on April 22, 2023

April 23, 2023

Earth Day is April 22nd, which is today!

Since its early beginnings in 1970, Earth Day has evolved into an event that celebrates our ecological home as well as an educational opportunity to explore the challenges we face in caring for our planet today and in the coming years. Visit EARTHDAY.ORG for additional information and a wide range of global eco-events.

The official theme for this year’s Earth Day is “Invest In Our Planet.”

Our Sunday service includes Earth Day themes as well as part 10 of our continuing series on Belongingness. The title of the talk is “Best Practices” and helps build a shared vocabulary for building and participating in community.

The YouTube Channel service for this week is led by Rev. Mary Blocher and the title of the message is “It Is, God Is, I Am.”

Please join us for one of the services this weekend.

There will be a short congregational meeting after the morning service in the parlor. We will have a brief coffee break and then bring our refreshments into the parlor while we conduct our meeting (we have to have coffee!). The main point of business is to look at proposed bylaw changes and then conduct a vote. All members and friends are welcome to attend, but only members (those who have signed the book) may vote. This meeting is in preparation of our Annual Meeting which occurs on Sunday, May 21.

For Earth Day here is a practice exercise to try sometime during the weekend. This is from my sermon delivered last year for the occasion. Go ahead and give it another try…
On this earth day week-end I ask you to do one thing. Walk outside a moment or better yet, go for a walk and at some point bend down slowly and simply touch the ground. Touch the earth with reverence, appreciation – and feel your hand connect to the ground; feel your connection to the earth and pause, just for a moment. In that pause is the present, as well as the past and the future of our planet. Say a prayer or say nothing at all – but on this beautiful rotating rock in space is our home and place on this day. Earth Day for all of us.

Have a great weekend!

In Ministry,

Dave

Our Spring concert is May 13th on the sanctuary stage. Make plans now to attend and tell your friends! If you would like to help pre-sell tickets we have tickets available at the church.

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/AgTNbQkoAzI
HERE IS THE ZOOM LINK FOR SUNDAY COFFEE HOUR:

Topic: UUHoulton coffee hour & check in

Time: Apr 23, 2023 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85971502254?pwd=N2JPTXpsM1lTckd3MUlQWENqbzhOQT09
Meeting ID: 859 7150 2254 Passcode: 311948

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

Here is a recent article from YES Magazine written by Morgan Florsheim that relates to having hope in disheartening times. Environmentalist Jane Goodall refers to “eco-grief” as a growing factor as humanity begins to come to terms with the extent of our ecological problems. We include this article as part of our Earth Day edition of Support Page.

Don’t Tell Me to Despair About the Climate: Hope Is a Right We Must Protect

Recently I read an essay that kept me up at night. The piece, Under the Weather by climate journalist Ash Sanders, left me with an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach that I found myself struggling to shake, even weeks later.

The personal essay tells the story of Sanders and a mentor of hers, Chris Foster. Sanders recounts how both she and Foster have struggled for much of their adult lives with a gripping sense of impending doom, a depression deeply tied to their grief for a world lost. She writes about the newly coined terms for environmentally related mental health problems—eco-anxiety, climate grief, pre-traumatic stress disorder—and suggests that these conditions should not necessarily be viewed as disorders, but rather as the only reasonable response to a world experiencing catastrophe.

She tells the stories of people whose experiences of living have been ruled by this extreme grief, to the point of burnout or withdrawal from society—people whose climate depression has made their lives feel “unbearable.” When Sanders asks Foster if he believes he is sick, he replies, “I don’t know. But I know this: If your heart is breaking, you’re on my team.”

I am tired of being told that this world I was handed is irrevocably broken.

After reading those final words, I set the book that contained the essay down on my bedside table, suddenly wide awake and reeling. It’s not that I don’t empathize with Sanders. Since I was a teenager, I’ve known that I want to be a part of the fight against climate change and environmental injustice. I know firsthand the realities of mental health struggles, and I know what it is to feel climate anxiety, even climate grief. I know that someone like Sanders or Foster, who has been doing climate work much longer than I have, is likely to experience these emotions to a much higher degree. I am not naive to the incredible task of building a more equitable, safe, and thriving future. Sometimes (often) it overwhelms me.

