echinacea in summer

This is the season to walk along the beach and enjoy the sight and sound of the waves coming ashore as the sands stretch out before you. The title of this week’s service is “Sandcastles” and explores the ephemeral wonders of our life and the world. Even while the waves and incessant motion keeps the sandcastles of life subject to change, there are qualities that endure. This week’s 

online YouTube service is titled “The Seagull Photobomb” which includes a story about a hungry seagull, the high price of seafood and how embarrassment is sometimes a healthy corrective for our egos. Embarrassment is something everyone experiences from time to time and while it may be uncomfortable when it’s happening, in the long term there can be benefits. You’ll find the link listed below. 

Please join us for one of the services this weekend.

Remember that there is a pot-luck picnic after this week’s Sunday morning service at Bill and Betty White’s house in Ludlow. Please bring something yummy to share (don’t forget desserts!) and there will also be a grill available if you’d like to barbecue something. Bring a comfy lawn chair with you and plenty of bug repellant. If it’s a rainy day the sun room and porch are a good option. Directions are included below.

Option 1:  Take Ludlow Road by Walmart and drive west approximately nine miles (I’m not sure of the exact mileage) until you see 

1849 Ludlow Road on your right.

Option 2:  Take I-95 south out of Houlton and take the Smyrna Mills exit. Turn left on US Route 2 and take your first left on Town Line Road. Then take your first right on Ludlow Road and go approximately 2 miles until you see 1849 Ludlow Road on your left. 

Option 3:  Ask Alexis for directions on your Google Maps App.

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) 
The link will come later in the day. Stay tuned.HERE IS THE ZOOM LINK FOR SUNDAY COFFEE HOUR:

David Hutchinson is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: UUHoulton zoom coffee hour & check-inTime: Aug 14, 2022 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)       
Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/82175712047?pwd=cCtWenBtd1BiN25VN250YUQwUlhpUT09
Meeting ID: 821 7571 2047 Passcode: 230950

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 Golden Buddha Inside You

BY TARA BRACH|  JULY 19, 2022

In this excerpt from her new book, Trusting the Gold, Tara Brach shares how to break out of the “trance of unworthiness,” uncover the gold inside of us, and learn to trust the in the basic goodness that is our very essence.

For decades a prayer has circulated in the background of my daily life: May I trust my own goodness. May I see the goodness in others.

This longing emerged from a deep place of suffering I went through as a young adult. During that dark time, I felt anxious and depressed, separate from the world around me. I was continually judging myself as falling short, not good enough, doubting my basic worth. That of course kept me from feeling close and connected to others and to the world. It blocked me from feeling creative, stopped me from being fully alive.

The more you trust this loving presence as the truth of who you are, the more fully you will call it forth in yourself, and in all those you touch.

It feels like grace that this “trance of unworthiness” led me onto a spiritual path that showed me how to hold myself with compassion. This allowed me to see through the layers of judgment and doubt and to discover beneath them clarity, openness, presence, and love. Increasingly over the years, my trust in this loving awareness as the essence of who we all are has become a guiding light. No matter how wrong or lacking we may feel, how caught in separation, or how trapped by the messages, violations, and inequities of the society we live in, this basic goodness remains the essence of our Being.

A beautiful story holds within it this truth. During the mid-1950s in Bangkok, a huge clay statue of the Buddha began to crack due to heat and drought. When some monks arrived to investigate, they shined a flashlight into the largest of the cracks. What they saw surprised everyone. Deep under the gray clay was the gleam of gold.

No one had known that inside this popular but ordinary looking statue was a solid gold Buddha. As it turns out, the statue had been covered with plaster

and clay six hundred years earlier to protect it from invading armies. Although all the monks who lived in the monastery at that time had been killed in the attack, the golden Buddha, its beauty and value covered over, had survived untouched.

Just as the monks disguised the beauty of the golden Buddha in order to protect it during dangerous times, we cover our own innate purity and goodness as we

encounter a challenging world. As children, many of us were criticized, ignored, misunderstood, or abused, leading us to doubt that gold within us. As we grow up, we increasingly internalize the judgments and values of our society, further losing touch with our innocence, our creativity, and our tender hearts. We cover over the gold as we seek the approval of others, looking to them to measure our worth—to determine whether we are good enough, smart enough, successful enough. And if we are part of a nondominant group in our culture, we take on additional layers of protection to help us face the violence of social injustice and oppression.

