The first day of Summer ’23 arrived this week and along with it 80 degree temperatures that felt…oh so good! Let’s hope for more of the same. June is Pride Month so Dave is leading the first part of the service reflecting the theme.
Wear something rainbow if you like! Steve Kinney is our speaker at this week’s Sunday service and he is sharing his experience of a well-known painting at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton; Salvador Dali’s Santiago el Grande. The title of the talk is “The Atomic Mysticism of Salvador Dali; How The Artist Reconciled Faith and Science in the Painting.” For those interested, we are planning a trip to visit the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in July. Steve has arranged a tour for our group (at a reduced rate) and we will also have a meal at one of Fredericton’s many fine restaurants. We will discuss selecting a date and our sign-up process during coffee hour after the service.
Here is an excerpt from the talk:
Throughout Western history artists have used their imagination to depict the events and ethos of their age. In the early 20th century, the “ethos” got complicated by fast moving advances in science, including medicine and psychology, and the previously unknown horror of the two World Wars, including the use of atomic bombs. In his surrealist paintings Salvador Dali processed all of this, especially his personal fascination with what Freud was discovering about the subconscious. The paintings, often considered strange or bizarre, were really elaborate dreamscapes–sometimes Hellscapes. In fact, he developed a hypnosis-like system of waking himself up from naps so he could paint the disturbing images fresh from his dreams…Dali claimed he was a “lifelong Catholic without faith.” He used this, and other paintings, to resolve internal discord between science and religion in a belief system he identified as “Atomic Mysticism.”
YouTube Channel content for this week
is a service led by Rev. Mary Blocher titled “The Divine Masculine.” Here is a description of the service:
Father’s Day is a time we honor our fathers, grandfather, great-grandfathers, and our male ancestors. Because trauma sometimes happens within our family systems, it may be difficult to honor our male lineage. Father Sky sent a message this past week as the wildfires raged in Canada sending toxic smoke to America. Climate change is real. What can we do to help The Great Correction come to fruition to help heal Father Sky and Mother Earth?
You will find the link for YouTube listed below. Please join us for one of the services this weekend.
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)
HERE IS THE ZOOM LINK FOR SUNDAY COFFEE HOUR:
Topic: UUHoulton coffee hour & check-in
Time: Jun 25, 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 @UUHoulton
June 25 Sunday Service: Steve Kinney “Atomic Mysticism” This is also a Pride Service led by Rev. Dave
June 27 Meditation Group 4PM (online)
June 30 Midnight Madness: UUHoulton Chicken Curry Night (Starting at 4PM on the church front lawn)
July 1 Yard Sale on the church lawn 8AM-3PM If interested in helping talk to Joshua Atkinson
July 2 Sunday Service: Dave Hutchinson
July 9 Sunday Service: Jeremy Harden
July 15 Houlton Coffeehouse 7-9PM
July 16 Sunday Service: Rev Mary Blocher
July 23 Sunday Service: Joshua Atkinson
July 30 Sunday Service: Dave Hutchinson
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 U.S. Route 2 (aka Military Street), Houlton, ME 04730
A Life of Hope, Well Lived
Daniel Ellsberg
by Abby Zimet, columnist for Common Dreams
We mourn the loss of Daniel Ellsberg, singularly principled truth-teller, activist and “patriarch of whistleblowing” who exposed the murderous lies of the Vietnam War – with, it turns out, the help of his 13-year-old son – and spent the next 50-plus years bearing righteous witness to “the human consequences (of) what we’re doing” – our wars, ravages of the planet, dalliance with nuclear mayhem. A fierce ally of “those who care about the others,” he grew weary but never hopeless, insisting, “One candle lights another.”
“My dear father, Daniel Ellsberg, died this morning June 16 at 1:24 a.m., four months after his diagnosis with pancreatic cancer,” wrote his son Robert. “His family surrounded him as he took his last breath. He had no pain and died peacefully at home.” His father’s time since his diagnosis was largely happy: “Just as he had always written better under a deadline, it turned out he was able to ‘live better under a deadline’ – with joy, gratitude, purpose (and) perhaps a feeling of relief that the fate of the world no longer depended on his efforts.” He “didn’t feel there was any tragedy attached to dying at the age of 92,” and remained true to his vision till the end. In May, he spoke with his usual eloquence and acuity to Politico about the deadly impact of America’s ceaseless imperialist adventures, duplicitous arrogance and warmongering in the specious name of democracy – the same issues that stirred him to oppose those in seemingly unassailable power more than five decades before.
