Cherry blossoms in Houlton
If you happened to walk by the church this week you may have noticed that our cherry blossoms have arrived! This is one of our cherished seasonal markers of the yearly cycle. Cherry blossoms in May mean cherries later in the summer and the joy of walking out the back door after Sunday service and picking a fresh cherry right off the tree. Ahh, I’m already thinking about it…
There’s a lot going on this weekend with the monthly LGBTQ+ luncheon on Saturday at noon and Houlton Coffeehouse Saturday night. Sunday Service this week is a continuation of our EarthCare theme with part nine of our ten part study series and Dr. Mark Horvath presents a lecture titled “The Oil-Free Future” (see Mark’s brief bio below). Guest musician Bertrand Laurence will also be joining us for the service sharing two original compositions. Cherry blossoms will be on the altar and there’s also a rumor that there will be fiddlehead quiche at coffee hour. So many reasons to come, to take part and see everyone on Sunday.
YouTube Channel content for this week
is a Mother’s Day service lead by Joshua Atkinson titled “Gratitude for Mothers.” There are many reasons to celebrate mothers and compassion touches all of them. We hope you can join us for one of the services.
In Ministry,
Dave
short bio:
Mark Horvath is an astronomer at large, living in the town of Houlton, Maine. Mark did his undergraduate work in physics and astronomy at Penn State University and his graduate work at the University of Massachusetts in Radio Astronomy at the 5 College Radio Astronomy Observatory. His PhD thesis involves using fractals to determine limits on how stars form from giant molecular clouds. Currently he works at Gartner as an analyst covering quantum computing and post quantum encryption techniques. He’s seen 6 solar eclipses, 2 Total Eclipses, 3 Partial and one Total that was completely rained out. Mark is also the former owner of Wired Cafe in Market Square (where Market Pizza is today) and a member of the Houlton Town Council. He likes to look at the night sky. EarthCare Study Material:
Not Only a Danger but a PromiseThelma Young Lutunatabua
A massive rebirth is needed right now for much of the industrialized world – one that will justly transition us beyond the extractive dominance of fossil fuels and into a new way of being. Over the past few years I’ve found myself rereading the manifesto that Grace Lee Boggs and other women leaders wrote in 2005 that proclaimed, “Another world is necessary, another world is possible, another world has already started.” In it they declare, “This universal crisis is not only a danger but a promise, an opportunity to advance ourselves and our societies to a new level, based on a new vision, new principles and values.” With each new pipeline approved, with each new gas permit granted, world leaders show that they are not ready for this rebirth. But the Earth knows what’s necessary and is continuing to send shock signals that we cannot keep on postponing this transition. How do we keep on rolling this rebirth along, even despite all that is politically, economically, environmentally against us?
The future will no doubt hold its fair share of pain. Even if we transition off fossil fuels right away, it is uncertain what levels of greenhouse gases are locked into the atmosphere, how quickly our ecological systems will right themselves (though some scientific estimates look more promising than others). Yes, there will be more heat waves, more monstrous cyclones, more crop failures. I am heart broken at the lives destroyed by floods, drought, and greed, yet I also praise the new victories won, the pipelines stopped, the community solar projects built…
The world will change in the coming decades, there’s no doubt about it. Don’t surrender to the disasters and corrupt politicians. No – surrender to the new works of social change already showing us hope and possibility.
Closing EssayRebecca Solnit; Not Too Late
The future is a night in which we cannot see far; we can only navigate it by looking to the past, where we can count our victories, learn from our defeats, measure change, and see how power grows and imagination shifts. This is as true of the climate movement as anything; the movement has grown, achieved extraordinary things, improved the possibilities, awoken the world. It still has far to go, but these accomplishments should fortify our confidence to continue.
