Our Annual meeting is this Sunday, the first one we have conducted since covid interrupted life over three years ago. (We have a lot of catching up to do!) There will be an abbreviated Sunday service in the parlor followed by a potluck luncheon and annual meeting in the church basement. If you have never attended an annual meeting before, it is a great way to see the inner workings of the organization and a chance to show appreciation to the many volunteers it takes to keep the place up and going. Please bring  something to share for the potluck and bring your appetite. All members and friends are welcome to attend, but only members may vote. The YouTube Channel service for this week 

is a Mother’s Day Service led by Rev. Mary Blocher titled “The Divine Feminine.” You will find the link for YouTube listed below. Please join us for one of the services this weekend. 
We are currently updating our church directory (we haven’t had an update since Covid) and hope to have it ready for our annual meeting on Sunday. Typical info includes name, address, phone number and email address. Additional information can include pets (name and species) and your birthday (optional). If there have been changes in your info or if you are new, please send the information to dave@backwoodsblog.com and we will include it in the new directory. Thank you for your cooperation.  

Have a great weekend!

In Ministry,DaveService of Remembrance for Charles “Chuck” DunningMay 20    Saturday afternoon at 1PM in the parlor

Charles Dunning(10.14.77 – 04.22.23)Chuck was our lawn care guy, handyman and all around good friend who helped us out at the Unitarian Church for the past ten years.There is a service of remembrance for Chuck today at 1PMin the church parlor. Please join us. 

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

Topic: UUHoulton coffee hour & check-in

Time: May 21, 2023 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/83679671411?pwd=TWJtK2IrSnFmQ0RUQVBueGVsQjAvdz09

Meeting ID: 836 7967 1411

Passcode: 423001

Calendar of Events @UUHoultonMay 21   Sunday Service (abbreviated service)           Annual Meeting and potluck downstairsMay 28      Sunday Service: Dr. Bill WhiteMay 31      Meditation Group  4PM   (online)June 4   Flower Communion Service   Welcoming New Members Ceremony        BBQ & Barn Party at the Blocher’s       Live music with Bertrand LaurenceJune 11   Sunday Service: Dave Hutchinson June 11   Sunday Concert at Noon: Ewan Dobson, instrumental guitar    On the coffeehouse stage, lunch available in the cafe    No charge for the concert, donations encouraged.Special Event:May 23   Tuesday Evening 6:30PMChurch of the Good Shepherd
SAVE THE DATE! Osihkiyol “Zeke” Crofton-Macdonald, Ambassador of the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians will speak at Church of the Good Shepherd at 6:30 pm on Tuesday May 23.  He will speak about the history, current relations, and possibilities for cooperation for the tribe and surrounding towns. This event is open to the public and is a good chance to get to know our neighbors!

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 Street

FEATURE ARTICLE:

Our theme for the year has been “Belongingness.” UUHoulton member and alert reader Steve Kinney noticed this article on D.E.I. strategies in the New York Times this week and sent it to me. I’ve included it in this week’s support page along with the post by Steve.

Companies are backtracking on the “victim or villain” policies of identity politics, to create an atmosphere of bringing one’s “whole self” to work. Great to witness the ability to evolve on these issues…Coincidentally, I also shared the link with my friend in NYC. He heads a global team leading DEI practices for a Hedge Fund. He told me that yesterday this article was the talk of the town for people in their field.

posted by Steve K.

Why Some Companies Are Saying ‘Diversity and Belonging’ Instead of ‘Diversity and Inclusion’

The changing terminology reflects new thinking among some consultants, who say traditional D.E.I. strategies haven’t worked out as planned.The New York Times

by Jennifer Miller

published May 13, 2023 

Jennifer Miller is a freelance reporter who covers American cultural divides.

Woodward is a 153-year-old aerospace company that required its male employees to wear bow ties into the 1990s. So Paul Benson, the company’s 

chief human resources officer, knew that creating a companywide diversity, 

equity and inclusion program would require a seismic shift. “Look at our 

org chart online, and we’re a lily-white leadership team of old males,” he said. 