But equally, I know what it is to watch someone you love feel crushed by the weight of the world, and to feel helpless in lifting that burden. I’m 22, barely out of college, and already I have seen more friends than I could have ever imagined fall into deep depression, magnified by their care for the world and the way they felt helpless to stop the suffering within it. I know the way depression closes a person off to the good and spotlights the bad, how it sows seeds of shame and self-doubt and sits back to watch them grow. I wish that I didn’t. Depression tells us that we are at once powerless and culpable, and therefore the only logical response is to disengage, turn inward, eschew connection—a response which only serves to reinforce the oppressive systems like racial injustice and capitalism that are truly responsible for our suffering.

In her essay, Sanders described an interaction Foster had with a student who began to cry in one of his lectures as Foster categorized a goal carbon dioxide target of below 350 parts per million as “hopeless.” The student asked the question, “If I didn’t have hope, how could I live?” and Foster’s instinct was to respond with, “Exactly.” Sanders says Foster knows his attitude “doesn’t make him easy to be around,” but she brushes past what I would argue is the larger issue—that the peddling of despair is unproductive, if not downright irresponsible.

Where is the joy or satisfaction in fighting for a world that is already damned?

Even without professors who declare doom, a hopeless attitude toward the world is already pervasive in communities of young people, both on social media and in person. I’ve seen it in my peers, my friends, my partners. On college campuses, cynicism is sometimes equated to intelligence. To be optimistic, I’ve been told on multiple occasions, is to be willingly naive. But while misery may love company, it doesn’t always leave space for joy. I was made to feel guilty for feeling happiness in a world of darkness. Whether this cynicism is a symptom or the cause of an increase in mental health issues in young people, we know this: The rate of major depression in adolescents increased more than 50% between 2005 and 2017, and the rate of moderate to severe depression in college students nearly doubled between 2007 and 2018.

My generation, unlike Sanders’ or Foster’s, was born into a world where the climate crisis was already well underway. We’ve had it hanging over our heads our whole lives. I am tired of being told that this world I was handed is irrevocably broken. I understand that the climate leaders from generations past are tired too, and that the decades of work have disheartened some. The youth climate movement deserves hope and optimism regardless. To imply the impossibility of a livable future or teach a class on catastrophe without giving students the tools to emotionally process the content suggests not a radical awareness of the mental health issues discussed in Under the Weather but rather a blindness to them. We cannot expect people to take care of the world when they are not given the resources to take care of themselves.

The hypothesis known as “depressive realism” theorizes that people with depression see the world more accurately than their peers, that they are simply unfettered by positive cognitive biases. I don’t think it matters whether or not the theory of depressive realism is accurate. (Science suggests it is not). I find it to be unhelpful, maybe even dangerous. If we view depression as an inescapable side effect of living in a damaged world, it may suggest to some that it is pointless to do the things necessary to take care of oneself, or that it is selfish to allow yourself rest while injustice persists and the seas continue to rise.

Doom and gloom do not a movement make.

Neither of those things is true. Whatever the root of depression, its symptoms can be treated. This isn’t to say that all it will take is a few therapy sessions to stop being overwhelmed by global catastrophe, and much work must be done to ensure that everyone can have access to treatment. But you don’t have to be in crisis to seek help. And we don’t have to ignore reality to live fulfilling, happy, and productive lives. The suggestion that a person must either be miserable or ignorant, that we must either accept the weight of the world or turn our backs to it, not only lacks nuance but actively contributes to the suffering its proponents claim to want to address.

And if we really want to make progress on the climate front? Research by experts on climate change communication suggests, perhaps unsurprisingly, that people respond poorly to hopeless depictions of catastrophe. Suggesting readers should be depressed about the future results in more apathy than action. In other words, doom and gloom do not a movement make. Where is the joy or satisfaction in fighting for a world that is already damned? I want a different narrative to follow, one that encourages self-care alongside activism, that works intentionally to foster excitement for the future we desire.

We’re talking about degrees here, literally, so there is no point at which we can no longer strive to make the future better than it otherwise would be. To Sanders and Foster, I say this: Tell me of your despair, but don’t tell me to despair. The question of whether it is the world or the person who is ailing is too simple. The world is sick but it is not only sick. We all need healing.

Hope is not a happy accident. Hope is a right we must protect.