(In spite of our difficulties) The world will not stop being beautiful, not stop having sunrises and full moons, light pouring through the clouds; and while some places may be scarred or drowned and (seem) for a time lifeless, in others, seeds will break through soil, flowers will bloom, birds will soar, new life will be born and babies will learn to walk. Yes, the climate crisis will not end suddenly (it’s a long haul), and equipping yourself to keep going means finding what feeds your heart and soul. Indigenous plant scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer says, “Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us and gives us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the Earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”
LGBTQ+ LUNCHEON May 18, Saturday at Noon
LGBTQ+ luncheon is at 12 noon on Saturday, May 18 in the UUHoulton church basement. Food is provided, but please bring a potluck item to add to the event. It’s always fun to see what delicious fare shows up. The Cup Cafe will also have the espresso machine turned on for those interested in a caffeinated treat. Friends and allies welcome!
HOULTON COFFEEHOUSE
May 18, Saturday Evening 7-9 PM Houlton Coffee House at the Cup Cafe, 61 Military Street, Houlton, Maine
FEATURE: Simon Pritchard EP Release Party 8PM
Open-Mic @7PM
Coffeehouse is this weekend featuring Simon Pritchard and his first EP release “Saudade.” Simon will play material from the EP (extended play) and copies will be available for $5 at the release party. Show your support for local musicians and songwriters by coming to the show and being a part of the experience. Open-mic starts at 7PM and Simon comes on stage at 8PM. We have a couple of open-mic musicians who have signed up ahead of time so the show is already taking shape. Our kitchen has homemade chili on the menu (vegan and beef) and our barista staff will be pulling shots on the espresso machine with our full line of coffee drinks. During the eclipse we launched our own “totality latte” to rave reviews and since it was so popular we are featuring it at this month’s coffeehouse. You gotta try it!
We also have kiwi lemon spritzer Italian sodas at the fizz bar. And we still have plenty of eclipse merchandise available; T-shirts, ceramic travel mugs, stickers and Equal Exchange Total Eclipse chocolate bars (92% cocao). It’s an eclipse blackout bar.
Come early for supper and hang out before the show. Cafe doors open at 5:30PM.
See you at the Cup!
Feel the buzz…
Menu
Vegan Chili (and cheese)Classic Chili (and cheese)
Kiwi Lemon Spritzer Totality Latte (chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, textured milk and espresso)
In Celebration of Music, Poetry and the Arts…
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 zoom coffee hour & check inTime: May 19, 2024 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/81880286111?pwd=vlN8YurDY0xe0DGbPOF0y8YHvB0tlk.1
Meeting ID: 818 8028 6111Passcode: 162132
Calendar of Events @UUHoulton
May 18 LGBTQ+ Luncheon 12 Noon
May 18 Houlton Coffeehouse 7PM Feature: Simon Pritchard ep release party
May 19 Sunday service: Mark Horvath & David Hutchinson
May 26 Sunday Service: Rev. Dale HoldenMay 28 Meditation Group 4PM (online)June 2 Flower Communion Service David Hutchinson New Members Recognition Sunday Potluck BBQ Party following the service at Bill White’s
June 9 Sunday Service: Randi Bradbury & Ira Dyer
June 11 Meditation Group 4PM (online)
June 15 Aroostook Pride Event in Presque Isle (details to come)
June 15 Houlton Coffeehouse: Janice Santos
June 16 Sunday Service: Jodi Scott
June 23 Sunday Service: MaryAlice Mowry (LGBTQ+ pride service)
June 25 Meditation Group 4PM (online)
June 30 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 Houlton
61 Military Street
Can Climate Cafes Help Ease the Anxiety of Planetary Crisis?
The groups, which are springing up across the country, allow people to talk through their emotions around environmental change.
By Lola Fadulu and Emily Schmall
Lola Fadulu reported from New York, and Emily Schmall from Chicago.
March 20, 2024
In a small room in Lower Manhattan, a group of eight New Yorkers sat in a circle sharing kombucha and their climate fears against the background of pattering rain and wailing sirens.
