We are recognizing LGBTQ+ Pride Month at UUHoulton with a special service this Sunday. Pride Month was inspired by the Stonewall riots that took place over several days beginning on June 28th, 1969. The riots began after a police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar located within Lower Manhattan in New York city. From those early days, the  movement has grown and the month of June highlights LGBTQ+ history, education and celebrations across the country and the globe. MaryAlice Mowry leads the Pride Service with assistance from Stephen Kinney and special music by Rosalind Morgan and Nicholas Foster. The title of MaryAlice’s message is “The Gift of Pride.” Everyone is invited to show their support by wearing rainbow colors and bright attire. 
YouTube Channel content for this week 

is a tip of our hat to fathers everywhere in the first part of the service followed by a message by Jodi Scott titled “Divine Energy; What’s My Connection?” Do we sense our own innate spiritual resources or do we look elsewhere? You will find the link for the YouTube Service included below. 

We hope you can 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)

HERE IS THE ZOOM LINK FOR SUNDAY COFFEE HOUR:

Topic: UUHoulton zoom coffee hour

Time: Jun 23, 2024 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/87201599041?pwd=hon9Fb9YanmSn66Ya6thubiGDFdU9R.1

Meeting ID: 872 0159 9041

Passcode: 066387

Calendar of Events @UUHoulton

June 23 Sunday Service:  MaryAlice Mowry   (LGBTQ+ pride service)

June 25 Meditation Group  4PM   (online)

June 30 Sunday Service: David Hutchinson

July 3 Midnight Madness 4PM-9PM    (Curry Night Church Front Lawn)

July 7 Sunday Service:  David Hutchinson & Janice Santos

July 9 Meditation Group  4PM  (online)

July 13 LGBTQ+ Luncheon   12 Noon

July 13 Houlton Coffeehouse   Open-Mic Night

July 14 Sunday Service 

July 20 Nirvana Tribute Night  7PM    (Cup Cafe)

July 21 Sunday Service:  

July 23 Meditation Group  4PM    (online)

July 28 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

May We Live the Spirit of Pride

With gratitude for the freedom to be our true authentic selves,
may we live the Spirit of Pride

With the courage that comes from challenging fear,
may we live the Spirit of Pride

With sorrow for those who could not be here with us today, and in honor of those who died of AIDS or who lost their lives,
may we live the Spirit of Pride

With grief for those whose pain was unbearable and who left us too soon,
may we live the Spirit of Pride

Looking ahead to the justice still withheld,
may we live the Spirit of Pride

With the confidence that a sense of community banishes isolation and loneliness,
may we live the Spirit of Pride

With the rainbow flag flying high, a sense of beloved community among us, and the joy that comes from making new connections,
may we live the Spirit of Pride

UUA Website

Dedication for Rainbow Flag

One of Unitarian Universalism’s missions and commitments is that of welcoming:
of welcoming and affirming the blessedness of loving relationships in any of their forms
and the worthiness and beauty of all gender expressions.
Let us join now in a unison reading of dedication for our commitment to this stance.

We dedicate this flag and our commitment
To affirm and celebrate loving relationships in all of their forms
And gender identities in their many expressions.
May this flag inspire us to live with pride,
To embrace our truths,
And to unite in the face of adversity.
May it remind us to work towards a world
Where love knows no bounds.

From the UUA website

The Parts We Live With: D.H. Lawrence and the Yearning for Living Unison

The great paradox of personhood is that the sum is simpler than its parts. We move through the world as a totality, fragmentary but indivisible, clothed in a costume of personality beneath which roil parts perpetually fighting for power, perpetually yearning for harmony. The person making the choices, the person bearing their consequences, and the person taking responsibility for them are rarely the same person. There is no pain like the pain of watching oneself overtaken by one’s most shameful parts — the chaotic, the compulsive, the ungenerous, the needy, governed by fear and lack, splattering confusion and distress over anyone who comes near.

To live with consciousness is to own all the parts but not be owned by any of them, to choose with clarity and composure which ones to act from. To love fully — oneself, or another — is to accept all the parts and cherish the totality. 

D.H. Lawrence (September 11, 1885–March 2, 1930) captures this with poetic precision in his personal credo, composed in response to the thirteen qualities Benjamin Franklin identified as the wisest parts of personhood — temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility.

“The soul has many motions, many gods come and go,” Franklin had observed in recognition of our composite nature. “Know that you are responsible to the gods inside you and to the men in whom the gods are manifest.” Lawrence writes in response:

Here’s my creed, against Benjamin’s. This is what I believe:

“That I am I.”
“That my soul is a dark forest.”
“That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.”
“That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back.”
“That I must have the courage to let them come and go.”
“That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women.”

There is my creed.

It is not easy living with those constant visitations from conflicting gods, each with a different dictate, impelling you toward a different path. What makes it all bearable is seeing this constellation of parts as a part of something greater still — a vast and coherent universe governed by immutable laws and immense forces that vanquish the grandiose smallness of the self and its warring fragments, that render life too great and total a miracle to be met with anything but a resounding – Yes, yes…please.

Observing that what we most long for is our “living unison,” he writes:

The vast marvel is to be alive… The supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human soul… There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters.

Rhododendron in Monticello…

Peonies in Patten  (MaryAlice) 

MaryAlice at her grandson’s graduation in California

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 Gaza

Prayers for American Midwest after recent tornados Prayers for those affected by the ongoing heat waves (India, Pakistan, Middle East and North America) 

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.