In one of my final college classes over Zoom in spring 2020, my professor, environmental anthropologist Myles Lennon, led us through a discussion of Braiding Sweetgrass, the awe-inspiring book by Indigenous scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer. Kimmerer writes of the endurance of Indigenous people: “despite exile, despite a siege four hundred years long, there is something, some heart of living stone, that will not surrender.” The climate crisis is not the first time a people has faced the end of the world. As we navigate this latest existential threat, we would do well to listen to Kimmerer and other Indigenous leaders. As my professor put it that day, existence can cohabitate with collapse. It is not one or the other.

I have a lot of decisions ahead of me. As I consider how I want to live my life, where to dedicate my energy, I refuse to accept the idea that I must sacrifice all joy to attend to the world’s problems. I know myself to be more helpful when I have addressed my own needs: needs for good food and good company, for hope, for long afternoons in the sunshine. I am grateful for the teachers that I have had in this movement, such as professor Lennon, and the people who have reminded me of all the reasons to imagine a brighter future. I know that hope is not a happy accident. Hope is a right we must protect. Hope is a discipline, according to Mariame Kaba, an organizer and educator building the movement for transformative justice.

The climate crisis is ongoing. And, also, a bird is building a nest in the eaves outside my window. Come spring, there will be new birth. In shaky hands, I hold these two truths together.

Joanna Macy on the Great Awakening the Planet Needs

BY MELVIN MCLEOD AND JOANNA MACY

Lion’s Roar editor-in-chief Melvin McLeod talks to renowned Buddhist thinker and environmental activist Joanna Macy about the global awakening the planet needs—while we still have time. At heart, it’s a spiritual revolution.

Joanna Macy

Melvin McLeod: You have had a long and influential career as a Buddhist thinker and writer, social justice activist, and respected voice in the environmental movement. You are also the root teacher of the “Work That Reconnects,” which you describe as a body of theory and practice that helps people “experience their innate connections with each other and the self-healing powers of the web of life, transforming despair and overwhelm into inspired, collaborative action.” Why is this work important now?

Joanna Macy: I think the most important thing we need to hear is the voice inside us which connects us to all beings and to the whole web of life. That is needed now to counteract the crippling of the modern self, which is cruelly contained, as in a prison cell, by the hyper-individualism of the last five centuries.

When you really pay attention, you see that you are part of the whole web of life.

When Thich Nhat Hanh was asked what we most need to do for the sake of our world, he said “to hear within ourselves the sounds of the earth crying.” I believe it’s true. The earth iscrying, deep in our consciousness. Sometimes it reaches us.

The starting place of this work is the admonition to choose life, or, as you put it, to return to the wellsprings of life. All of us probably aspire to that, but how do we do it in practice?

We can begin by choosing to be present. We can choose to pay attention. That is the essential magic of mindfulness, and of the Buddha’s own life.

When you pay attention to your experience, you realize that you’re not just a separate organism sitting here breathing. You are not only breathing but being breathed. You need an oxygen-producing web of life for you to breathe—you need trees, you need plankton.

So where does the self begin and where does it end? When you really pay attention, you see that you are part of the whole web of life. That leads you to want to know that life and to protect it.

Rather than choosing life, you say we are in a culture that “deadens the heart and mind,” which it does by encouraging us not to acknowledge our suffering and pain. To what extent does fully connecting with life depend on opening our hearts and minds to the reality of suffering, both our own and others?

That’s how the Buddha began. The first noble truth is suffering. But the truth of suffering seems almost subversive within the American dream of affluence. It seems almost unpatriotic to confess anxieties about this country or our life.

It’s one of the basic functions of ego to suppress our awareness of suffering. So that’s not new. But it seems that today the whole system is designed to offer us more and more elaborate forms of deadening, distraction, and self-indulgence to cover over our suffering, and thus disconnect us from the fullness of life.

That’s right. Actually, reconnecting with the web of life may be harder for us than for any of our ancestors. As I look back over the millennia of humanity’s journey, it’s hard to imagine another time when we were so cruelly isolated by the illusion of a separate self and by a political economy that pits us against each other.

So this primary teaching of the Lord Buddha, the truth of suffering, is both necessary and liberating now. Our pain for the world, which we honor in the Work That Reconnects, reveals that we are far vaster than we ever imagined ourselves to be. This crumbles the walls of the little separate ego and moves naturally into seeing with new eyes. Then you see with the eyes of an undefended being, intimately interrelated with this incredible living planet. You see that you’re part of everything.

