Dusk Over Houlton  (2023)

As you may have noticed, the days are getting shorter all the time and by 4 o’clock in the afternoon it’s already starting to get dark. On Tuesday afternoon I happened to be at the church and I decided to launch the drone for a short flight. It ended up being a short flight indeed, because it was getting dark. This was not part of my initial flight plan, but as the lights started to come on across the town of Houlton I realized it was developing into an interesting photo shot. Within a matter of minutes it was too dark to see much of anything, but the one shot I did get was worth the flight. 
Our Sunday Service leader this week is Rev. Mary Blocher and her message is titled “How to Cope with Everything New.”  YouTube Channel content for this week is a service led by 

Randi Bradbury and Ira Dyer titled “Consciously Manifesting Your Life.” Ira provides special music and we will look at the Seven Steps of Manifesting our Mind in the world around us. An open mind is one of our greatest assets. The link for YouTube is listed below. Please join us for one of the services.
Here is the link to the playlist that Ira created for last week’s coffee hour which also includes the service music videos. Check it out!
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLa-TDW-kg0umF9DOaLV4KnuMuDXfRS0UL&si=S4vkGDosHN4nazR-

In Ministry,Dave

THE LGBTQ+  LUNCHEON SCHEDULED FOR TODAY HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO SEASONAL FLU – COLD – COVID CIRCUMSTANCES. THE EVENT WILL BE BACK NEXT MONTH ON DECEMBER 16TH. PLEASE TAKE CARE EVERYONE AND WE WILL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH!

HOULTON COFFEEHOUSE
November 18,  Saturday Evening             7-9 PMThe Cup Cafe,   61 Military Street

FEATURE:   Bertrand Laurence

Houlton Coffeehouse is this weekend featuring guitar extraordinaire Bertrand Laurence. Bertrand brings his international flair to the coffeehouse stage with the blues, folk, story-telling and assorted entertainment options. Bertrand always puts on a great show! See the “brief bio” below for more info.

Open-mic starts at 7PM. If you are an aspiring musician, poet, stand-up comedian or writer you won’t find a better stage (or more supportive audience) to try out your material. We are now live-streaming coffeehouse so the stage is even larger. Believe it or not, we are now in our 31st year of Houlton Coffeehouse (and still going strong!). Come early to sign up and we’ll try to fit in as many performers as possible. We have barley & vegetable soup (with a kielbasa option) on menu and our barista staff will be pulling shots on the espresso machine with our full line of coffee drinks. 

Come early for supper and hang out before the show. Cafe doors open at 5:30PM.

See you at the Cup!

Feel the buzz…

MenuBarley & Vegetable Soup (with a kielbasa option)Kiwi spritzer with a lemon twistPumpkin Spice Latte
Brief Bio:

Bertrand studied music briefly at Berklee college, sound-art at Mass Art, and finger-style guitar on his own while ruining his parent’s blues, country & folk record collection. 

Bertrand’s guitar playing evolved from countless hours improvising in public to silent movies, improv’ comedy, and designing sound for movement theatre. Recently moved from Cambridge MA to Houlton, this ex-pat is also an awarded guitar instructor, a dad, and a recovering ex-mime. Expect a range of American styles, and stories of a frenchman surviving in the USA.

“La Vie En Bleu” …an unexpected gem…unquestionable tone and phrasing whether using six-or twelve-string acoustic or Dobro slide…” 

-Michael Caito, The Providence Phoenix

“…street tough…with seductive smoothness…”

 -Scott Alarik, the Boston Globe
In Celebration of Music, Poetry and the Arts…(providing a stage for over 30 years!)

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/tS8t8fVjSnU

HERE IS THE ZOOM LINK FOR SUNDAY COFFEE HOUR:

Topic: UUHoulton coffee hour & check-in

Time: Nov 19, 2023 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/86732617469?pwd=8xYZPtmkpOtgQaMLxsIenwLappwlMA.1

Meeting ID: 867 3261 7469

Passcode: 611194

Calendar of Events @UUHoulton

Nov 18      Houlton Coffeehouse  7PM  Feature: Bertrand Laurence

Nov 19  Sunday Service: Rev. Mary Blocher

Nov 21  Meditation Group  4PM  (online)

Nov 23      Happy Thanksgiving!