But employees were eager for a more inclusive culture.“People want to feel like they belong,” Mr. Benson said. “They want to come to work and not feel like they have to check themselves at the door.”
Last summer, Mr. Benson started searching for a diversity consultant who was up to the task. He hoped to find a relatable former executive “who had seen the light.”Instead, a Google search led him to a Black comedian and former media personality named Karith Foster. She is the chief executive of Inversity Solutions, a consultancy that rethinks traditional diversity programming.Ms. Foster said companies must address racism, sexism, homophobia and antisemitism in the workplace. But she believes that an overemphasis on identity groups and a tendency to reduce people to “victim or villain” can strip agency from and alienate everyone — including employees of color. She says her approach allows everyone “to make mistakes, say the wrong thing sometimes and be able to correct it.”Mr. Benson was convinced. He hired Ms. Foster to give the keynote address at Woodward’s leadership summit last October.
Shortly after taking the stage, she asked everyone to close their eyes and raise their hands in response to a series of provocative questions: Had they ever locked the car when a Black man walked by? Had they thought, yes, Jewish people really are good with money? Had they questioned the intelligence of someone with a thick Southern accent?
People raised their hands tentatively, even fearfully. By the time Ms. Foster finished, nearly every hand — including her own — was up.
“Congratulations. You’re certified human beings,” she said. “It’s not about being right or wrong but understanding when bias comes into play.”Mr. Benson was relieved. “I was at a table with somebody who started the whole thing with his arms folded,” he recalled. “His body language said this dude’s not a believer. Halfway through, he’s laughing and clapping.”Ms. Foster, he said, helped people “feel OK with themselves, like maybe you haven’t been an activist or on this journey in your past, but let’s see how we can move forward.”In other words, she helped them feel that they belonged in the conversation.The question of belonging has become the latest focus in the evolving world of corporate diversity, equity and inclusion programming.Interest in creating more inclusive workplaces exploded after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. Many corporations turned their attention to addressing systemic racism and power imbalances — the things that had kept boardrooms white and employees of color feeling excluded from office life.
Now, nearly three years since that moment, some companies are amending their approach to D.E.I., even renaming their departments to include “belonging.” It’s the age of D.E.I.-B.Some critics worry it’s about making white people comfortable rather than addressing systemic inequality, or that it simply allows companies to prioritize getting along over necessary change.“Belonging is a way to help people who aren’t marginalized feel like they’re part of the conversation,” said Stephanie Creary, assistant professor of management at the Wharton School of Business who studies corporate strategies for diversity and inclusion.She believes an abstract focus on belonging allows companies to avoid the tough conversations about power — and the resistance those conversations often generate. “The concern is that we are just creating new terms like belonging as a way to manage that resistance,” Ms. Creary said.Ms. Foster contends that as a practical matter, there will be no equity if the people in power — “the straight white male”— feel excluded from the conversation. The people traditional D.E.I. practitioners “most want to enroll are the people they’re isolating and honestly ostracizing,” she said.The nonpartisan nonprofit Business for America recently interviewed more than two dozen executives at 18 companies and found this to be a common theme. “The way they’ve rolled out D.E.I. has exacerbated divides even while addressing valuable issues,” said Sarah Bonk, BFA’s founder and chief executive. “It has created some hostility, resentment.”It’s why companies like Woodward are now hiring consultants who specialize in “belonging” and “bridge building.” They are coming to the aid of executives who fear that national divisions are penetrating the workplace, threatening to drive a wedge between colleagues and making everyone feel anxious and defensive.
Professor Creary agrees these are real problems. “I can see that corporations want to have a structured conversation around how allowing all of us to thrive will help us all collectively,” she said. But she worries “belonging” gives cover to people who would rather maintain the status quo. “There’s still a large percentage of people who have a zero sum mind-set,” she said. “If I support you, I am going to lose.”

