The July 4th week-end is here and along with it a host of activities and celebrations in Houlton and the surrounding area. Midnight Madness starts things off tonight with venders and sales downtown, live music, McGill’s Community Band concert in Monument Park, fireworks and more. We’ll be selling UUChicken Curry on the church front lawn starting at 4PM and then following it up with a yard sale on Saturday (see details below).

Make sure you drop by and see what’s going on. On Sunday we have our regular service at 10AM with Dave speaking on a topic titled “Interdependence Day and the Atomic Art of Lichen.” You may notice that Steve’s talk from last week has influenced Dave’s talk this week. (Sometimes this cannot be helped.) It was a great service!

YouTube Channel content for this week is a service with Steve Kinney 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 on July 22. 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. The cost of the tour is $12 per person (Canadian funds). We will meet at the church parking lot at 8AM and then carpool to Fredericton. If you are interested in joining us please register by sending an email to dave@backwoodsblog.com or speak to Dave or Steve in person. There will also be a sign up list on the information table in the coffee room. 

Here is an excerpt from Steve’s talk:

Throughout Western history artists have used their imagination to depict the events and ethos of their age. In the early 20^th 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.”
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: Jul 2, 2023 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/87255285441?pwd=NUpMeGM2ZS85VWp4b3QwbUtTT0FCZz09

Meeting ID: 872 5528 5441

Passcode: 109650

Calendar of Events @UUHoultonJune 30     Midnight Madness: UUHoulton Chicken Curry Night                 (Starting at 4PM on the church front lawn)July 1  Yard Sale on the church lawn  8AM-3PMJuly 2  Sunday Service:  Dave HutchinsonJuly 9  Sunday Service:  Jeremy HardenJuly 15  Houlton Coffeehouse  7-9PMJuly 16  Sunday Service:  Rev Mary BlocherJuly 22      Trip to Beaverbrook Art Gallery  8AMJuly 23  Sunday Service:  Joshua AtkinsonJuly 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 Houlton61 Military Street
Midnight Madness on the UUHoulton Front Lawn June 30, Friday Night   4-8PM

Join us for Midnight Madness on the UUHoulton front lawn. UUChicken Curry has become a Midnight Madness must-have. I don’t know how many years we’ve been doing this (I’ve lost count) but we’re doing it again. There is also a vegetable curry option. Get there early before we sell out! There will also be hot and cold beverages, iced lattes from the cafe and slushies to cool your cravings. Don’t miss it!  The forecast is a bit “iffy,” but the cafe will be open inside if it’s too wet outside.

Yard Sale @ UUHoultonJuly 1, Saturday  8AM – 3PM
There is an outside yard sale at the UU church on Saturday starting at 8AM. With the Arts & Crafts Fair going on across the street in Monument Park, we decided to take advantage of the extra foot-traffic and have our yard sale at the same time. Shop both sides of the street! If you have items to donate to the sale you can drop them off during the day on Friday at the church as we’ll be setting up for Midnight Madness. If you would like to be a vender and run your own sale, tables are available at a modest fee. Please inquire with Joshua at 260-564-3110.

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
this grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I don’t know how many lives this poem has changed, daily, but it has mine. As powerful as it is accessible—there’s nothing subtle or ambiguous about this poem—it reminds us all to live harder, to turn away from numbness, to be alert, and remember—life goes fast. Love it, but remember. Love it, and remember.

What intrigues me about this poem, after the heat of discovery has passed, is the technical construct of it. With the poem’s truth lodged safely within me, I’m able to go in and look at the nuts and bolts of it. The first marvelous device that wows me is the way Oliver bookends the poem with questions. Right from the start, she demands, with punchy authority—with clamant insistence—Who made the world?

Tell me, she might as well be asking, what is the square root—to the trillionth decimal—of the rate of acceleration of an anvil dropped from the blue sky at a temperature of 90 degrees?

So great are Oliver’s gifts that the reader, though challenged by the sudden—and difficult—question, follows her anyway, and is rewarded, is beguiled. We—the readers—get to experience in the middle of the poem the kind of lovely, lyrical, sensate imagery that is so becalming, and which Oliver could write with her eyes closed. That part, the middle part, is just what genius does, again and again—sees the world in the world’s own irreplicability.