Nov 26  Sunday Service: George Peabody and David Hutchinson

Dec 3  Sunday Service: Rev. Dale Holden   (1st Sunday of Advent)

Dec 3  Holiday Brunch @ Randi and Ira’s after coffee hour 

Dec 5  Meditation Group  4PM  (online)

Dec 9  Holiday Craft Fair 

Dec 10  Sunday Service: David Hutchinson

Dec 16      LGBTQ+ Luncheon at noon

Dec 16   Houlton Coffeehouse    Feature: Ira Dyer

Dec 17  Sunday Service:  Joshua Atkinson

Dec 19     Meditation Group  4PM  (online)

Dec 21 Winter Solstice Celebration Drumming 6:30PM Ceremony 7:00PM

Dec 24 (No Sunday Morning Service)

Dec 24 Christmas Eve Candlelight Service  4PM         Potluck in the fellowship hall following the service

Dec 31 Sunday Service: David 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

May Sarton on Generosity

by Maria Popova from her weekly column “Brain Pickings.”

May Sarton    (May 3, 1912–July 16, 1995) 

“Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you,” Annie Dillard wrote in her beautiful essay on generosity. “You open your safe and find ashes.” I feel this truth deeply, daily — for nearly two decades of offering these writings freely, I have lived by the generosity of strangers. It is especially gratifying to perpetuate the spirit of generosity if you have arrived at the ability to do so by way of struggle and privation. No one takes more joy in giving than those who come from little. That is what the philosopher-poet May Sarton explores in a passage from her endlessly rewarding 1972 book Journal of a Solitude. In her sixtieth year, after decades of struggling to live by her pen as she went on channeling the human experience in her ravishingpoems, Sarton finds herself at last solvent, and giddily so. Reflecting on her belief in the “free flow” of energy and means, she writes:

Both human problems and money flow out of this house very freely, and I believe that is good. At least, it has to do in both cases with a vision of life, with an ethos… I am always so astonished, after all the years when I had none, that I now have money to give away that sometimes I may speak of it out of sheer joy. No one who has inherited a fortune would ever do this, I suspect — noblesse oblige. No doubt it is shocking to some people. But I am really rather like a child who runs about saying, “Look at this treasure I found! I am going to give it to Peter, who is sad, or to Betty, who is sick.”

She offers a simple, lovely definition of wealth:

Being very rich so far as I am concerned is having a margin. The margin is being able to give.
May Sarton was thirty-three when she left Cambridge for Santa Fe. She had just lived through a World War and a long period of personal turmoil that had syphoned her creative vitality — a kind of deadening she had not experienced before. Under the immense blue skies that hadst enchanted the young Georgia O’Keefe a generation earlier, she started coming back to life. Her white-washed room at the boarding house had mountain views, a rush of sunlight, and a police dog and “a very nice English teacher” for neighbors. As the sun rose over the mountains, she woke up each morning “simply on fire” with poetry — new poems she read to the English teacher, not yet knowing she was falling in love with her. Judy would become her great love, then her lifelong friend and the closest she ever had to family.

MEDITATION IN SUNLIGHT
by May Sarton

In space in time I sit
Thousands of feet above
The sea and meditate
On solitude on love

Near all is brown and poor
Houses are made of earth
Sun opens every door
The city is a hearth

Far all is blue and strange
The sky looks down on snow
And meets the mountain-range
Where time is light not shadow

Time in the heart held still
Space as the household god
And joy instead of will
Knows love as solitude

Knows solitude as love
Knows time as light not shadow
Thousands of feet above
The sea where I am now

Prayer List
For those working for social justice and societal change

Pray for peaceful action and democratic process in our nation

The war in Ukraine continues

Prayers for those in Palestine and Israel as the war continues into its second month

Prayers for the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza

Prayers for those affected by the recent mass shooting in Lewiston

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.