Bring your ‘whole self’ to work

The belonging obsession is the result of a now-widespread corporate standard: Bring your whole self to work. If you have the flexibility to work wherever you want, and the freedom to discuss the social and political issues that matter to you, then ideally, you’ll feel that you belong at your company.Bring your whole self to work emerged before the pandemic but became something of a mandate at its height, as companies tried to stanch a wave of resignations. They were also responding to concerns that many people felt excluded in the workplace. According to a 2022 report by the think tank Coqual, roughly half of Black and Asian professionals with a bachelor’s or more advanced degree don’t feel a sense of belonging at work.Last year, the Society for Human Resource Management conducted its first survey on corporate belonging. Seventy-six percent of respondents said their organization prioritized belonging as part of its D.E.I. strategy and 64 percent said they planned to invest more in belonging initiatives this year. Respondents said that identity-based communities, like employee resource groups, helped foster belonging, while mandatory diversity training did not.Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and professor at N.Y.U.’s Stern School of Business, wishes we weren’t having this conversation about identity and belonging. “At a time of rising political polarization, many people’s whole selves don’t fit with the whole selves of their colleagues,” Mr. Haidt, a self-described centrist, said. “I’ve heard from so many managers. They can’t stand it anymore — the constant conflict over people’s identities.”In 2017, he and a colleague, Caroline Mehl, started the Constructive Dialogue Institute, whose main product is an educational platform called Perspectives. The tool uses online modules and workshops to help users explore where their values come from and why people from different backgrounds might have opposing values
In 2019, CDI began licensing Perspectives to corporations. Annual fees are $50 to $150 per employee license. Companies can also book a menu of live training options for $3,500 to $15,000 for a full day.Allegis Global Solutions, a work force solutions company with 3,500 employees, was an early adopter.Already, the platform has helped the company navigate some complex political situations. Last June, a 26-year-old human resources coordinator named Shakara Worrell was in a meeting when she learned that the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade. “The entire meeting stopped,” Ms. Worrell said. “That’s when I realized, I’m not the only one whose heart just dropped.”Ms. Worrell, who is mixed race, said she came to Allegis partly because the company prioritized belonging. She recalls reading news of police brutality at her previous job and feeling that she had to suppress her feelings.“I just remember sitting in my cube and not being able to just voice my opinions,” Ms. Worrell said. She remembered thinking: “I don’t really belong.”Not so at Allegis. There, Ms. Worrell coleads Elevate, the company’s employee resource group for women’s empowerment. After the Supreme Court decision, she and fellow members decided to hold an event series to help employees digest the ruling. When they informed the human resources and D.E.I. teams, they were directed to Perspectives.“No matter if they were for or against, we wanted our people to feel OK and be OK,” Ms. Worrell said.
And were they? Allegis said roughly 200 people attended the first meeting, which was held virtually. Afterward, Ms. Worrell followed up with the one attendee who had spoken in favor of the court’s decision.“Even though I was that one person going against the grain,” Ms. Worrell recalled the colleague saying, “I still felt like I should share.”

An ‘Offensive Focus on Group Labels’

Irshad Manji, founder of the consultancy Moral Courage College, says an “almost offensive focus on group labels” is a big problem with mainstream diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. “It all but compels people to stereotype each other. I happen to be Muslim and a faithful Muslim,” she said. “But that does not mean I interpret Islam like every other Muslim out there.”Ms. Manji believes that people now use “belonging” as a “tacit acknowledgment that traditional D.E.I. hasn’t worked well.”So what approach does work? In 2018, Autodesk, a software company with 13,700 employees, began planning a culture shake-up.Some employees were afraid to offend one another, so they defaulted to being “fake nice” and “passive aggressive,” said Autodesk’s president and chief executive, Andrew Anagnost. Others felt unsupported and would not speak up in meetings.
Autodesk renamed its “Diversity and Inclusion” team the “Diversity and Belonging” team. Managers learned strategies for recognizing — and then counteracting — their own defensive thinking.They were given poker chips to “play” each time they spoke to avoid dominating the discussion.The company paid the leaders of employee resource groups bonuses to signal their value. And Mr. Anagnost put himself forward as the executive sponsor of the Autodesk Black Network.But the company also tackled equity. It switched the location of a new office hub from Denver to Atlanta, knowing it would have a better shot at attracting Black engineering graduates there. Autodesk regularly polls its employees about their experiences at work. After the culture shift took hold, Mr. Anagnost said that belonging scores increased for women and employees of color and decreased for white men.“Then that normalized,” he said. “Yeah, sure, OK, there’s going to be some squeeze on opportunity in some areas as you try to increase representation in others. But the threat level goes down when you create a sense of ‘we can all rise together.’”

