Image Christmas Eve ‘23
The last remaining days of the year are winding down. We have a pretty good idea of what 2023 brought us in the last three hundred and fifty days, but when it began we had no idea of what it held. The same is true of 2024. What does the new year hold? I think it helps to know that none of us know. All we can do is to be ready to live each day, the best we can, no matter what it might bring. As this is our last Sunday Service of the year, I will be sharing “Odds and Ends” from the expiring year; personal reflections, poems, stories as well as our annual tradition of recognizing those who have passed during the year and a Yule Log ritual. Happy New Year everyone!YouTube Channel content for this week is our Christmas Eve Candlelight Service in the sanctuary. The service is a presentation of carols and readings with Nick Foster as our guest soloist. Three Kings also sing (too bad they didn’t have outfits and cardboard crowns) and the Christmas Eve Ensemble (The Unitunes) sing “In the Bleak Midwinter.” The candlelight portion of the service is not included but you will notice plenty of other lit candles throughout the proceedings. The link for YouTube is listed below. Please join us for one of the services.
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)THE LINK WILL COME LATER IN THE DAY.
LINK FOR WINTER SOLSTICE SERVICE 2020:
HERE IS THE ZOOM LINK FOR SUNDAY COFFEE HOUR:
Topic: UUHoulton coffee hour & check-in
Time: Dec 31, 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
Dec 31 Sunday Service: David Hutchinson
Jan 1 New Year’s Brunch 10AM
Jan 2 Meditation Group 4PM (online)
Jan 3 Aroostook Climate Group Meeting in cafe 6PM
Jan 7 Sunday Service: David Hutchinson
Jan 8 UUHoulton Board Meeting 6PM
Jan 13 LGBTQ+ Luncheon at noon
Jan 13 Houlton Coffeehouse (Open-Mic Night)
Jan 14 Sunday Service: Rev. Mary Blocher
Jan 14 UUHoulton Social Action Group Meeting during coffee hour
Jan 21 Sunday Service: David Hutchinson
Virtual Offering Plate
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UU Church of Houlton, 61 Military Street, Houlton, ME 04730
Our UUHoulton pledge drive is winding down but you can still donate or make a pledge by contacting
A Christmas Message from the Pope and a Priestby Juan Cole
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – My mother was a Lutheran and the Coles were Catholics, though my grandfather fell away when he married a woman from the Brethren peace church. So it was striking to me that on this Christmas a Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem, Munther Isaac, and Pope Francis both made headlines with their sermons. The schism of the Reformation was never healed, but people in the two spiritual traditions can agree on one thing, which is that the hunger, thirst, cold, homelessness, wounds and death stalking the 2.2 million Palestinians of Gaza at the hands of the extreme right wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, aided by President Joe Biden, makes this Christmas different.
Pope Francis said at his evening Mass on Christmas Eve, “Tonight, our hearts are in Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace is once more rejected by the futile logic of war, by the clash of arms that even today prevents him from finding room in the world.”
In Bethlehem itself, where Pastor Isaac preaches, the city elders canceled the Christmas parade and other festivities in commemoration of the shivering Palestinians a few miles away whose stomachs are being gnawed at by hunger and whose throats are raspy with thirst. Bethlehem is a town of some 25,000 in the Palestinian West Bank occupied militarily by Israeli troops. About 11,000 of its residents are Palestinian Christians, descendants of the Near Eastern pagans and Jews living under Roman rule who embraced the message of Jesus of Nazareth in his lifetime and after.
Bethlehem’s population is not being bombed from the sky the way the Palestinians of Gaza are, but they also suffer from Israeli occupation. According to a 2020 poll 80% of Palestinian Christians worry about being attacked by militant Israeli squatters, 83% worry that these colonizers will drive them from their homes, and 70% are concerned that the Israeli government will simply annex their land. Fully 62% of Palestinian Christians believe that the ultimate goal of the Israeli government is to expel Christians from their homeland. A good 14% have actually lost land to the Israelis, and 42% have to regularly go through Israeli security checkpoints, which have carved the West Bank up into cantons and make it difficult to get to hospital.
Although there are only about 800 Palestinian Christians in Gaza, they have suffered from Israeli bombardment, sniping attacks, and razing of civilian infrastructure. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem revealed in a letter last week that an Israeli army sniper “murdered two Christian women inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza”. It said that besieged mother and daughter Nahida and Samar “were shot and killed as they walked to the Sister’s Convent. One was killed as she tried to carry the other to safety”.
They were among hundreds of Christians taking refuge in the Parish. The church had given the GPS coordinates of church properties in Gaza to the Israeli government in hopes they would be spared, but local Palestinians say that church building has been shelled by Israeli armor.
Pope Francis responded at that time, lamenting of the Israeli campaign against Gaza that “unarmed civilians are the targets of bombings and gunfire.” He condemned the assualt at the compound of the Catholic parish, “where there are no terrorists, but families, children, people who are sick and have disabilities, and nuns . . . A mother, Mrs. Nahida Khalil Anton, and her daughter, Samar Kamal Anton, were killed, and others were wounded by the shooters while they were going to the bathroom,” he announced.
The Pope continued, “Some say, ‘This is terrorism. This is war.’ Yes, it is war. It is terrorism . . . That is why the Scripture affirms that ‘God stops wars… breaks the bow, splinters the spear’ (Psalm 46:10). Let us pray to the Lord for peace.”
