Unitarian Universalist Church of Houlton, Maine, 10:00AM Sunday Morning Service Support Page. February 2, 2025. - Unitarian Universalist Church of Houlton Maine

on February 1, 2025

“Winter Transportation” photo by B. Laurence

We are making our way through winter. It has been unsteady and unpredictable at times, but let’s give ourselves some credit, we’ve made it to the first day of February! Bertrand Laurence took this photograph on a foggy day in early January and I’m featuring it in this week’s Support Page. I think it alludes to both past and present, is understated in its own way, and I like how the small glint of orange on back of the carriage brightens a rather gray day.

This week we are trying a slightly different format for our Sunday lecture. It’s called “Sunday Morning Conversations” based on a New England Transcendentalist model from the 19th century. Margaret Fuller, a famous writer and social activist from that era, delivered a short talk followed by a guided discussion on the topic. These were called “conversations.” We’ve tried this model before at UUHoulton, usually on a Monday night on various topics of interest, and we called them “Monday Evening Conversations.” In this case, we’re doing it on a Sunday morning. Continuing with our theme, the topic question for Sunday is “What is Religion?” You’ll find additional study material from Yogananda’s “The Science of Religion” in today’s Support Page that we will use in the service.

YouTube Channel content for this week is a continuation of our theme “The Science of Religion and our UU Shared Values” (part six). We have our flip-chart ready and we are going to think-tank “components of religion” and see what we come up with on our initial list. It will be interesting to see how many of these overlap with our UU Shared Values. There is also a Lemon Taste-Test. See what that’s all about! We hope you can join us for one of the services online or in-person.

Enjoy the week-end and keep warm!

In Ministry,

Dave
Here’s the list that we came up with from last Sunday’s service on components of religion.

Our gifted recorder did a remarkable job of fitting everything on one page! This is just a “raw list”of initial ideas and now we will start to organize and make sense of the data in upcoming services. Thank you to everyone who contributed!!

Components of Religion:

Pluralism

Kindness

Equanimity

Equity

Generosity

Gratitude

Allowance

Non-Interference

Affirmation

Community

Transformation

Service

Release

Welcoming

Support

Curiosity

Belonging

Personal Growth

Spiritual Practices

Interdependence

Empathy

Forgiveness

Spirituality

Self Knowledge

Justice

Compassion

Worship

PrayerLove

Connectedness

Expression Through Music and Art

Understanding

Ethics

Humility

Unconditional Love

Acceptance

Mindfulness

Humanity

Study Material
The Science of Religion

by Paramahansa Yogananda

The purpose of this book is to outline what should be understood by religion, in order to know it as universally and pragmatically necessary. It also seeks to present that aspect of the idea of God which has direct bearing on the motives and actions of every minute of our lives… The point emphasized in this book is that whatever conception we have of God, if it does not influence our daily conduct, if everyday life does not find an inspiration from it, and if it is not found universally necessary, then that conception is useless.
These (inadequate) conceptions savor of outlandishness when we are on the street, in a factory, behind a counter, or in an office. Not because we are really dead to God and religion, but because we lack a proper conception of them – a conception that can be interwoven with the fabric of daily life. What we conceive of God should be of daily, nay hourly, relevance to us. The very conception of God should stir us to seek Such in the midst of our daily lives. This is what we mean by a pragmatic and compelling conception of the Divine. We should take religion and God out of the sphere of belief into that of daily life. If we do not emphasize the necessity of God in every aspect of our lives and the need of religion every minute of our existence, then God and religion drop out of our intimate daily consideration and become only a one-day-in-a-week affair.
If by religion we understand only practices, particular tenets, dogmas, customs, and conventions, then there may be the grounds for the existence of many religions. But if religion means primarily God-consciousness, or the realization of God both within and without, and secondarily a body of beliefs, tenets, and dogmas, then, strictly speaking, there is but one religion in the world, for there is but one God.
This book gives a *psychological definition of religion, not an objective definition based on dogmas or tenets. In other words, it seeks to make religion a question of our whole inward being and attitude, and not a mere observance of certain rules and precepts.
That which is universal and most necessary to a person is religion to that person. The predominant life motive, whatever it may be, is religion to us…The significant part of it is that back of whatsoever thing we worship with blind exclusiveness is always one fundamental motive. That is, if we make money, business, or obtaining the necessities or luxuries of life the be-all and end-all of our experience, still, back of our motives lies a deeper motive: we seek these things in order to banish pain and bring happiness. This fundamental religion; other secondary motives form pseudo religions. Because religion is not conceived in a universal way, it is relegated to the region of the clouds…It is a pity we do not consider religion to be necessary in the same way. Instead, we regard it as an ornament, a decoration, and not a component part of a person’s life.
The pragmatical or practical necessity of the Universal Religion is often understood as merely a theoretical necessity, religion being considered an object of intellectual concern. If we know the religious ideal merely through the intellect, we think we have reached this ideal and that we are not required to live it or realize it. It is a great mistake on our part to confuse pragmatical necessity with theoretical necessity. Many would perhaps admit, on a little reflection, that Universal Religion is surely the permanent avoidance of pain and the conscious realization of Bliss/Love, but few understand the importance and practical necessity that this religion carries with it.

* Yogananda encouraged a new language and reconceptualization of the Divine.

