Less than a week until Christmas Day (I’m writing this on Thursday afternoon) and still not much snow the ground. This snowy picture of Market Square was taken last year, not this year, but we’re still hoping…The excitement, anticipation, as well as the exhaustion of the holiday season are all part of the package that is our Christmas experience. I hope that you will find time, in the busyness of it all, to reflect on the meaning and significance of this holy season for you and those you love. We have several services scheduled in the coming days to include as part of your holiday celebration leading into the new year. The Winter Solstice Celebration is tonight on Saturday, December 21. Drumming starts at 6:30 in the sanctuary and the solstice ceremony, led by Leigh and Fred Griffith at 7:00 in the parlor. Potluck refreshments will follow afterwards downstairs in the cafe. We observe the Fourth Sunday of Advent this week with the minister delivering a homily titled ”Untangling the Lights” on allowance, which follows up his talk on anticipation, apprehension and assurance. The Christmas Eve Candlelight Service is on Tuesday afternoon at 4PM followed by a potluck in the fellowship hall. A Yule Log Service finishes out the year on Sunday, December 29. All are welcome.
YouTube Channel content for this week is the Third Sunday of Advent and Rev. Dale Holden leads the service with word and music. Rosalind Morgan is our guest soloist and our very own Unitunes share a musical number. The theme of the service is peace and the title of Dale’s reflection is “Sleep in Heavenly Peace.” We hope you can join us for one of the services online or in-person.
Enjoy the week-end and keep warm.
Christmas is coming!
In Ministry,Dave
Winter Solstice Celebration @UUHoultonDecember 21 Saturday Night
6:30 Drumming in the sanctuary7:00 Solstice Ceremony in the parlor
Potluck refreshments following the ceremony in The Cup CafeWe have hot wassail…!!
Christmas Eve Candlelight ServiceDecember 24 Tuesday Afternoon
4PM Christmas Eve Service Followed by potluck in the fellowship hall
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: Dec 22, 2024 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/87221608739?pwd=V1HcigYLRIuRiNQd433DGJyYUm1QMg.1
Meeting ID: 872 2160 8739Passcode: 516402
Calendar of Events @UUHoultonDec 21 Winter Solstice Celebration 7PM Drumming at 6:30PM
(potluck refreshments in the cafe afterwards)Dec 22 Sunday Service: “Allowance” David HutchinsonDec 24 Christmas Eve Candlelight Service 4PM (potluck in the church fellowship hall following)Dec 25 Merry Christmas!!Dec 29 Sunday Service: Open Pulpit Service (yule log)
Virtual Offering Plate
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UU Church of Houlton
61 Military Street
Fear Not and Hallelujah
by Rev. Marcus Liefert
December 20, 2023
“And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not….”
—Luke 2:9-10a
I could use an angel popping by every now and then to tell me to fear not. Instead of waking up and doomscrolling, I want each morning for my phone to alert me to a baby born. It would be sort of like an obituary in reverse:
Undoubtedly, the angel would alert me, she will touch other lives. She will care deeply, and others will feel excitement when they see her, sorrow at her absence. Perhaps she will teach children, drive buses, fight fires, steward libraries, or manage cities. Or maybe she will inspire people around the world for millennia to come by preaching a message of transcendent love and a holy vision of peace on earth.
She may, it would conclude, live a quiet life with a few close friends, a cat or maybe chickens, who depend on her to feed them each day, and a case of treasured books she turns to when the rest of the world is too much to face.
Fear not, it would gently remind me: another human life has begun; another newborn messiah has been welcomed into this world.
I’d still read the science and politics of climate change and feel my heart lurch for our planet in peril. I’d still read about police departments propping up white supremacy and high courts stripping women’s rights, or love separated by borders, our country still ruthlessly declaring: no room at the inn.
But in the back of my head, I’d also hear the angel song, imagining that miraculous life full of spectacular greatness or simple, ordinary, human wonder.
Fear not, the angels would text me.
Hallelujah, I’d write back. Hallelujah, as all of us move forward, doing the next thing that is to be done, which is about all you can ask.
Fear not, the angels say. Hallelujah, we write back. Let heaven and nature sing.
Prayer
God of newborn child and new parents, of life in the midst of winter, be with us in our fear and our joy. When the world is too much with us and worry or grief, numbing or cynicism, threaten to smother all hope of magic from our lives, bless us with the reminder that new life arrives. May our hearts open to receive it; may our hands find gifts to honor it; may our voices find songs to rejoice in it.
