November 9, 2024

“Sunset in November”  (photo by Dave)With a return to standard time last week the sunset now arrives an hour earlier than we had grown accustomed to. Of course, the days are getting shorter this time of year, but the one hour adjustment sure makes it seem abrupt. I took this photo last November just after the time change, and you can notice the lights starting to come on across town. This is the view from our UUHoulton corner as the sun begins to set over a northern town in November. 

The big news this weekend is Houlton Mini-Con (see the article below). The doors opened on Friday afternoon and the event continues until Sunday night with vendors, gamers, workshops, art classes, food and lots of people in costumes! The Sunday Morning Service will include themes from the Mini-Con with Dale Holden playing the Imperial March on the organ (in costume), a memorial tribute to James Earl Jones, who recently passed and was the voice of Darth Vader, special music by Bertrand Lawrence and a sermon by the minister on the practice of Jediism. Costumes are encouraged and don’t forget your light saber! Our YouTube Channel content for this week 

is a service led by Brigitte Rivers titled “Telling Our Stories.” The story-telling finds expression in various forms, but what matters most is the personal reflection, observation and the life story itself. Brigitte shares her process as a writer, artist, teacher and stand-up comic. We hope you can join us for one of the services online or in-person.Enjoy the week-end!
May the force be with you…

In Ministry,Dave

 Houlton Pioneer Times news article 

Aroostook’s 1st comic con hits Houlton in November

by Kathleen Phalen Tomaselli

A comic con is coming to Aroostook County in November and the packed weekend event is slated to be much more than just people dressing up in costumes and vendors hawking superhero paraphernalia. The Houlton event, Nov. 8-10, is the first comic con, or comic book convention, north of Bangor and offers a variety of activities. There will be gaming, artisan workshops, expert panels, superheroes and their nemesis villains, book authors, educational sessions and non-stop play.  “It’s geared for geeks, nerds, lovers of comic books, board games, scifi and fantasy,” said co-host Roxanne Bruce of Shiretown Gaming who started preparing for this last year.

Comic cons are comics and pop art conventions that celebrate comics, film, television, cosplay, science fiction, fantasy, gaming, anime and other related art. Attendees often dress in the garb of their favorite characters and share a love of alternate worlds and realities. “I like to say comic con is for anyone who likes comic books, board games, card games, fantasy and sci-fi,” said Bruce. 

The 501st Legion, an international costuming fan group that celebrates Star Wars, will be joining the event as will the Star Wars StormTrooper Battalion, The Mandalorian, Batman, Yuri the Toxic Husky, the Master Chief, Transformers, to name a few. 

On Sunday, the final day, the public is invited to meet at the Houlton Bridge at 9 a.m. for an actual Star Wars Battle, followed by a group walk through downtown to the Unitarian Church Eclipse Rock where they will present a Darth Vader statue. The church organist will be playing the Imperial March on the historic pipe organ. And at 10 a.m., and the Unitarian Minister, Rev. Dave Hutchinson, will present a Jedi Sermon during the Sunday Service.

“Bring your lightsaber,” Bruce said.

There will be authors from around the state signing books and an author’s panel.

On Saturday, organizers and volunteers will be teaching people how to play Dungeons & Dragons. There will be an expert panel including Scott, who is a PhD psychologist, and Bruce, who is a University of Maine educator with a doctorate in business administration, talking about using D&D and other role playing games for therapy and as educational tools.

There will be nine different vendors each day, with some vendors showing people how to do things like paint or knit and crochet.  

“We have so many different things planned. I think it will be a great time,” said Cup Cafe manager Jodi Scott. 

