October 30, 2022
This is the time of the turning wheel. I just walked outside, as I’m writing this (7PM on Friday evening), and the clear night sky is star-studded with an orange crescent moon waxing on day four just setting in the western sky. This is a time of transition and reflection as the wheel keeps moving. Leigh and Fred Griffith will lead our service on Sunday and share from their tradition the message of Samhain. Costumes are appropriate, if you like, and there may even be some extra candy and treats during coffee hour.
Our YouTube service for this week is part three of Belonging; Belonging Uncertainty. You’ll find a transcript of the service talk included in this week’s support page. Please join us for one of the services this weekend. Have a good week-end everyone.
In Ministry,
Dave
THIS WEEK’S YOUTUBE SERVICE:
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/cHgA-uZ4Vkw
HERE IS THE ZOOM LINK FOR SUNDAY COFFEE HOUR:
David Hutchinson is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: UUHoulton Coffee hour & check-inTime: Oct 30, 2022 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/84124335287?pwd=cnFuNkQrelhNMFFEUDJLOCtwczRlQT09
Meeting ID: 841 2433 5287 Passcode: 170385
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
Here is the transcript from last week’s talk “Belonging Uncertainty.”
Belonging (Part Three) Belonging Uncertainty
Bob and his friend Frank decided that they needed to get out more, meet some new people and get out of their well-worn rut, so they decided to join a club. The next Tuesday night Bob picked Frank up in his car and they drove downtown to attend a meeting. The speaker got up and said, “Welcome to the Assumption Club. I think we all know why we are here…”
Many of you may, or may not be aware, that when my mother transitioned to the nursing home last Fall, Linda and I moved from our farmhouse on back of the property to my mother’s house on US Route 1 so we could keep an eye on the place, keep the heat on during the winter and keep the driveway plowed. So we’ve gone from off-the-grid living to on-the grid. One of the changes that has come along with that is that we now have an electric washer and dryer so we can do our own laundry at home instead of going to the laundromat.
Well, about a month ago our dryer went on the fritz. It was over thirty years old, so it came as no real surprise, we bought a new dryer at Lowe’s and they delivered it in prompt fashion. Last week, two of our members here lit a candle and told a similar story about how their dryer met the same fate and then how it sat in their kitchen for about a month or so until a contractor could come and install it. I refrained from saying anything at the time, but that was exactly what Linda and I had gone through and, it took about a month (a little longer perhaps), for our contractor to arrive. I’ve waited until today to elaborate upon the story. The dryer had been installed so long ago, that it was wired directly to the electrical panel in our basement so new wiring was required, an outlet box installed behind the dryer and a heavy duty electrical plug wired to the appliance. The electrical work cost almost as much as the dryer itself. When the electricians were finished we were all standing in the kitchen waiting for them to turn on the dryer. One of them hit the button…we waited and nothing happened. We all looked at each other. They double-checked the setting on the dryer, the plug, the connection…he hit the button again…nothing. Then one of he electricians asked, “Dave, did you happen to check the breaker?” Linda, looks at me, pauses and gives me one of those looks that says, “You did check the breaker, didn’t you?” Well, the dryer was over thirty years old, I’d had my fingers crossed that it wouldn’t die on us, and then when it stopped working, I assumed it was dead. During my recent jury-duty experience I was introduced to the “differential-diagnostic” process, which is when you identify and then eliminate possible causes to a specific problem ruling them out one by one and then coming up with your most likely diagnosis. Well, in this case with the dryer, I failed to utilize the differential-diagnostic process. I made the assumption that the dryer was broken and stopped right there. I didn’t even check the breaker. The electrician looks at me and says, “I don’t think there is anything wrong with your old dryer, you just need a new breaker.” And right he was. So we now have a new dryer, a new outlet and a new breaker, end of story.
Of course, this is something I should have been well aware of, Don’t Make Assumptions, because this is one of our 4 agreements that we try to practice here at UUHoulton – and it’s right here on the banner hanging behind me, just so we don’t forget. So I’ll try to do better.
