September 10, 2022
Since September 11 is on a Sunday this year the UUHoulton board decided to help organize a special recognition service in the amphitheater to mark the occasion. Along with the Houlton United Methodist Church, The Hodgdon United Methodist Church and the local Salvation Army, the Unitarian Universalist Church is also one of the sponsor organizations.
The 9-11 Remembrance Service and Recognition of Local First Responders starts at 10:30AM and will be followed by an outdoor cookout in the green space between the UU and Methodist churches. We are responsible to provide desserts. If you can help us out with desserts or assist setting up for the meal please contact Dave, Leigh or Donna. There will be chairs set up in Monument Park for the service but you may want to bring your own comfy portable chair instead. The weather forecast looks fine for the weekend, but in case of rain the service and meal will be moved indoors to the Methodist Church.
We hope to see you there!
Our production team has experienced technical issues of late but we are hoping to have links up later in the day.
Steve Kinney’s service “Meeting Len & Cub” and this week’s YouTube service “Conflicting Reports” will both be available. Thanks for your patience.
Due to the cookout following the 9-11 Recognition Service there will be no zoom coffee hour this week. We will see you next time.
Have a good week-end everyone.
In Ministry,Dave
UPCOMING YOUTUBE SERVICE:
Here is the link to Steve Kinney’s YouTube Service: Meeting Len and Cub
(Please note it won’t be active until 10AM on Sunday morning)
THERE IS NO ZOOM COFFEE HOUR THIS WEEK DUE TO THE SEPT 11 SERVICE IN THE AMPHITHEATER.
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 Houlton, 61 Military Street, Houlton, ME 04730
Calm In the Midst of Chaos
Sharon Salzberg on the power of equanimity.
Before I began meditating, when I thought of being out of balance, I would visualize a hand holding an old-fashioned scale, where one of the weighted brass plates was a bit lower than the other. But that image didn’t quite capture the way I actually felt when what I needed was some equanimity.
As life twists and turns, often we try to convey the impression that we’ve got it all together. But sometimes we maintain the appearance of steadiness only by staying in a state of tension so high that our emotional equilibrium can be blown off course by the mildest of breezes. Is it truly a life in balance if it requires so much effort? Ease is part of what we want: to feel unrestricted, peaceful, and free, to be able to respond appropriately to our world as it changes.
Watch a gyroscope in motion and you’ll see the wonder of the simple way it maintains a perfect balance.
I’ve come to think that a better image for balance is a gyroscope. The gyroscope is a wonderful visual representation of equanimity: the ability to find calm and steadiness under stress. That balance is loose and limber, capable of ducking some of what’s coming and getting quickly back to true.
Watch a gyroscope in motion and you’ll see the wonder of the simple way it maintains a perfect balance. The core of the gyroscope, its axis, spins with such power that it keeps the big circle around it well balanced. Although constantly in motion, the gyroscope is stable, adjusting to whatever comes its way. A gust of wind or a hard knock on the table will send a spinning top tumbling, but not a gyroscope. Try to knock it over and it gracefully and steadily rights itself.
As we navigate through circumstances, we can learn to be more agile and responsive instead of reactive. The balance of a gyroscope comes from its strong core—its central, stable energy. A sense of meaning in our lives can give us that core, lifting our aspirations, strengthening us in adversity, helping us have a sense of who we are and what we care about in spite of changing situations.
The Upaya Zen Center co-abbot, Joshin, talked to me about growing up in Brooklyn in a poor family with an alcoholic father and how he found a strong enough center to get him through:
I had these Catholic roots. Even as a young kid, I took a lot of comfort in the images of Saint Francis, the pauper, and Jesus, who loved outcasts. Those stories always moved me a lot. Somehow, I could identify with them. Religious life offered me what I thought was a way out. When I joined the Dominicans, the vow of poverty was a step up for me. I entered the Dominicans with ten dollars in my pocket, and you had to hand in all your money when you went in. And then they gave me twenty-five dollars back as my monthly stipend. So I thought, Oh, okay, you know, I could do with twenty-five dollars a month. In this sense, religious life was an escape—it started out as a way of finding some safety for myself. But this transformed over time. I developed a sense of spiritual self that was bigger than the hardships of my life. Religious life gave me a sense that I wasn’t just that. Even though I left the Dominicans, as I look back at that time, it gave me a sense of meaning. It gave me a way to use my experience, to develop a life of service, to develop a life that seemed to have purpose.