In Champaign, Ill., a psychotherapist facilitating a meeting for other therapists held up a branch of goldenrod, asking the half-dozen participants online to consider their connection to nature.
And in Kansas City, Mo., a nonprofit that runs a weekly discussion on Zoom began its session with a spiritual reading and a guided meditation before breaking into groups to discuss topics like the ethics of childbearing amid a fast-rising global population and concerns of resource scarcity.
All were examples of a new grass-roots movement called climate cafes. These in-person and online groups are places for people to discuss their grief, fears, anxiety and other emotions about the climate crisis.
They are springing up in cities across the United States — including Los Angeles, Seattle and Boston — and around the world. It isn’t clear how many exist, but Rebecca Nestor of the Climate Psychology Alliance, a nonprofit that trains facilitators, said the number of cafes had greatly increased in the past three years. Climate Psychology Alliance North America has trained about 350 people to run climate cafes in the U.S. and Canada, and it lists 300 clinicians in its climate-aware therapist directory.
The alliance examines how mental health is affected by ecosystems — extreme weather and disasters; tainted air and water — and how that intersects with other forces, like racism and income inequality. Psychologists say that such groups help people face the unsettling realities of the climate crisis.
Ms. Nestor first hosted a climate cafe in Oxford in Britain in 2018. She said the idea was modeled after the death cafe, a concept created by a Swiss sociologist, through which people gather to talk openly about death in order to better appreciate their lives.
Many of the climate cafes are free and open to the public, but some have been convened especially for librarians, therapists and other professionals.
‘I can’t buy into the narrative anymore that there’s no choice in how this ends.’
Since June 2023, Olivia Ferraro, 24, who works in finance, has hosted more than 20 intimate climate cafes in New York City that have had between five and 20 attendees. She has also trained people online from all over the U.S. and the world — Puerto Rico, Vancouver, England and Australia — who want to facilitate such meetings in their own communities.
On a recent drizzly, unseasonably warm January evening — the temperature was 51 degrees and the high was 56 degrees — Ms. Ferraro prepped for her meeting. She lit her Brooklyn Candle Company Fern + Moss candle, which she has lit for every meeting, and turned on Khruangbin’s chill melodies.
She arranged 10 chairs into a circle near a brick wall, and set out grapes, sparkling water, plantain chips and other snacks on a table, and brought out reusable cups from her mother’s 2016 wedding.
Slowly, people from every part of the city trickled in. The crowd skewed young, with a few older adults in the mix. Each was attending a climate cafe for the first time.
After some small talk, Ms. Ferraro shared the rules for the evening. She explained that it was not intended as a substitute for clinical care.
The attendees, over the course of an hour, described worrying for their future children and future generations more broadly. They described feeling overwhelmed, not only by climate change but also by the political climate. They described oscillating between feeling hopeless and empowered about the planet’s future.
At times, long pauses punctuated the comments, as the attendees took in what had been said, staring simply at each other or into their laps.
“I can’t buy into the narrative anymore that there’s no choice in how this ends and that major corporations have complete control over my future,” said Sheila McMenamin, 32, who lives in Brooklyn.
“They do not have total control, and I refuse to cede that,” she said, as other participants hummed in agreement.
One Black woman wept, saying it was difficult to know that people of color would be disproportionately affected by climate change, but many did not have the time to participate in groups like these.
“I’m enraged about the fact that more Black and brown people are not in these rooms,” said the woman, Syrah Scott, a mother in her 40s who lives in Queens. She said that many people of color were just focused on survival. “They don’t have the money to be concerned about these things,” she said.
‘I find myself struggling to enjoy the outdoors.’
The online climate cafe for therapists in Illinois began with Kate Maurer rubbing the dried stalk of goldenrod in her hand that she had plucked from her backyard. The object connected her to the climate crisis, she said, because it was one of the many flowers native to Illinois that she had planted in an effort to restore the natural environment.
But being in her garden had begun to trigger complex emotions, she said. While nature had always given her solace, it now also made her sad.