Compassion—literally to “suffer with”—asks you to not be afraid to be part of this world. When you are that wide open, you see that the grief you feel is just the other side of love. You only mourn what you love.

Let’s turn to your analysis of the global situation and the choices humanity faces. One path you describe is supporting business as usual—continuing in the direction we are currently going. The alternative is to proceed with choices that lead to a life-sustaining culture. These range from how we grow food to how we resolve conflict. You have come to call this “the Great Turning.” Ultimately, you argue that this must be a spiritual revolution, because only spirituality leads to the kind of profound change the world needs to avoid the looming catastrophe.

Yes. But it’s spiritual with legs. Spiritual with hands. Spiritual with a loud mouth. Because we need to slow down the powerful impetus of economic growth that drives industry and government. It’s spirituality that’s ready to sit on the tracks, that’s ready to take the guns out of their hands.

This is where the two streams of your life come together—the spiritual and the politically engaged.

I experience them as one river. In early Buddhist scriptures there is a simple and wonderful phrase describing the relation between wisdom and action: they are “like two hands washing each other.” It is a dance of reciprocity. You can’t have one without the other, because they generate each other.

I learned this in my year with the Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka, which brings a Buddhist understanding to Gandhian nonviolence. In India, the word Sarvodaya means “the uplift of all,” but in Buddhist Sri Lanka it means “the awakening of all.” In the buddhadharma, that waking up is inseparable from realizing our interdependence or interbeing.

When you talk about the Great Turning, it sounds like that means people need to realize the basic Buddhist teaching of anatta — that there is no separate, independent, permanent self and everything is interconnected in the ever-changing web of life.

That’s absolutely essential, but it also needs to include being willing to get your hands dirty.

But you have to start with the realization.

Actually it’s not sequential, Melvin. Even the eighth-century Buddhist master Shantideva made clear that you can discover wisdom through your actions. In the Sarvodaya movement, the work camps in the villages are one of the ways to discover your mutual belonging.

I remember one unforgettable work camp in the middle of a town where we were digging a fountain for a hospital. We were in a kind of bucket brigade passing along buckets of mud, and next to me in the line was a fellow who was dressed like an office worker. He was sweating from the effort and laughing. He said, “Ah, now I am experiencing no separate self. I’m now experiencing anatta.” He thought that it was a great joke, but that is the main reason for Sarvodaya’s work camps. As the movement puts it, “we teach through actions first; words come after.”

We’re up to almost eight billion people on this planet and time is short. Do you really have hope that this great awakening can take place on a sufficient scale to change the direction in which we’re heading?

I find that assuring people there’s hope, including myself, is not all that useful. In Buddhism, there is no word for hope. It would be viewed as a distraction from what’s at hand. It takes you out of the present moment and into conjecture.

We have a choice: do we want to give up and surrender to the great unraveling, or do we want to join those who are working for a liveable future?

I think all we can really affirm is where we want to put our attention. I have a choice: do I want to give up and surrender to the great unraveling, or do I want to join those who are working for a liveable future? Since the outcome is uncertain, we have to enjoy doing something exhilarating and useful without knowing for sure if it’s going to work out.

We need to and we can find adventure in uncertainty. That’s the best we can offer right now. Uncertainty

rivets the attention. It’s like walking on a narrow trail with the land falling off on either side. It concentrates the mind wonderfully. But if you want a sure fire, guaranteed deal, then I don’t know where you’d find it right now, except through some kind of frontal lobotomy.

I think it’s more than wanting guaranteed success. It’s about having any hope at all. You could come to the conclusion that we simply can’t turn the whole thing around in time. So where do you find the motivation to do the right thing if you don’t have any real hope?

To be honest, it looks like we’re nearing the end of corporate capitalism. People and ecosystems the world over are already suffering from its massive dysfunctions. Within another generation or two, all of us, regardless of our current level of comfort or privilege, will be struggling to build a future through the rubble of a failed political economy.

So in that context, what’s our real hope? That is something wonderful to ponder. If you want to live with an open heart and a free mind, it leads you to confront such questions as: What can we do to reduce suffering now? How can we bring forward the moral strength, the values, and the practices to help us prepare for so great a challenge? What do we need to let go of in order to build a life sustaining culture?