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: Nov 10, 2024 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/85390620571?pwd=NowRXaQTDgG448agll58jd5HzyD8pz.1
Meeting ID: 853 9062 0571Passcode: 534660

Calendar of Events @UUHoultonNov 8-10  Mini-Con Event   (comic & gaming conference)Nov 10 Sunday Service: David HutchinsonNov 16 LGBTQ+ Luncheon  12 noonNov 17 Sunday Service: Pledge Drive Kick-Off Sunday    Group-Led Service             Potluck Meal Following the ServiceNov 18 UUHoulton Board Meeting 6PM Nov 19 Meditation Group  4PM  (online)Nov 24 Sunday Service: David Hutchinson Nov 24 Art Class @The Cup   1-3PMDec 1 Sunday Service:  Bill WhiteDec 3 Meditation Group  4PM  (online)Dec 4 Aroostook Climate Group meeting 6PM  Dec 8 Sunday Service: David HutchinsonDec 14 LGBTQ+ Luncheon  12 noonDec 14 Houlton Coffeehouse  7PM Feature: Event Horizon and Johnny StringsDec 15 Sunday Service: Dale HoldenDec 21 Winter Solstice Celebration  7PMDec 22 Sunday Service: David HutchinsonDec 24 Christmas Eve Candlelight Service 4PM (potluck in the church fellowship hall following)Dec 29 Sunday Service:  Open Pulpit Service

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 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

UUA Announcement

Unitarian Universalist Association

To our beloved Unitarian Universalist community:

Yesterday morning, we awoke to the undeniable reality that the religious and political right’s decades-long strategy to sow fear and division and pit our communities against one another prevailed on the electoral landscape. While there were victories on important issues in state measures and local races, we cannot deny that the politicians who will hold control of the presidency and the senate have told us clearly their intent to target our communities and further destabilize our democracy.

Beloveds, we are with you in all of it today. We acknowledge that among us are a wide range of emotions, experiences, reactions and needs. We make space for all of us, and we join you in your tears, your terror, your anger.

Dear ones, please know that your Unitarian Universalist Association has been planning for multiple scenarios, including this one, for a long time. We know well that these election results will mean even more threats against beloveds among and beyond our congregations – especially BIPOC folks, migrants, trans/nonbinary/queer people, the disabled community, people with uteruses, and more. In the coming days and weeks, we will be in close communication with our leaders and our congregations about both spiritual and practical considerations as we provide extra support and solidarity to these groups and strategize our next moves to show up in our power as a religious community. 

There is profound rage in the nation right now – among both the staggering number of those who chose to vote for this deadly agenda of domination and division, and those who feel betrayed and dehumanized by it. Fear is also rampant across the country, although how we respond to that fear has clearly led us to respond in wildly different ways. Many of us – particularly those who have never found full hope and safety in the protections of the state – are not surprised at this outcome, even as we are shattered by it.

At the same time, Unitarian Universalists know that democracy and justice are central to, but not defined by, electoral cycles. We honor and celebrate the incredible work thousands of UUs have done through UU the Vote this year, and we remind ourselves that the long-term struggles for democracy, for bodily autonomy, for climate justice and decriminalization are the ongoing imperatives of our faith. We will continue to Side With Love because that is who we are, regardless of the results of any one election. We will center ourselves in Love, and ground our work going forward in our shared values of justice, equity, transformation, pluralism, interdependence, and generosity.

Friends, now is the time to trust your leadership; to be in close communication with your local partners and trusted co-conspirators; to prepare for the influx of people who will walk through your doors seeking comfort, community, connection.

It is a moment for deliberateness, care, thoughtfulness, and coordination. To give space for the magnitude of today, recognizing we will discern together the actions needed in the weeks and months ahead. And it will be imperative for us all, individually and collectively, to reground in the spiritual practices and organizing skills that we have been cultivating for so long.

So we pause, we breathe, we hold one another close. And we ask:

How will Unitarian Universalism meet this moment? Who are we called to be, and what are our deepest values and commitments compelling us to do as the map of the terrain that lies ahead snaps into focus?

Perhaps the greatest gift of belonging to the rooted, dynamic living tradition of Unitarian Universalism is knowing in our bones that we are both the inheritors of a complex and powerful historical legacy and the stewards of a future yet to be imagined.