Ellsberg was a military analyst with a Harvard doctorate, a resume from the right-wing RAND Corporation and high-level security clearance when in 1964 he became an advisor to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who years after forging “McNamara’s War” decried his own actions as “terribly wrong” – a mea culpa many dismissed. “His regret cannot be huge enough to balance the books for our dead soldiers,” said one critic who somehow elided the brutal reality of a war that also cost billions of dollars and millions of lives other than 60,000 American ones. “The ghosts of those unlived lives circle close around Mr. McNamara.” Meanwhile, from his first day at the Pentagon – the day of the Tonkin Gulf encounter used as a pretext for Congressional approval of the war – through two years spent on the ground in Vietnam, including with Marine patrols, to working on the damning report now known as the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg came to consistently view Vietnam as an immoral and unwinnable war almost wholly built on lies.
That report, says Robert, convinced him the war was “not just a problem or a mistake, (but) a crime that must be resisted.” He didn’t release the Pentagon Papers because “he was offended merely by its chronicle of lies…He was offended by the crimes those lies were protecting – they were lies about murder.” As a child, Robert said his father “tended to talk to me about ‘grown-up’ things”: the Vietnam War, the perils of nuclear war, history, empire, non-violence, “the human capacities for evil and for changing the world.” (He was also “wildly funny,” had memorized many favorite poems, loved magic, music, movies and nature, especially the ocean.) One day in 1969, Daniel took him out to lunch and told him about his plan to copy secret documents in hopes of helping end an untenable war. “He’d been sharing with me books and writings by Gandhi, Thoreau, Martin Luther King, so I understood what he was talking about,” he said. “He asked if I would help him. So that afternoon I spent the day at a Xerox machine copying documents. I was thirteen.”
At the time, Robert “didn’t fully comprehend the implications. It was something my father asked me to do, and I admired him so much, I would have done anything he asked.” Later in life, Daniel explained himself: “Feeling he would soon go to prison, possibly for the rest of his life, he wanted to leave me with the example there could come a time when one might be compelled to make a sacrifice (for) the sake of a greater good. My father did not teach me to ride a bike or catch a baseball. But he wanted to pass along that lesson.” Working with anti-war activist Anthony Russo, Ellsberg went underground to distribute documents to the media, and on June 12, 1971, the New York Times published the first in a series of history-making, Pulitzer-winning Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg surrendered to arrest June 28; at 15, Robert was subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury; Ellsberg was ultimately indicted under the Espionage Act and faced up to 115 years in prison. But two years later, the charges were dismissed when toadies for Nixon, livid at “the son-of-a-bitching thief,” were found to have burglarized Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office as part of a “neutralization” scheme.
For the next half-century, an indefatigable Ellsberg wrote, lobbied, protested, got arrested almost 100 times, and spoke up against climate change, nuclear proliferation, the erosion of civil rights for black, poor, queer, other marginalized people, and the hidden, dirty truths of an imperialist country “addicted to waging aggressive war” too often made invisible. Speaking with The Intercept after the Iraq War began, Ellsberg referenced heartfelt 9/11 coverage by newspapers that ran headshots and anecdotes about the victims – what made them human, what people remembered of them. “Imagine if the Times were to run a page or two of photographs of the people who burned on the night of ‘shock and awe,’ to say, ‘Look, each one had friends, parents, children, each made their mark in some little way in the world, and these were the people we killed.’ Of course it’s never happened – nothing like it,” he said. “I am in favor, unreservedly, of making people aware what the human consequences are of what we’re doing – where we are killing people, what the real interests appear to be, who is benefiting.”