How to Move Forward Once You’ve Hit Bottom

BY PEMA CHÖDRÖN

Pema Chödrön tells the story of when, having hit rock bottom, she asked her teacher what to do.

I thought I would tell you this little story about Naropa University’s founder, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and my very first one-on-one interview with him. This interview occurred during the time when my life was completely falling apart, and I went there because I wanted to talk about the fact that I was feeling like such a failure and so raw.

But when I sat down in front of him, he said, “How is your meditation?”

I said, “Fine.”

And then we just started talking, superficial chatter, until he stood up and said, “It was very nice to meet you,” and started walking me to the door. In other words, the interview was over.

And so at that point, realizing the interview was over, I just blurted out my whole story:

My life is over.

I have hit the bottom.

I don’t know what to do.

Please help me.

And here is the advice Trungpa Rinpoche gave me. He said, “Well, it’s a lot like walking into the ocean, and a big wave comes and knocks you over. And you find yourself lying on the bottom with sand in your nose and in your mouth. And you are lying there, and you have a choice. You can either lie there, or you can stand up and start to keep walking out to sea.”

So, basically, you stand up, because the “lying there” choice equals dying.

Metaphorically lying there is what a lot of us choose to do at that point. But you can choose to stand up and start walking, and after a while another big wave comes and knocks you down.

You find yourself at the bottom of the ocean with sand in your nose and sand in your mouth, and again you have the choice to lie there or to stand up and start walking forward.

“So the waves keep coming,” he said. “And you keep cultivating your courage and bravery and sense of humor to relate to this situation of the waves, and you keep getting up and going forward.”

This was his advice to me.

Trungpa then said, “After a while, it will begin to seem to you that the waves are getting smaller and smaller. And they won’t knock you over anymore.”

That is good life advice.

It isn’t that the waves stop coming; it’s that because you train in holding the rawness of vulnerability in your heart, the waves just appear to be getting smaller and smaller, and they don’t knock you over anymore.

“Fail better” means you begin to have the ability to hold what I call “the rawness of vulnerability” in your heart.

So what I’m saying is: fail. Then fail again, and then maybe you start to work with some of the things I’m saying. And when it happens again, when things don’t work out, you fail better. In other words, you are able to work with the feeling of failure instead of shoving it under the rug, blaming it on somebody else, coming up with a negative self-image—all of those futile strategies.

“Fail better” means you begin to have the ability to hold what I call “the rawness of vulnerability” in your heart, and see it as your connection with other human beings and as a part of your humanness. Failing better means when these things happen in your life, they become a source of growth, a source of forward, a source of, “out of that place of rawness you can really communicate genuinely with other people.”

Your best qualities come out of that place because it’s unguarded and you’re not shielding yourself. Failing better means that failure becomes a rich and fertile ground instead of just another slap in the face. That’s why, in the Trungpa Rinpoche story that I shared, the waves that are knocking you down begin to appear smaller and have less and less of an ability to knock you over. And actually maybe it is the same wave, maybe it’s even a bigger wave than the one that hit last year, but it appears to you smaller because of your ability to swim with it or ride the wave.

And it isn’t that failure doesn’t still hurt. I mean, you lose people you love. All kinds of things happen that break your heart, but you can hold failure and loss as part of your human experience and that which connects you with other people.

Adapted from Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better: Wise Advice for Leaning into the Unknown by Pema Chodron. Copyright © 2015 by Pema Chodron. To be published by Sounds True in September 2015.

Spring flowers on the altar last Sunday

Kristen Wells taking a photo of The Pelletier & Lovejoy Jazz Ensemble 

after the show last Saturday night. Check out several videos of their

performance on The Cup Cafe Facebook page. It was an amazing night!!

Sanctuary stage before the show…

Prayer ListFor 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 MichiganPrayers 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 LouisvillePrayers for those affected by the recent mass shootings in AlabamaPrayers for those affected by the mass shooting in Texas Prayers for peace and reconciliation in this spring season

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.