But then the second part of the bookend, the harder question, approaches—harder even than the impossible opener of who-made-the-world—and arrives, the game-changer. The life-changer.

Poem from New and Selected Poems, by Mary Oliver (1992); Beacon Press.

ABOUT RICK BASS

Rick Bass lives with his family in Yaak and Missoula, Montana, where he has long been active in efforts to protect the last roadless lands in one of the wildest landscapes in the northern Rockies. His latest novel is 2009’s Nashville Chrome, which looks at the music business and the destructiveness of fame; 2012 saw the release of three nonfiction works by Bass: The Black Rhinos of Namibia, A Thousand Deer, and In My Home There Is No More Sorrow.

News from the UUA

Delegates Overwhelmingly Elect Sofía Betancourt UUA President at Momentous GA

The election of Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt as president of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), to overwhelming acclaim and a standing ovation, marked the high point of a momentous General Assembly 2023 that was both a joyous celebration of UU values and a call to action for the work ahead

Boston, Mass. (June 26, 2023) – Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt was elected to serve as President of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) with the support of more than 2300 Unitarian Universalist (UU) delegates at the denomination’s annual General Assembly (GA) from June 21st to June 25th. Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt was appointed interim co-president of the UUA in 2017, and was the UUA’s first woman president. Now she will be both the first out queer individual and the first woman of color elected to the role. She succeeds the Rev. Dr. Susan Frederick-Gray and will begin her tenure on July 10th. 

“Unitarian Universalism has a vital, liberating message for our time. Our nation and denomination are experiencing challenges in a time of significant division, change and radicalization,” said Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt. “But together, I know we can serve one another, organize for justice, widen the circle of concern, collectively imagine new ways forward in community, and grow spiritually. I am looking forward to the continued work of radical inclusion, faithful witness, and the embrace of a wide range of voices and leaders for our faith.”

The Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt has served Unitarian Universalism for more than twenty years as a religious educator, minister, scholar, member of the UUA national staff and of many volunteer committees at regional and denominational levels, and as interim co-president of the UUA in the spring of 2017. She holds a Ph.D. in Religious Ethics and African American Studies from Yale University as well as an M.Div. from Starr King School for the Ministry. She is the author of Ecowomanism at the Panamá Canal: Black Women, Labor, and Environmental Ethics  (2022). Rev. Dr. Betancourt, who identifies as queer, currently lives in the Washington DC area. Please see the Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt’s full biography below.

Biography of Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt

Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt

The Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt is a minister, educator, scholar, vocalist, poet, fiber artist, and change-maker. Her work in the world and her practice of Unitarian Universalism are informed by the belief that building mutual, accountable relationships with one another allows us to live our values more fully every day. Raised in New York City as the child of immigrants from Panamá and Chile, and the grandchild of a seventh-generation Unitarian, she knows the strength that comes from building lasting community at the meeting point of difference. She is an unabashed Universalist. The teachings of unearned grace, an all-embracing love, relational accountability, and dignity that surpasses all violent forms of oppression lie at the core of her understanding of life, living, and service in faithful community.

The Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt has served Unitarian Universalism for more than twenty years as a religious educator, minister, scholar, member of the UUA national staff and many volunteer committees at regional and denominational levels, and as interim co-president of the UUA in the spring of 2017. She holds a Ph.D. in Religious Ethics and African American Studies from Yale University as well as an M.Div. from Starr King School for the Ministry.

Betancourt has served congregations in Stockton, California; Norwich, Connecticut; Storrs, Connecticut; and Fresno, California; and has served on the faculty of Starr King School for the Ministry. She most recently served as Resident Scholar and Special Advisor on Justice and Equity at our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. She is the author of Ecowomanism at the Panamá Canal: Black Women, Labor, and Environmental Ethics  (2022).

more wild roses…

Artwork and altar for Steve’s service on Dali

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 Prayers for those affected by the heat dome in the American southPrayers for the five lives lost in the Titan submersible off the coast of NewfoundlandPrayers for the firefighters in Canada and the US fighting fires this summer

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.