That kind of transparency “is not impossible,” he felt, given a social media where “people can be their own investigative journalists.” But he was dismayed to realize that, while such action may help, “It’s very far from being a guarantee anything will change.” Conceding Americans being lied to by government and complicit media are “surely less responsible (than) the ones doing the lying,” he lamented “a first approximation that the public doesn’t show any effective concern for the number of people we kill in these wars.” Vitally, concealed from them “is that they are citizens of an empire that (claims) the right to determine who governs other countries” – and if we don’t approve of them, to remove them. “Virtually every president tells us we are a very peace-loving people (for whom) war is not our normal state,” but “that of course does go against the fact that we’ve been at war almost continuously.” He returned, again, to lies, notably those that encourage Americans to support war “convinced we’re better than other people.” “As a former insider, one becomes aware it’s not difficult to deceive people,” he said. “You’re often telling them what they would like to believe.”
Over time, he could grow disheartened that, “While admiration for brave whistleblowers might be widespread, actual emulation is scarce.” But news of his illness, now death, sparked a grateful outpouring for “a hero of truth,” “a great man” whose “courage is imperishable.” On his father’s 80th birthday, Robert wrote of his legacy, “In the chronicle of conscientious actions, one candle lights another.” Thus has he followed in his upright footsteps: An activist, editor, theologian, he’s written books about saints, prophets and “witnesses for our time,” arguing, “Courage, holiness, goodness are contagious.” In a piece for Father’s Day written before Daniel’s death, he recalls several productive, Trump-era years helping him edit The Doomsday Machine, a 2nd volume of memoirs Daniel had long struggled to finish, because, “Now is not the time to give up.” Nor was it ever. His father never “retired” from his belief in peace and protecting the world’s creatures, or from his self-declared mission to stand with “those who care about the others – (they) are my tribe.” “He was not what you would call a ‘person of faith,'” says Robert of his father. “He was happy to think of himself as a person of hope…It was a form of action, a way of life.” May his memory be for a blessing.
Abby Zimet
A longtime, award-winning journalist, she moved to the Maine woods in the early 70s, where she spent a dozen years building a house, hauling water and writing before moving to Portland. Having come of political age during the Vietnam War, she has long been involved in women’s, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues.
What Can I Do About Burnout?
Burnout is the feeling of exhaustion that helpers sometimes experience when they have taken on more than they can handle. But, says Karen Kissel Wegela, there is much we can do to prevent it, and to work with it when it occurs.
This week my husband Fred and I were standing in a small windowless room with our veterinarian, looking at x-rays of one of our dogs, Ziji. The vet, Alan, pointed to an area in the lung and indicated that there was a mass that could be malignant.
At that point I sensed a wave of dizziness and heat, and felt like I was about to keel over. Fred and Alan quickly noticed and came to my assistance. They walked me out to the waiting room and tended to me, suggesting I sit down and lower my head. I have never actually fainted in my life, so I was quite surprised and not a little frightened by how I was feeling.
Physically, burnout can manifest in exhaustion, muscle tension, clumsiness and dizziness. Emotionally, we might find that we have hair-trigger reactivity, feelings of anger, sadness, depression, and inadequacy.
In the past few months I have been feeling overwhelmed by a variety of events in my personal and professional life. Among other things, I am about to step down after fifteen years as director of the M.A. Contemplative Psychotherapy program at Naropa, and I feel like I am handing “my baby” into other hands.
As I’ve said before in this column, transitions, even ones that we seek out, are challenging. I am experiencing what helpers call “burnout,” and it is showing up in my body, my emotions, and my mind.
Burnout refers to the kind of exhaustion or feeling of overload that professional and other helpers sometimes experience when they have taken on more than they feel that they can comfortably or appropriately handle. Physically, burnout can manifest in exhaustion, muscle tension, clumsiness and dizziness. Emotionally, we might find that we have hair-trigger reactivity. Feelings of anger, sadness and even depression are not uncommon. We might feel hopeless and inadequate.
Angry outbursts and tears might pop out at seemingly silly things, and our minds might feel chock full of thoughts that whirl rapidly from one topic to another. One of the most pernicious symptoms of burnout is the belief that there must be something terribly wrong with us to find ourselves in such a state. We lose all sense of maitri (unconditional friendliness to all aspects of our experience). Instead we become self-aggressive. This is especially easy for helpers to do. We are likely to habitually buy a storyline about ourselves as being helpful, useful people, and in situations where that storyline is not being supported, it is a blow to our attempts to create an ego based on seeing ourselves as “helpers.” Doubts about who we are get added to our other feelings of distress.