Discovering (or rediscovering) a sense of purpose begins with identifying and examining our most deeply held values. When we align our actions with those values or concerns that have centering power in our lives—those we’re most devoted to, that form the passionate core of what we care about—our actions are empowered, whatever the challenge.
Bernice Johnson Reagon, a singer with Sweet Honey in the Rock, was a dedicated activist in the early sixties. Recalling the danger she and her friends faced in challenging segregation in Georgia, she said, “Now I sit back and look at some of the things we did, and I say, ‘What in the world came over us?’ But death had nothing to do with what we were doing. If somebody shot us, we would be dead. And when people died, we cried and went to funerals. And we went and did the next thing the next day, because it was really beyond life and death. It was really like sometimes you know what you’re supposed to be doing.”
When we have a sense of what we are supposed to be doing and we then go out and do it, we forge a center and reinforce the core strength we can return to and rely on again and again.
We also strengthen the core within ourselves by paying attention to the perimeter of the gyroscope as much as the axis. Defining a perimeter around us means we no longer consider ourselves completely responsible for absolutely everything. Even if life events are hard, we don’t have to embellish them to make them even harder: “This is going to last forever,” or “This has to be worked out right now,” or “This proves I’m worthless and ineffective.” The wisdom of the gyroscope says, “Breathe a bit so you can act, and appreciate what comes next.”
We may charge into situations imagining that maintaining control is the secret to making life work. We can affect things around us—that’s the whole point of taking action—but it’s not helpful to think we’re going to finally be in absolute control. That’s not going to happen, not even for a moment. We don’t wield control over who is going to get sick, who is going to get better, or the inevitable ups and downs of our activism. We cannot immediately direct everybody and everything in this world to our liking. Would that it were so!
We might act fervently, and hopefully we would, to alleviate suffering. But to imagine that we can decide the certain outcome of our efforts is like thinking we’re going to wake up in the morning one day, look in the mirror, and determine, “I’ve thought about it really carefully. I’ve weighed all the pros and cons, and I’ve decided I’m not going to die.” The body has its own nature. Certainly, we can affect that, and we can transform a lot and be very impactful, but death is not a decision we make.
We do everything we can, and then we need to let go of our expectation and disappointment. If we don’t, our fearful fantasies and shattered dreams will be endless. If we plant the seed of our effort with a willingness to do all that we can, plus the wisdom of knowing that we don’t do it all ourselves and that we cannot simply command everything to our liking, we won’t feel defeated by circumstances.
Environmental activist and author Joanna Macy, in conversation with Krista Tippett on the On Being podcast, said, “[If] we can be fearless, to be with our pain, it turns. It doesn’t stay static.
“It only doesn’t change if we refuse to look at it. But when we look at it, when we take it in our hands, when we can just be with it and keep breathing, then it turns. It turns to reveal its other face, and the other face of our pain for the world is our love for the world, our absolutely inseparable connectedness with all life.”
Equanimity means being with pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow, in such a way that our hearts are fully open and also whole, intact. We can recognize what is true, even if painful, and also know peace. Equanimity doesn’t mean we have no feeling about anything; it’s not a state of blankness. Instead, it is the spaciousness that can relate to any feeling, any occurrence, any arising, and still be free.
ABOUT SHARON SALZBERG
Sharon Salzberg is co-founder of Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and the author of many books, including the New York Times bestseller, Real Happiness; her seminal work, Lovingkindness; and her latest, Real Change: Mindfulness To Heal Ourselves and the World.
Here is pipe organ specialist Robert Faucher working on our UU pipe organ earlier this week with local assistant Justin helping out…
Karen and Dale preparing music for the Ingathering Service (September 18) and supervising the pipe organ work session.
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
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 longest and hottest heat wave of the year is currently in south eastern China
Prayers for the drinking water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi
Prayers for those grieving the recent mass shooting in Memphis, Tenn
We mourn the passing of Queen Elisabeth II
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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