Today, as it has always been, the unwavering Love at the center of our faith is our greatest balm, our strongest shield, and our fiercest power. That animating core of Love will both demand our rigorous action and offer us the wellspring of hope and courage that will equip us for that work in the times ahead.

Beloveds, we will hold our fear together.

We will honor our rage and devastation and grief.

We will hold one another ferociously, tenderly, faithfully.

And then:

We will move deliberately.

We will invest in trust.

We will claim joy, rest, and sustenance.

We will resist en masse.

We will fight fascism and continue the struggle for democracy.

We will continue to build our movements for justice.

We will focus our efforts and abandon distractions.

We will create safe harbor for those in danger.

We will leverage our resources.

We will sharpen our skills and our analysis.

We will act as if no person is disposable.

We will refuse the politics of division and despair.

We will seek the wisdom of elders and of history.

We will weave deeper connections with our neighbors.

We will fight for our survival.

And we will create the conditions of possibility for our thriving and liberation.

With deep love, faith, and solidarity,

Your Unitarian Universalist Association

November 7, 2024

A Lighthouse for Dark Times

This is the elemental speaking: It is during phase transition — when the temperature and pressure of a system go beyond what the system can withstand and matter changes from one state to another — that the system is most pliant, most possible. This chaos of particles that liquefies solids and vaporizes liquids is just the creative force by which the new order of a more stable structure finds itself. The world would not exist without these discomposing transitions, during which everything seems to be falling apart and entropy seems to have the last word. And yet here it is, solid beneath our living feet — feet that carry value systems, systems of sanity, just as vulnerable to the upheavals of phase transition yet just as resilient, saved too by the irrepressible creative force that makes order, makes beauty, makes a new and stronger structure of possibility out of the chaos of such times.

Cultures and civilizations tend to overestimate the stability of their states, only to find themselves regularly discomposed by internal pressures and tensions too great for the system to hold. And yet always in them there are those who harness from the chaos the creative force to imagine, and in the act of imagining to effect, a phase transition to a different state. 

We call those people artists — they who never forget it is only what we can imagine that limits or liberates what is possible. “A society must assume that it is stable,” James Baldwin wrote in reckoning with the immense creative process that is humanity, “but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.” In the instability, the possibility; in the chaos, the building blocks of a stronger structure.

A century of upheavals ago, suspended between two World Wars, Hermann Hesse(July 2, 1877–August 9, 1962) considered the strange power and possibility of such societal phase transitions in his novel Steppenwolf (public library). He writes:

Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and ugliness; accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap. A man of the Classical Age who had to live in medieval times would suffocate miserably just as a savage does in the midst of our civilisation. Now there are times when a whole generation is caught in this way between two ages, two modes of life, with the consequence that it loses all power to understand itself and has no standard, no security, no simple acquiescence.

We too are living now through such a world, caught again between two ages, confused and conflicted, suffocating and suffering. But we have a powerful instrument for self-understanding, for cutting through the confusion to draw from these civilizational phase transitions new and stronger structures of possibility: the creative spirit. 

Hesse observes that artists feel these painful instabilities more deeply than the rest of society and more restlessly, and out of that restlessness they make the lifelines that save us, the lifelines we call art. A century before Toni Morrison, living through another upheaval, insisted that “this is precisely the time when artists go to work,”Hesse insists that artists nourish the goodness of the human spirit “with such strength and indescribable beauty” that it is “flung so high and dazzlingly over the wide sea of suffering, that the light of it, spreading its radiance, touches others too with its enchantment.”

Often, they do the nourishing at great personal cost. He considers what it means, and what it takes, to be an artist:

You will, instead, embark on the longer and wearier and harder road of life. You will have to multiply many times your two-fold being and complicate your complexities still further. Instead of narrowing your world and simplifying your soul, you will have to absorb more and more of the world and at last take all of it up in your painfully expanded soul, if you are ever to find peace.