About the Author
Rev. Marcus Liefert serves as minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, CA. He’s a lifelong UU whose ministry was shaped by growing up at First Unitarian in Oakland, squandering his teenage years as a leader in Young Religious Unitarian Universalists.
People Above Ideas: Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd on Grief and Anxiety in the Wake of the Election
Grief work helps us find “devotion, courage, and resistance” going forward, writes Ladd.NANCY MCDONALD LADD 12/9/2024
I promised myself a long time ago that I would never give my heart to a notion, an idea, or an ideal so far removed from real life that the loss of it would break my heart without putting me in relationship to real, live, hurting people. Never give your heart to an abstraction, I promised. Not to the idea of liberty, or the concept of faith, or the notion of people’s basic goodness. The idea of idealism has never been enough for me.
And yet, in the wake of a national election that sent seismic waves of uncertainty rippling in our lives and the world, I feel grief for the passing of notions that I long cautioned myself against turning my heart over to entirely. Despite myself, I grieved the death of partially fictive concepts that only the privileged could ever have believed in. The cracks formed and forming in the once-rock-solid idea of democracy. The story told behind sheltering walls during my 1980s childhood about America bringing “peace through strength” to the whole world. The great era of international cooperation ushered in by the institution-builders who filled our progressive sanctuaries in the middle of the 20th century. The dream that people, underneath it all, will look out for one another in the end. Though I promised never to give my heart to such abstractions, when the votes rolled in, I grieved what Langston Hughes once called, “the land that never has been yet and yet must be.”
Now, as we move through the end of this year, I am trying not to judge my feelings of loss and grief. I’m not self-flagellating for the purpose of being seen to publicly self-flagellate, though such behavior is well within the normal patterns of white progressives such as myself in these days. Guided by the wisdom of my colleagues including queer, BIPOC, trans, and immigrant beloveds whose bodies are at risk every day in this reality we share I am instead making space for those feelings.
Grief isn’t right or wrong. It just is. Like a stone in the hand or a cup of water on the countertop. It is.
In this moment, the stakes of grief work are profound because our collective liberation depends on our honest inner work. For those whose identities and expressions mean that they are most acutely at risk, unaddressed grief can take root in the body, bringing pain and suffering even beyond the inherent risks of an increasingly dangerous world. For those who hold privileged identities, unprocessed grief has a way of curdling into anxiety. Anxiety, left unchecked, has a way of coming out sideways, often incorrectly aimed at the very people among us who are most at risk. Conflicts over random issues erupt, to distract us from greater harmful patterns that remain unaddressed. We go after the ones closest to us when we don’t feel capable of taking down the structures of power that feel too far away.
If we do not do the work of grieving the ideals we mistakenly gave our hearts to, we might end up hurting each other when we need community the most.
This Advent season, I am reminded that the Christian tradition waits for the birth of a baby. Not a concept or an idea or even a king, but a vulnerable, small, very human child. The pause of the season is not held in liturgical spaces to make way for the king of kings, but for an embodied child lying right next to us—a child in need of our care, our devotion, and our sacrifice.
I can’t fully love the real human who is my neighbor, my friend, my fellow congregant, or my partner in holy resistance if I don’t grieve the concepts and ideas that I mistakenly loved in their stead.
So let there be sorrow even amid the twinkling of the lights. Let us wait for every real, embodied human to invite us into acts of greater devotion, courage, and resistance than we could muster alone. Let us grieve the ideas we have lost so that we can love the people with whom we share the way forward.
AUTHOR BIONancy McDonald LaddNancy McDonald Ladd is Director of Communications and Public Ministry at the UUA. Rev. Ladd leads the development and implementation of the UUA’s communications strategy, ensures that strategy addresses the UUA’s intersectional justice priorities, and manages the UUA Communications staff. Previously, she served as Senior Minister at River Road Unitarian Universalist Congregation from 2012 – 2024. Under her leadership, River Road became both a beacon and a beta-test for new forms of lay, staff and clergy collaboration within and across congregations.
Tree decorating during coffee hour last Sunday:
…and Don puts the star on top of the tree!
Jim and Elvis in the holiday spirit!
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 the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza
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 AmericaPrayers for those in need or homeless during this Advent season
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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