When it comes to our topic today “belonging uncertainty” I think our third agreement “don’t make assumptions” comes into play. “Belonging uncertainty” is a term that refers to the state of mind in which one suffers from doubts about whether one is fully accepted in a particular environment or ever could be. It is something we all experience from time to tome and is a healthy reminder of the fragile nature of belonging.
The assumption I think we need to be careful, not to make, is that everyone is secure and comfortable in being here, which is essentially a social situation and social setting, do not assume that this is easy. We are social creatures that need social connection and social support, but we may not always feel that we have the social skills to successfully and consistently pull that off.
A couple of weeks ago we looked at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs chart and he placed belonging on the third tier from the bottom which can be a little misleading. Even though it’s the third level on the chart and all the levels are the same size, research over the past several decades suggests that belonging should be located closer to the base of the pyramid, as a need nearly as vital as food and shelter. And we need to keep in mind that this is true not just in our childhood but throughout our adult lives. We have evolved as a fundamentally social species and have an instinct to seek social connection.
I made an assumption years ago, when I was first the minister here, that most of us; especially our membership felt reasonably confident of their belongingness and comfortability of being here. Then I would notice people saying things like they felt socially awkward, experienced social anxiety during coffee hour or would sometimes find it difficult to connect to others, be it new comers or people they had known for years. Once I had new awareness around “belonging uncertainty” it made me feel different, more secure actually, just knowing that this was a common felt experience, and that I wasn’t the only one challenged in this way, we all were to a certain degree that it may vary from one person to the next.
Cohen talks about this social anxiety in gradiated terms as on a contuium; “social pain” being the most severe, “social uncertainty” being intermittent and unsettling and then “social unease” a milder degree of general anxiety and awkwardness. The full range or sliding scale of social anxiety is common to all of us, yet, we may not realize how common, and in that insight alone is possibly the most helpful means to stabilize and give ourselves a more solid social foundation to experiment and work on our own belongingness in the setting and situation.
The term “wise interventions” refers to interventions that nurture
people’s belonging and self-worth…The interventions are simple
and often counterintuitive solutions with powerful and even life-
changing effects.
Key to our being “wise” is a desire and readiness to see a situation
from the perspective of others we’re sharing it with and to take note
of how aspects of the situation may be affecting them. A situation in
which we are comfortable might feel threatening to others, which
we might not appreciate unless we’re mindful.
The overall message of this extensive body of expert research is
hearteningly simple. Subtle, brief, psychologically “wise”
interventions at the level of the encounter can make a world of
difference in people’s ability to make the most out of life’s
possibilities, unlocking our hidden potentials.
On page 33, Cohen says, “while we are sensitive to what endangers our own belonging, we tend to be much less aware of the feelings that others experience, the danger to their belonging.”
The key to a “wise” or an “in the know” intervention is empathy. Are you aware of what the other person might be feeling or what they might be thinking, not just your own thoughts and feelings. Empathy is a game-changer. It’s something we are all familiar with, but do we actually use it as often and consistently as we should.
Don’t make assumptions. Be aware of situation crafting and wise interventions to help alleviate social uncertainty.
This is from page 47
Wise interventions can set in motion a virtuous cycle of positive reinforcement, helping people to progressively strengthen and protect their sense of belonging long after the intervention has ended. In fact, we see the virtuous cycle in many studies of wise interventions, especially when they meet the requirements of the triple Ts of situational crafting (remember those from last time?); The right psychological message (tailoring) is given to the right person or persons (targeting) at the right time (timeliness). Under these conditions, a wise intervention will be more likely to make an authentic connection with people’s lives.
Even a brief experience or encounter can have a larger effect than you might think. The author shares an example from his experience: (page 37)
Even though belonging may be easily derailed, it can also be easily affirmed. When I was a self-doubting assistant professor, I found that a brief stimulating conversation with a student or an email about how much someone was enjoying my class could put my mind at ease. These small moments of connection can have big effects.