Often the way we deal with what comes our way is at the root of burnout. There is much we can do to work with preventing it, as well as with working with it when it occurs.
One of the biggest causes of burnout is the desynchronization of body and mind.
First we ignore small cues that we are not fully present: we don’t get enough sleep or food, or we over-schedule ourselves. This leads to still more separation of body and mind, as we speed up to accomplish more. If we ignore these initial signs of burnout, we might become physically ill or even more mentally frazzled.
An additional cause is becoming attached to outcomes. If we are focusing on what will happen in the future, we lose track of the present moment. This happens a lot for professional helpers: we want so much for the situation to improve, we want the person we’re trying to help to feel better. This is exhausting, and it makes us less helpful since we’re only partially present.
In order to synchronize mind and body, we need to reconnect with the nowness of this very moment. Underneath all of our obsessive worrying, our mindless ditziness and poor judgment is the fact that body and mind are not together.
There are four key ideas in working with and preventing burnout. The first is bringing ourselves into contact with nowness. The second is learning to make realistic choices about what we can and cannot accomplish. The third is cultivating maitri. The fourth is getting help from others instead of trying to do it all alone.
In order to synchronize mind and body, we need to reconnect with the nowness of this very moment. Underneath all of our obsessive worrying, our mindless ditziness and poor judgment is the fact that body and mind are not together.
If we can bring ourselves gently back to this moment, this body, this place, we can start to slow down our wild minds. Bringing body and mind back into connection in the present moment helps us discriminate between what is actually happening and what we fear or hope is happening. This is an enormous help. Making choices about what we can and cannot realistically do is also based on being grounded in the present moment.
The simplest thing to do is to breathe.
Taking some breaths and paying attention to that experience can help us feel grounded. When we feel burnt out, especially if we are anxious, we tend to hold our breath.
Noticing our sense perceptions can help us reorient to this place in this moment. While writing this morning, I suddenly realized I’d forgotten to start the crock-pot for dinner. I dashed off to take care of it and then left for my day’s appointments. On the way home, I forgot to pick up the cat and had to circle back to the vet’s.
So, now that I am back at my computer, I am taking some of my own advice. I am enjoying some mindful breaths. I am looking up and noticing the trees and fields outside the window. I am getting up and petting Ziji where he rests awaiting his lung surgery. These things are helping me be right here, right now. My mind is slowing down a bit, and my heart is softening. As I tell you of the mindless things I did today, I feel some humor and maitri. I am practicing feeling whatever arises and letting it be just what it is, instead of what I’d prefer it to be. So these are some ways to practice the first three key ideas.
The fourth thing that I can do is to get some assistance and support from my friends, family and colleagues. I can go for a walk with a friend. I can ask someone to help with all of the picking up and dropping off of animals. And for professional helpers, it is always important to engage in on-going supervision or peer consultation to prevent personal difficulties from affecting one’s work with others.
Most importantly, I can walk myself into my meditation room and sit down on my cushion. I can let go of the false sense of urgency that there is something else that I must be doing at this second.
A number of years ago I worked with a client who was a Naropa student and a meditation practitioner. He told me something that I often reflect on. “You know,” he said, “when I’m really busy and don’t have time to practice meditation, I never have enough time. But if I do practice, then somehow there’s more space, and I have enough time for everything.”
ABOUT KAREN KISSEL WEGELA
Karen Kissel Wegela, PhD, is a psychologist in private practice and a professor in Naropa University’s MA Contemplative Psychotherapy and Buddhist Psychology department. Her most recent book is Contemplative Psychotherapy Essentials: Enriching Your Practice with Buddhist Psychology.
First wild rose of summer. They arrived a little later than usual,
but I saw the first of our wild roses by the river on Thursday
morning.
oyster mushroom on a tree next to our fire pit…
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 year
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 the Carmichael family with the loss of DillonPrayers for those affected by the recent train crash in India Daniel Ellsberg, U.S. military analyst who helped publish The Pentagon Papers in 1971 died last week. He was 93.Prayers for those affected by the tornados in Texas this past week.Prayers for the five lives lost in the Titan submersible off the coast of Newfoundland.
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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