing the stress in our lives.
In our garden, it can be difficult to identify which plant is a weed and which one might actually flower.
Reducing stress, like reducing weight, means subtracting something. In our garden, the first thing we subtract is the weeds. In our daily life we might consider, for instance, how much news we really need. I went on a weekend retreat with my women’s group to Weston Priory in Vermont, where Benedictine monks maintain a farm, gardens, and orchard. They live an engaged life dedicated to justice and nonviolence in the world, yet they told us their only source of news was the Sunday New York Times. Their example inspired me to weed my own news intake, limiting it to once a day.
In our garden, though, it can be difficult to identify which plant is a weed and which one might actually flower. In the spring, we sometimes can’t tell the difference between a goldenrod and a sweet William. How then do we discriminate between weedy activities in our lives and skillful ones, such as meditation, that will sweeten our minds?
Try weeding out junk mail, catalogs, and unsubscribing from nonessential email lists. Write down one or two things you might consider weeding out for a week. TV? Movies? Shopping? People who went on a voluntary fast from their credit cards found they stopped dashing out to the store. They made do with what was on hand at home. And they felt calmer.
Keeping a space clear for meditation requires determination. Neighboring activities will try to encroach on our cleared space. In gardening terminology, such encroaching plants are called spreaders. Think of bee balm or any members of the square-stemmed mint family—if you give them an inch, they’ll take over the yard. Seemingly urgent incoming information will try to crowd out our important relationships, including our relationship to our meditation practice. Consider dividing in half the time you spend social networking. I set a “mindfulness bell” to ring an hour before bedtime on my computer to remind me to turn it off and sit for twenty minutes before going to sleep.
Plant the seeds of mindfulness by focusing on the breath, sounds, or sensations.
Clear some space in your home as well as your schedule. Set up a cushion or a chair. Perhaps use a nearby shelf as an altar. Then commit to sit, at a regular time in this regular place. Set a timer for, say, twenty minutes on your microwave or cellphone.
If you don’t have an established practice, I recommend beginning your meditation by softening the heart. First, visualize a place of still water. This feeling may last for only a second. Notice that. Next, express gratitude for the blessings of your life, even the common things that you take for granted. Third, practice loving-kindness toward yourself. This tenderizing of the heart is like preparing the soil in our garden—we turn the soil and add the compost of caring. Then we plant the seeds of mindfulness by focusing on the breath, sounds, or sensations. After your timer goes off, try to sit in a chair by a window with a nice view, or perhaps on a deck. With a cup of tea in hand, contemplate an aspect of a recent dharma reading or stroll around a garden.
You know what your houseplants look like if you forget to water them for a while. The same thing happens with our meditation practice if we neglect it for a couple of weeks, or even for a few days. We water our practice by sitting daily. We support our practice by sitting weekly with a group. We fertilize our practice by reading dharma books or listening to dharma talks.
Occasionally we take our practice to a retreat center, where it may flower or bear fruit, as a plant will do in a greenhouse. On retreat we have just the right conditions—a schedule, nutritious meals that are prepared for us, and only the belongings that fit into one suitcase. Amazing how little we need to live comfortably for a week or so. Simplifying our lives gives us breathing space. One advantage of going on retreat is that someone else tells us what to weed out of our daily routine at the retreat center: no reading, no writing, no cellphones, no computer. No wonder life feels calmer.
The spring or fall of our lives can be conducive to transplanting a meditation practice.
A gardening adage about perennials says: “The first year they sleep. The second year they creep. The third year they leap.” This means that when you transplant perennials into your garden, they just sort of sit there the first year. But underground they are developing a root system that will sustain them for a long time. Our meditation practice requires this sort of patience. First we simply sit on the cushion and develop the habit of sitting. During the second year, perennials begin to look more robust—they bloom and begin to grow. The third year they are fully established in their new location and have a serious growth spurt. Some perennials are even slower, such as my climbing hydrangea that took five years to grow three feet. Then it grew three feet the following year. Now it covers half the side of my house, and a robin nests in it each spring. Our meditation practice needs time to flower and bear the fruits of a spiritual life.
Transplanting season does come to an end. The spring or fall of our lives can be conducive to transplanting a meditation practice, while the summer of our lives may be totally booked with work, family, and paying off the mortgage. In the winter of our lives, when we are on our deathbed, the elements of earth, water, heat, and air are likely to be out of balance, and possibly very uncomfortable. That’s when the mindfulness we’ve been nurturing, the wisdom we’ve gleaned from our practice, will support us—just when we need it the most.
ABOUT CHERYL WILFONG
Cheryl Wilfong is the author of The Meditative Gardener: Cultivating Mindfulness of Body, Feelings, and Mind.
Poetry Corner
The Life of FlowersDave Hutchinson
Stepping out the back doorin the early days of Junethe lush field of long green grassis splashed with bursts of yellowunder deep blue sky.
These common flowers are the mass majority of the colorscapeoutnumbering the modestly dispensedreds, blues, oranges and whites.
The human eye is one more colorin the field.Eye lids wide openWe seeWe contemplateWe view the full expanse of our gaze.
The flower does not exist for next week.The flower does not exist for last week.It exists for the short duration of the days at hand.
It is yellow.It is red.It is light pink.
Open your eyes and see.Open your heart and touch the life of flowers
Communion basket of flowers (2017)shared by Susan Glick
We have a new UU picnic table by the meditation garden. Thank you Christoph and Donna!
Prayer List
For those recovering from COVID-19 in the state of MaineLocal emergency personnel and hospital staffFor 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 peace
The war in Ukraine is in its third month
Prayers for friends and family of John Richards who passed recently
Prayers for those grieving the recent mass shooting in Buffalo, New York
Prayers for those grieving the recent mass shooting in Southern California
Prayers for those grieving the recent mass shooting in Uvalde , Texas
Prayers for those grieving the recent mass shooting in Tulsa, Oklahoma
Prayers for those grieving the recent mass shooting in Racine, Wisconsin
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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