I’ve noticed and experienced for myself how these brief interactions can have a lasting effect during our own coffee hours after the service. My predecessor, Rev. Martha Newman used to say that she could gauge the vitality of a UU group simply by observing their behavior and mannerisms during the coffee hour. When she first arrived in Houlton we used to have the coffee, tea and refreshments set up on a desk in the back corner of the parlor. After the service people would get a cup of coffee (back in those days you couldn’t get coffee before or during the service, it was discouraged until afterwards; that was a Dave innovation) so people would get a cup of coffee, there were a few simple food items, people would pleasantly chat for a few minutes and people would be on their way. Coffee hour might have lasted 15 minutes.
The first thing she did was set a coffee machine up in the foyer, what we now call the coffee room, and encouraged folks to bring more elaborate refreshments. It didn’t take long before people started to hang out longer, extend the conversations and enjoy the improved food options. This was a key part of the renewal of the UUHoulotn group which had at that point reached a perilous point in its survival. Not that coffee and improved pastries had turned things around, but belongingness and a connected sense of mutual interests had. In those days, I know people started to make a special effort to attend services, not necessarily for the topic of the day, but perhaps for one of their friends who was leading the service that day or simply to hang out with their new-found friends during coffee hour. Some of those coffee hours lasted until 2 o’clock in the afternoon.
We encouraged people to not only seek out new connections for them self, but to raise the social IQ of the group itself and look out for others in the social circle that day who might be having a difficult time finding someone to talk to.
Empathy. Group awareness.Lowering belonging uncertainty.Create situation crafting and wise interventions. Even a brief and passing affirmation can have a significant and lasting effect.Not making assumptions and accessing empathy can assist us in sensing and seeing how someone else might be experiencing the same situation as us, but they are experiencing it in a different way.
In closing a quote from the last paragraph in Chapter Two “Belonging Uncertainty.”
These and other wise interventions can help people realize the potential already present in themselves and in their environment. Sometimes you can change aspects of the physical setting to foster belonging, sometimes not. But as we’ll continue to explore, you can almost always help people to apply a new mental lens to their situation so that it is less threatening (challenging) to their sense of belonging.
We all need to belong. We all need a place to be.
Tree of Wisdom
Oak and maple, palm and pine—trees are our closest neighbors and most patient teachers. Henry Shukman on the common roots of people and trees.
There is a cabin in the remote mountains of northern New Mexico that stands on the side of a steep, wooded ravine. It is hidden deep among the huge ponderosa pines that thrive in the high air. Near the cabin, one lone dead pine soars a hundred feet into the sky. It has been dead a few years now and is known as the “Corkins Tree,” after the cabin’s last owners, and there’s a story attached to it.
The Corkins lived in the cabin for many years and stayed on even after they had sold the property to a friend of mine. They became good friends with him, and my friend was intrigued by the way the husband always referred to the then healthy giant pine as “his tree.”
“We’re close,” he used to say. “I swear, the day that tree goes, I go too. And vice versa.”
My friend took this prediction with a pinch of salt, being a level-headed businessman not given to hyperbole or fanciful stories. Finally, the Corkins’ health deteriorated to the point where the altitude and cold were no longer tolerable, and they moved to Florida for their final years.
My friend used to visit them there when he could. One time, he arrived to find his friend bedridden, clearly on his last legs, hooked up to oxygen and past speaking. They had a silent tearful farewell, and he flew back to New Mexico.
As he approached the cabin, he noticed that the big tree did not look well. Its needles were yellow and thinning. Sheets of its dark bark had fallen away, exposing the silver wood beneath. One large branch had cracked and fallen. There was no mistaking it: the tree was dying. In fact, it was already dead. It never again put out new needles, and today it is a magnificent, lofty skeleton, silver and gaunt, rising like a spire out of the foliage below.