We have a choice. We have the tools in our spiritual traditions. Being fully with what we’re experiencing, we can work together and cherish each other. Professor Jem Bendell, who writes about the need for “deep adaptation,” says, “Now that I have accepted this collapse, I have more peace of mind and love in my life than ever before.”

It seems there’s a deep connection between impermanence and love, because it’s recognizing that someone or something is impermanent that frees us to truly love them.

That’s it. There is a cherishing that allows space for love as we stand at this incredible brink. I’m gradually losing my vision through macular degeneration, but I’m very happy that I can still see that beautiful tree behind you as we speak.

And perhaps you love and treasure it more because you will lose the sight of it.

What you’re expressing so beautifully is the exquisite and sacred aspect of impermanence.

In Buddhism, it’s recommended that every morning when you wake up you say to yourself, “Today may be the day I die,” because that will transform how you live that day. Because of death—impermanence—you will live that day with more love and gratitude. I wonder how it would transform us to apply that meditation to the world itself—that it too will die sooner than we expect.

We would want to cherish each other while we still can. To look into each other’s eyes with love. I imagine going out and thanking the trees and all the life forms instead of turning them into money. I imagine us wanting to liberate those in prison. We have just a short time. These are the kinds of things we can do before it’s too late.

When we look into our own soul with love, miracles can happen. It’s a great thing to come out of the sleep, out of the hurry, out of the rush, out of the constant comparing ourselves with other people. To let that terrible strain drop away.

I feel so fortunate to be alive now. People might think I’m crazy, but just speaking personally, it’s an incredible thing to be alive with my fellow humans at a time when the future looks so bleak.

Right now we can be here to honor life. It’s a precious thing to be giving thanks for what we have instead of insisting it must last forever. Well, it’s not lasting forever. Can we still be grateful?

ABOUT JOANNA MACY

PhD, teacher and author, is a scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking and deep ecology. As the root teacher of the Work That Reconnects, Macy has created a ground-breaking framework for personal and social change that brings a new way of seeing the world as our larger body. Macy received a BA from Wellesley College in 1950 and a PhD in Religion from Syracuse University in 1978. She continues to write and teach in Berkeley, California. Her most recent book is A Wild Love for the World: Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Times (ed. Stephanie Kaza). To learn more, visit www.joannamacy.net.

Poetry CornerFollowing several mass shootings Inaugueration poet Amanda Gorman wrote this poem which appeared in the New York Times in April 2022. In light of the recent shootings we thought we would reprint it again this year.

Hymn for the Hurting

By Amanda GormanEverything hurts,
Our hearts shadowed and strange,
Minds made muddied and mute.
We carry tragedy, terrifying and true.
And yet none of it is new;
We knew it as home,
As horror,
As heritage.
Even our children
Cannot be children,
Cannot be.Everything hurts.
It’s a hard time to be alive,
And even harder to stay that way.
We’re burdened to live out these days,
While at the same time, blessed to outlive them.This alarm is how we know
We must be altered —
That we must differ or die,
That we must triumph or try.
Thus while hate cannot be terminated,
It can be transformed
Into a love that lets us live.May we not just grieve, but give:
May we not just ache, but act;
May our signed right to bear arms
Never blind our sight from shared harm;
May we choose our children over chaos.
May another innocent never be lost.Maybe everything hurts,
Our hearts shadowed & strange.
But only when everything hurts
May everything change.

Ms. Gorman is a poet and the author of “The Hill We Climb,” “Call Us What We Carry” and “Change Sings.”

The photo titled “Earthrise,” went on to become one of the most iconic images of the 20th century and is often credited for propelling the environmental movement that led to the first Earth Day in 1970.

Sign of spring in Linda’s flower garden.

Prayer ListFor those recovering from COVID-19 in the state of MaineLocal emergency personnel and hospital staffFor our state and national leaders as the respond to the current coronavirus crisisFor those working for social justice and societal changePray for peaceful action and democratic process in our nationThe war in Ukraine is now in its second yearPrayers for those recovering from the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria Prayers for those affected by the mass shooting at the University of Michigan

Prayers for those in California experiencing extreme weatherPrayers for those affected by the mass shooting in Nashville

Prayers to ease the political unrest in the Middle EastPrayers for those affected by the recent violence in the West Bank, the Dome of the Rock and political protests in IsraelPrayers for those affected by the two mass shootings in Louisville

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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