Most people, Hesse laments while watching his contemporaries, are instead “robbed of their peace of mind and better feelings” by the newspapers they read daily — the social media of his time — through which the world’s power-mongers manipulate our imagination of the possible. “The end and aim of it all,” he prophecies, “is to have the war over again, the next war that draws nearer and nearer, and it will be a good deal more horrible than the last.”

That is what happened. The next war did come, the world’s grimmest yet — a phase transition that nearly destroyed every particle of humanity. And yet something was left standing, stirring — that same creative force that made of the chaos a new era of possibility never previously imagined: civil rights and women’s liberation, solar panels and antibiotics, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Nina Simone.

On the other side of that war’s ruins, another thinker of uncommon depth and sensitivity considered the role of the artist and of art in the collapse and reconfiguring of civilizations. In a 1949 address before the American Academy of Arts and Letters, later included in his lifeline of a collection Two Cheers for Democracy (public library), the English novelist, essayist, and broadcaster E.M Forster (January 1, 1879–June 7, 1970) celebrates the stabilizing power of art in times of incoherence and discord:

A work of art… is the only material object in the universe which may possess internal harmony. All the others have been pressed into shape from outside, and when their mould is removed they collapse. The work of art stands up by itself, and nothing else does. It achieves something which has often been promised by society, but always delusively. Ancient Athens made a mess — but the Antigone stands up. Renaissance Rome made a mess — but the ceiling of the Sistine got painted. James I made a mess — but there was Macbeth. Louis XIV — but there was Phèdre. Art… is the one orderly product which our muddling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths; it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden.

Because art is the antipode to the destructive forces sundering society, the artist — endowed with the personal and political power of the sensitive — will invariably tend to be an outsider to the society in which they are born. A decade before Auden observed that “the mere making of a work of art is itself a political act,” before Iris Murdoch observed that “tyrants always fear art because tyrants want to mystify while art tends to clarify,” Forster writes:

If our present society should disintegrate — and who dare prophesy that it won’t? — [the figure of the artist] will become clearer: the Bohemian, the outsider, the parasite, the rat — one of those figures which have at present no function either in a warring or a peaceful world. It may not be dignified to be a rat, but many of the ships are sinking, which is not dignified either — the officials did not build them properly. Myself, I would sooner be a swimming rat than a sinking ship — at all events I can look around me for a little longer — and I remember how one of us, a rat with particularly bright eyes called Shelley, squeaked out, “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators df the world,” before he vanished into the waters of the Mediterranean… The legislation of the artist is never formulated at the time, though it is sometimes discerned by future generations.

This, he assures us, is not a pessimistic view — it is a kind of faith in the future, made of our creative devotion to the present. (I am reminded here of his contemporary Albert Camus’s insistence that “real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present,” and of C.S. Lewis, who reckoned with our task in troubled times from the middle of a World War to remind us that “the present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.”) Forster writes:

Society can only represent a fragment of the human spirit, and that another fragment can only get expressed through art… Looking back into the past, it seems to me that that is all there has ever been: vantage-grounds for discussion and creation, little vantage-grounds in the changing chaos, where bubbles have been
blown and webs spun, and the desire to create order has found temporary gratification, and the sentinels have managed to utter their challenges, and the huntsmen, though lost individually, have heard each other’s calls through the impenetrable wood, and the lighthouses have never ceased sweeping the thankless seas.

Maria Popova is a Bulgarian-born, American-based essayist, book author, poet, and writer of literary and arts commentary and cultural criticism that has found wide appeal both for her writing and for the visual stylistics that accompany it.

Photos from the arts and craft sale last week:

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 Prayers for the worsening humanitarian crisis in GazaPrayers for those affected by the tragic school shooting in Georgia.Prayers for those recovering from the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Florida, North Carolina and the South EastPrayers for peace in the Middle East as the conflict widensPrayers for those recovering from hurricane Milton in FloridaPrayers for post election 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.