It died when the man died; the man died when it died, even though they were thousands of miles apart. Was it coincidence, or is it somehow possible that the life of trees and people could be so deeply entwined?
Zen likes to teach through things—dogs, cats, shoes, water jugs, flags, streams, roads. Zen could be said to view all phenomena as teachers, each and every one. There’s a famous story of a Christian Desert Father who lived in an Egyptian valley, alone and without books. When asked how he could tolerate his hermit’s life without works of scripture, he said, “But wherever I look, I see the Book of Creation laid open before me.”
Zen’s position is similar. We have no real need of scripture; all things are the dharma. But among the multiplicity of things in Zen teaching, one stands out: the tree.
Once Joshu was asked, “What was Bodhidharma’s meaning in coming from the West?” In other words, what is the teaching of Zen that Bodhidharma brought from India to China?
Joshu answered, “The cypress tree in the garden.”
The monk may have been surprised. All our years of arduous training, and they add up to nothing more than the tree outside?
Another time Joshu was asked whether an oak tree has buddhanature, and he immediately responded, “Yes.”
Zen lore is full of trees. When Yakusan was asked about his awakening, he said, “The withered tree is giving a dragon’s roar.” Unmon was once asked, “What is it when the tree withers and the leaves fall to the ground?” He answered, “Complete exposure of the golden wind.” By golden wind, he meant the autumn wind. But he also may have meant something truly golden and marvelous, which can be revealed only when thoughts of self have fallen away like the autumn leaves and the trunk of self has withered. Then a golden fact that unites all creation may appear. Perhaps this is also what Yakusan meant: that once the idea of “me” has withered, the single “dragon’s roar” of all existence may be heard.
Buddhism itself in a sense began with a tree. After exhausting the possibilities of materialist pleasure and ascetic mortification and finding his heart still not at peace, Shakyamuni sat down under a banyan tree, determined not to get up until he had resolved the “great matter” of life, death, suffering, and identity. After sitting for six days, it happened: he woke from the dream of self and other, life and death, and became a buddha, an awakened one. The tree became forever known as the bodhi tree.
Trees are our closest neighbors. There are dogs, cats, cows, and other domestic animals with whom some of us live, and there are our cousins like the chimpanzee with whom we don’t usually live. On the other hand, pretty much all people live with trees.
We may not live in them anymore, as our ancestors once did, but we remain a tree-dwelling species. In the deserts, they are the oases that provide homes for humanity, with their sheltering palms. In the grasslands, every village and farmstead nestles in its cluster of shivering trees; in the hills of Europe, the stone villages huddle amid pine, oak, and beech. Nor, without trees, would we have had the industrial revolution: coal and oil are the ancient remains of giant trees, and through the release of their vast power, we have paradoxically been able to denude great areas of our planet of its forests.
Trees are our natural environment. They are our friends like no other species. Warmth in winter, shade in summer, said the poet Alexander Pope, of trees’ gifts to humanity. Where people are, trees are. Many cities are filled with trees. Some even look like woodland from the air. For thousands of generations, trees have provided people with windbreaks, shade, shelter, fire, and one of the primary fabrics of our dwellings.
In the Valley of the Dee in Scotland, there is a yew tree that has been dated at more than two thousand years old. It would have been growing back in the days when Pontius Pilate was a boy there, in the remote northern Roman province of Scotland, where his father was stationed as a centurion. People say the boy Pilate used to play in this very tree. Thus a tree alive today in Scotland is connected to that other “tree” on Calvary two thousand years ago.
But trees also manifest our inherent connectedness in other ways. Thomas Hardy wrote: “Portion of this yew is a man my grandsire knew.” It’s a touch macabre, but we all recognize the truth of it: the graveyard loam is made of a lot of dead things, including human remains, and the trees are nourished by it, no less than they are by our exhalations and we by theirs.
But what if our connection to trees runs closer still?