The Israeli army denied the charges and got in a snit about a “blood libel.” But when you are the 17th most powerful military in the world and you genocide 20,000 civilians in 11 weeks, there isn’t any libel involved. It is just blood.
Israelis with a conscience, such as activist Orly Noy, the chairman of the human rights organization, B’Tselem, in contrast called desperately for a ceasefire. This issue isn’t about Judaism or Islam or Christianity, since there are people from each of those traditions who are on opposite sides of it.
As for Lutheran Pastor Munther Isaac, on Friday he preached a sermon “Christ in the Rubble.”
He cited the enormity of the death toll, including of thousands of children, and said that as in the case of South African Apartheid the theology of the state has been wielded against the helpless. Not even that some Palestinians are Christians has evoked sympathy in European and American Christians. “This war has confirmed to us that the world does not see us as equal. Maybe it is the color of our skin. Maybe it is because we are on the wrong side of the political equation. Even our kinship in Christ did not shield us. As they said, if it takes killing 100 Palestinians to get a single “Hamas militant” then so be it! We are not humans in their eyes. (But in God’s eyes… no one can tell us we are not!).”
He implicitly referred to US Evangelicals, many of whom have enthusiastically cheered on the Israeli army’s genocidal (my word) actions.
“I feel sorry for you. We will be ok. Despite the immense blow we have endured, we will recover. We will rise and stand up again from the midst of destruction, as we have always done as Palestinians, although this is by far the biggest blow we have received in a long time.
But again, for those who are complicit, I feel sorry for you. Will you ever recover from this?”
No, I don’t think this campaign’s supporters ever will regain their souls, which they have sold for the thirty silver coins of conformism, militarism, cowardice and Islamophobia.
Pastor Isaac went on:
“In our pain, anguish, and lament, we have searched for God, and found him under the rubble in Gaza. Jesus became the victim of the very same violence of the Empire. He was tortured. Crucified. He bled out as others watched. He was killed and cried out in pain – My God, where are you?
In Gaza today, God is under the rubble.
And in this Christmas season, as we search for Jesus, he is to be found not on the side of Rome, but our side of the wall. In a cave, with a simple family. Vulnerable. Barely, and miraculously surviving a massacre. Among a refugee family. This is where Jesus is found.”
About the Author
Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of “Informed Comment.” He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at he University of Michigan
Thich Nhat Hanh’s Love Letter to the Earth
BY THICH NHAT HANH| DECEMBER 1, 2020
The earth is you. You are the earth. When you realize there is no separation, says Thich Nhat Hanh, you fall completely in love with this beautiful planet.
At this very moment, the earth is above you, below you, all around you, and even inside you. The earth is everywhere.
You may be used to thinking of the earth as only the ground beneath your feet. But the water, the sea, the sky, and everything around us comes from the earth.
Everything outside us and everything inside us come from the earth.
We often forget that the planet we are living on has given us all the elements that make up our bodies. The water in our flesh, our bones, and all the microscopic cells inside our bodies all come from the earth and are part of the earth. The earth is not just the environment we live in. We are the earth and we are always carrying her within us.
The earth is not just the environment we live in. We are the earth and we are always carrying her within us.
Realizing this, we can see that the earth is truly alive. We are a living, breathing manifestation of this beautiful and generous planet. Knowing this, we can begin to transform our relationship to the earth. We can begin to walk differently and to care for her differently.
We will fall completely in love with the earth. When we are in love with someone or something, there is no separation between ourselves and the person or thing we love. We do whatever we can for them and this brings us great joy and nourishment. That is the relationship each of us can have with the earth. That is the relationship each of us must have with the earth if the earth is to survive, and if we are to survive as well.If we think about the earth as just the environment around us, we experience ourselves and the earth as separate entities. We may see the planet only in terms of what it can do for us.
We need to recognize that the planet and the people on it are ultimately one and the same. When we look deeply at the earth, we see that she is a formation made up of non-earth elements: the sun, the stars, and the whole universe. Certain elements, such as carbon, silicon, and iron, formed long ago in the heat of far-off supernovas. Distant stars contributed to their light.When we look into a flower, we can see that it’s made of many different elements, so we also call it a formation. A flower is made of many non-flower elements. The entire universe can be seen in a flower. If we look deeply into the flower, we can see the sun, the soil, the rain, and the gardener. Similarly, when we look deeply into the earth, we can see the presence of the whole cosmos.
A lot of our fear, hatred, anger, and feelings of separation and alienation come from the idea that we are separate from the planet. We see ourselves as the center of the universe and are concerned primarily with our own personal survival. If we care about the health and well-being of the planet, we do so for our own sake.
We want the air to be clean enough for us to breathe. We want the water to be clear enough so that we have something to drink. But we need to do more than use recycled products or donate money to environmental groups.
We have to change our whole relationship with the earth.
The view from the pulpit on Christmas Eve afternoon
Nick Foster and Dale Holden before the Christmas Eve Service
Solstice Eagle
An eagle has been hanging out behind our house the last couple of weeks.
Here are a couple of photos…
Prayer List
For those working for social justice and societal changePray for peaceful action and democratic process in our nationThe war in Ukraine continues
Prayers for those in Palestine and Israel as the war continues into its third monthPrayers for the worsening humanitarian crisis in GazaPrayers for those affected by the mass shooting in Lewiston in OctoberPrayers for the homeless and hunger challenged during the holidays
Merry Christmas to all people and all creatures large and small…All the best in the New Year!
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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