“I find myself struggling to enjoy the outdoors because of the constant reminders” of environmental degradation, she said.
That paradox reminded Lauren Bondy, a cafe participant, of that morning’s fresh snow, and of a black rhino. Ms. Bondy and her son, then 19, had glimpsed one of the last of the critically endangered species on vacation in Tanzania years ago.
“Appreciating the beauty of it, but also appreciating the rarity and the loss,” said Ms. Bondy, a therapist on Chicago’s North Shore. “We’re holding it all.”
This wasn’t psychotherapy, the climate cafe’s facilitators had said, but rather group catharsis.
Colleen Aziz, a therapist who runs a virtual practice across Illinois, said that she felt a responsibility to bring her professional training to bear, but that few patients brought climate concerns to their sessions.
“It’s really wonderful to meet clients who are stable enough that they’re ready and able to look directly at climate,” Ms. Aziz said after the cafe, “but it usually amounts to privilege.”
‘It’s an intergenerational fight.’
Other groups have more of a focus on action.
Around the same time Ms. Ferraro’s group sprang up, Jonathan Kirsch, 32, who works in law and lives in Brooklyn, co-founded a climate cafe in November 2022 with Gianna Lum. Their group started as a private, informal gathering in his apartment but is now open to the public, and the group is more focused on translating feelings into action.
On another recent rainy day in January, more than 30 people crammed into Mr. Kirsch’s apartment in Brooklyn for a climate cafe. The doorbell rang almost without interruption as people slogged up the stairs to the apartment and peeled off their wet coats and piled up their umbrellas.
Many at the meeting worked in climate fields, including one man who worked with Extinction Rebellion, the group that disrupted both the U.S. Open and the Met Opera in an attempt to shed more light on the climate crisis.
The attendees broke into small groups. Though they were frustrated by local, state and national policies, they felt hopeful. They were flush with ideas on how to channel their energy: composting, gardening, propagating, clothing swaps and mending circles, pushing for certain legislation, joining book clubs and writing groups, and even going back to school to further their education.
“The truth is that like this is such a long fight, it’s an intergenerational fight,” one attendee told the large group after the smaller discussion groups reconvened. “We have to come with a resilient mind-set, where we’re ready to lose a lot of battles and just know that our presence in the greatest struggle will be worth it.”
Do climate cafes work?
Convening to share climate worries isn’t new. Environmental activists have organized meetings since the 1970s to discuss how to respond to climate threats. Native American communities have long gathered to grieve the loss of land, according to Sherrie Bedonie, a social worker and co-founder of the Native American Counseling and Healing Collective.
But it seems the practice is becoming more mainstream. Last year was the hottest year ever recorded, and 2024 is expected to be warmer. Canada was ravaged by destructive fires in 2023 because of hot, dry, and windy conditions fueled by climate change, and the smoke from those fires brought hazy conditions to New York and other regions. Climate change already appears to have contributed to less snow this winter.
Participants have said that gathering to talk openly about their fears provides a kind of lightness.
Sami Aaron, 71, a retired software developer, founded the Resilient Activist in Kansas City after her son, a climate activist and urban studies graduate student at Berkeley, died by suicide, citing feelings of hopelessness over the changing climate.
Her group’s cafes try to instill hope, she said.
“The dread, the hopelessness is getting exiled in all of us, and that’s why we’re not talking about it, because it’s too painful,” Ms. Bondy said. “If we can’t heal what we’re all feeling,” she added, “we can’t heal our planet either.”Prayer List
For those working for social justice and societal changePray for peaceful action and democratic process in our nationThe war in Ukraine continuesPrayers for those in Palestine and Israel as the war continues into its seventh monthPrayers for the worsening humanitarian crisis in GazaPrayers for those affected by the recent tornados in the Mid-West and American SouthPrayers concerning the protests and turmoil on US college campuses Prayers for the city of Houston after this week’s severe storm
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 delusion.
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