Take the story of Zen master Kyogen. After years of intense scriptural study, he was asked a question by his master, Isan: What was his original face before his parents were born?
Kyogen could not give an immediate answer but confidently strode off to his store of scrolls and began searching for an appropriate response. Finally, crestfallen, he returned to Isan to confess that he had not been able to come up with anything. Would Isan please tell him the right answer?
Isan said, “I could tell you, but you would not thank me later.”
Having felt proud of his scholastic accomplishments, Kyogen now felt dashed. He left the monastery, convinced that he did not have what it took to become a good Zen monk.
For years Kyogen worked as a simple laborer. One morning he was sweeping out the yard at an old shrine when his broom happened to flick a pebble against a tree growing nearby. The stone hit the trunk with a pronounced tock. At that sound, Kyogen’s world suddenly fell away. He was left bereft of everything and suddenly realized a great truth about his existence, which he finally recognized as the answer to Isan’s question.
“One knock,” he declared, “and I have forgotten everything I ever knew.” The whole world as he had construed it fell away and revealed something marvelous about both himself and the tree against which the pebble had knocked.
In deep gratitude Kyogen washed, changed, lit incense, and bowed in the direction of Isan’s temple. “How grateful I am,” he said, “that you did not answer the question for me all those years ago. If you had, I could never have realized what I have now found.” Ever after, he taught by means of a famous koan, known as Kyogen’s “Man up a Tree.”
Dogen said, “Plants and trees are mind. Tile and pebble are Buddha. People don’t want to believe this.”
When all our ideas have fallen to the ground like leaves, when our sense of self and our attachment to life and death has fallen to the ground also, then the true life of the dharma can bloom in us. We find it pouring forth all around, a creative force beyond all reckoning in which we fully participate.
When I was twenty-three years old and fresh out of college, my first writing assignment took me into the Sahara Desert. One morning I found myself setting off before dawn into the Great Western Erg, the largest sea of sand dunes in the world, in the company of an old man and his donkey. All day we slogged up and down mountains of sand. In the evening, when we finally reached the oasis, I was so dazed with heat and exhaustion from the long hours under the fierce sun that I didn’t even realize what was going on.
The donkey moved toward something that shone like a mirror in the last of the light, beneath hundreds of tall pillars that rose into a thatched roof. Only when the donkey’s lip touched that mercury-like surface did I realize it was a pool of fresh water, and that we were standing beneath hundreds of palm trees. A wave of joy rose up: we had reached not just a place of water but a place of trees.
In the distance I heard a voice singing hoarsely, then another answer it, in an unearthly antiphony. We were led to a walled village of red mud amid the trees and fed dates, couscous, and camel’s milk. I discovered that every evening at dusk, the men of the village would hitch up their robes and climb into their palm trees. Pulling themselves into the crowns, they would perch amid the fronds and call to one another like birds.
It was a local adaptation of the daily call to prayer, normally delivered from the top of a minaret but here transplanted to the high fronds of desert palms. Over the suede expanse of land growing soft at dusk, it was one of the most beautiful ceremonial moments I ever witnessed, with the trees turning dark and the voices drifting out over the wide plain, as if the trees themselves were singing; as if man and tree were one.
ABOUT HENRY SHUKMAN
A Zen teacher in the Sanbo Kyodan lineage, Henry Shukman teaches at Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe. He grew up in Oxford, England, and came to New Mexico in 1991 to write Savage Pilgrims, a memoir about searching for D. H. Lawrence’s past. Shukman has published seven books; his latest novel, The Lost City, was a New York Times editors’ choice.
Happy Halloween!!
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 ninth month
Prayers for those affected by the flooding in Pakistan
Prayers for those affected by hurricane Fiona in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean
Prayers for those recovering from hurricane Ian in Florida and along parts of the east coast
Prayers for political unrest in the Middle East
Prayers for those involved in the school shooting this week in St. Louis
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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