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)

– YouTube youtu.be

HERE IS THE ZOOM LINK FOR SUNDAY COFFEE HOUR:
Topic: UUHoulton zoom coffee hour & check-inTime: Feb 2, 2025 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 @UUHoultonFeb 2 Sunday Service: Sunday Morning Conversations “What is Religion?”Feb 4 Meditation Group 4PM (online)Feb 5 Aroostook Climate Group Meeting in the cafe 6-7PMFeb 9 Sunday Service: David HutchinsonFeb 10 UUHoulton Board Meeting 4PMFeb 15 LGBTQ+ Luncheon NoonFeb 15 Houlton Coffeehouse 7-9PMFeb 16 Sunday Service: MaryAlice MowryFeb 23 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 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

I Lost Everything In a California Fire;

It Changed How I Live

by Pico Iyer

January 15, 2025

These days, I can’t stop thinking about the hazy morning in June 1990, when I walked all the way up our narrow mountain road in Santa Barbara, Calif., past exhausted firemen, past houses reduced to cinders and the skeletons of abandoned cars, until I reached the spot in the hills where our home was a pile of debris.

The previous evening, I’d gone upstairs to find our house encircled by 70-foot flames, whipped on by fast-moving winds. I’d jumped into a car, carrying nothing but my mother’s aging cat, but when we reached the bottom of our driveway I realized we were trapped.

For three hours we were caught in the middle of the Painted Cave fire, saved only by a good Samaritan who had driven up to be of help in a water truck and pointed a thin hose at each roar of orange as it approached.

His selflessness kept us alive until we could evacuate, and at evening’s end, I had as much to be grateful for as to regret. Yet nothing could ease the sorrow of calling my mother, who was away in Florida, to tell her that every last memento of her almost 60 years — every photo and keepsake and lecture note and necklace — was gone.

“There must be something,” she’d said.

“It’s gone, all gone.”

“Just find what you can.”

Climbing up the road a few hours later, I confirmed that every gleaming amenity in our newly remodeled house was ash.

Half a lifetime later, I see that fire as a turning point, not only a disaster. Though at the time it was one of the worst fires in California history, we had heroic firefighters to thank for the fact that almost everyone survived. And as we began, very slowly, to reconstruct our lives, I realized I could begin to live more simply, as I’d always wished to do. Coming so close to losing my life made losing my possessions a little easier to bear.

There was no escaping some memories. Reduced to nothing but a newly bought toothbrush, I could still feel myself sitting, helpless, in the car, watching the flames erase all my handwritten notes for my next three books and my next several years of writing — and with them, many of my lifelong dreams of being a writer. My mother felt she had lost her entire past and, in the autumn of her life, could not easily think of fresh beginnings.

As in the wake of a death, we then faced an Everest of paperwork. After we moved into a small apartment, it took us three and a half years before we could occupy a new home — much sturdier than the one we’d lost, but thunderously empty.

Yet when our insurance company offered to replace our belongings, I noticed that I could live happily without most of the books and clothes and pieces of furniture I’d accumulated. In some ways I felt lighter than before. I called my editor to tell him that all the books I’d promised him were no longer possible; after commiserating, he observed that perhaps I could write from memory and imagination now, from emotion, sources much deeper than my notes.

As a lifelong traveler, I felt in my bones how home is not where you happen to live so much as what lives inside you: my mother, my wife-to-be, the songs and stories that still played inside my head. I still had my words, the poems I’d learned from, my inner savings account.

Years later a friend would tell me that the Sufis say that you truly possess only what you cannot lose in a shipwreck.

Two weeks ago, I flew into Santa Barbara, toward my late mother’s rebuilt home, just as fires were shockingly remaking lives around Los Angeles, two hours to the south. Our home, as so often, was pitch-black: Our electricity had been turned off to protect us from the threat of another conflagration. Through the night, working by the light of a small lantern, I heard from friends not far away who had lost their homes or were staying in hotels, not sure what kind of life they had to return to.

The fires that were an occasional threat when our house burned down are regular visitors now to California and across the West. Insurance policies in these parts are ever harder to acquire. And though many of us in Southern California know we’re fortunate compared with most of our global neighbors facing environmental disaster, we also sense we’re living where humans are probably not meant to live, and the fire, flood and mudslide warnings will only become more frequent.

In the months after the fire, I noticed that some of my neighbors remained captive to what they had lost, while others were thinking more about how they could begin anew. It’s a matter of circumstances and temperament, perhaps, but the world’s increasing threats mean that we have to learn to ground ourselves amid the constant reminders of impermanence.

I truly hope my devastated friends around Los Angeles can look forward, toward what they can change, more than backward, to what they can’t. That they can cherish what they still have, which so often we take for granted, and which is all we have to sustain us. And that they may discover in time what I have found: that our lives are determined less by what happens to us than by what we make of what happens to us.

My heart grieves for all those who have suffered so much in recent catastrophes, yet if it deepens our sense of proportion, and of community — we’ll always be at the mercy of the winds, the heavens — then maybe something, somewhere, can be gained.

Pico Iyer, is an English-born essayist and novelist known chiefly for his travel writing. He is the author of numerous books on crossing cultures including Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk and The Global Soul.Photos from the Lemon Taste-Test:

Emma Zeigman (assistant) looks on as her brother Michael (the taster)

is about to take a sip…