Adding layer after layer to protect ourselves, we become identified with our coverings, believing ourselves to be separate, threatened, and deficient. Yet even when we cannot see the gold, the light and love of our true nature cannot be dimmed, tarnished, or erased. It calls to us daily through our longing for connection, our urge to understand reality, our delight in beauty, our natural desire to help others. Our deepest intuition is that there is something beyond our habitual story of a separate and isolated self: something vast, mysterious, and sacred.

What helps us uncover that gold? How can we learn to trust the pure awareness and love, the basic goodness that is our very essence? How can our lives be an active expression of our natural wisdom and kindness? And how can we respond with a wise heart to the human ignorance, greed, and hatred that perpetuates violence toward each other, racial and other caste systems, cruelty toward nonhuman animals, and destruction of our living earth? These questions have shaped my spiritual path.

The basic teachings of the Buddha awaken us to who we are. They begin with learning to recognize the Truth of our experience by opening to life, just as it is. Then we discover how to awaken our inherent capacity to meet this ever-changing life with Love. This unfolding of presence and love reveals the Freedom of our true nature.

Even though the gold of your true nature can get buried beneath fear, uncertainty, and confusion, the more you trust this loving presence as the truth of who you are, the more fully you will call it forth in yourself, and in all those you touch. And in our communities, as we humans increasingly remember that gold, we’ll treat each other and all beings with a growing reverence and love.

Our Basic Goodness

The gold of our true nature can never be tarnished. No matter how it might get covered over or disguised by feelings of anger, deficiency, or fear, our awareness remains radiant and pure. In the moments of remembering and trusting this basic goodness of our Being, the grip of “something’s wrong” dissolves and we open to happiness, peace, and freedom.

I could have done that better. I should have gotten more done. I wish I had been more sensitive. For many years, “never enough” was a chronic habit of my mind, and I could run endless variations on the theme. Finally one night before going to bed, I sat down and asked myself: “Okay, what would be enough? What do I have to do to be good enough?”

Over the next weeks I started tracking what happened after I’d completed a successful weekend of teaching, or after receiving feedback about contributing to others’ well-being, or after being particularly kind or generous with someone. The enough feeling would last for about 2.4 minutes before I’d start fixating on what else I needed to do, how I needed to prepare for the next event, how I needed to be more consistently sensitive and kind. Even the most satisfying accomplishments, upon close inspection, would seem tainted by ego, and therefore not spiritual enough. Whatever I was doing, it didn’t leave me with an enduring sense of enough.

Since that long-ago evening when I faced the never-ending narrative of falling short, I have discovered that enoughness has absolutely zero to do with accomplishing, nothing to do with achieving, and is not at all about trying to be good enough. Rather, the realization of enough is right here in the fullness of presence, in the tenderness of an open heart, in the silence that is listening to this life. These are the moments when the glow of gold shines through.

Reflection

Pause and let yourself sink into this moment, into presence, into your heart.

Gently say to yourself, “There’s nothing to do. This is enough…I am enough.”

Feel the fullness and peace of coming home.

Excerpted from Trusting the Gold: Uncovering Your Natural Goodness by Tara Brach. © 2021 by Tara Brach. 

ABOUT TARA BRACH

Tara Brach is a meditation teacher, psychologist and author of several books including international bestselling Radical Acceptance, Radical Compassion and Trusting the Gold. Her popular weekly podcast on emotional healing and spiritual awakening is downloaded 3 million times a month. Tara is founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington and along with Jack Kornfield, leads the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program(MMTCP), serving participants from more than 50 countries around the world. tarabrach.com

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

The war in Ukraine is now in its sixth month 

The global heat wave is affecting millions of people world-wide. Prayers for people, crops and animals.

Prayers for the communities in eastern Kentucky that suffered severe flooding recently.

Devastating wildfires are still continuing in the American West and in Europe. 

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.