It is with great sadness that I share the news of Dwayne Scott’s passing at Eastern Maine Medical after suffering a stroke on Wednesday. We will light a candle for Dwayne in this Sunday’s service and say a few words. There will be a Celebration of Life service for Dwayne in the coming days.
Please keep Jodi in your prayers and thoughtful awareness during this most difficult time.
In love and remembrance,
Dave
Upper Main Street, Houlton (early 1900s)
Winter is still here, so don’t put the snow shovel away just yet! As I’m writing this column on Friday afternoon, snow is falling and the wind is whirling it past my window. This photo depicts winter life in Houlton, Maine over a century ago, and while we don’t know the exact date of when the photograph was taken, it must be after the Great Fire of 1902. You can see the newly constructed Fogg block in the background of the photo on the left. It’s also interesting to note that the downtown streets were not plowed as of yet. The horse and pung, still the best mode of transportation this time of year.
The Sunday Service is the second part of a back to back presentation on our theme, “The Science of Religion and our UU Shared Values (part nine). The minister will be reading from our new hard copy edition of Love at the Center edited by Sofia Betancourt and focusing our discussion on what it means to shift a theology of love into the practical application of the day to day. Study material that we will use in the service is provided in today’s Support Page. There is also a great article by psychotherapist Trudy Goodman about working with anxiety in times of uncertainty and stressful circumstance.
YouTube Channel content for this week is a continuation of our theme “The Science of Religion and our UU Shared Values” (part eight). Since this is roughly our half way point in our study we are going to do a mid-point summary and check-in and see how we’re doing. We’ve covered a lot of topic-space and there is still so much to discuss! The minister also shares a winter camping coffee brewing method that applies to the topic. We hope you can join us for one of the services online or in-person.
Keep warm everybody!
In Ministry,
Dave
Don’t forget to turn your clocks ahead this week-end!
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: Mar 9, 2025 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/82212331998?pwd=zE8zFMyPs0UHVkSQuMVZhoi1YG1zDb.1
Meeting ID: 822 1233 1998Passcode: 570739
Calendar of Events @UUHoulton
March 9 Sunday Service: David Hutchinson
March 15 LGBTQ+ Luncheon Noon
March 15 Houlton Coffeehouse 7-9PM
March 16 Sunday Service: Keith Helmuth & Stuart Kinney
March 18 Meditation Group (online) 4PM
March 23 Sunday Service: Annual Meeting (Abbreviated Service Followed by Potluck & Meeting)
March 30 Sunday Service: TBA April 1 Meditation Group (online) 4PM
April 6 Sunday Service: David Hutchinson
April 13 Sunday Service: Dale Holden
April 15 Meditation Group (online) 4PM
April 19 LGBTQ+ Luncheon 12 Noon
April 20 Sunday Service: Easter 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, Houlton, ME 04730
The Larger Way by David Hutchinson
In times of conflict
differing points of view are numberless,
the arguments circumvent fatigue
clouding the opinions of many.
Wisdom takes its place
in the circumstances of the day
willing to offer it counsel.
But interest has waned for a sane solution
and logic is bent toward a partial truth and a limited view.
(often times) The smaller way is chosen over the larger;
forceful means over peaceful.
Yet wisdom is present.
Sanity resides in the neurosis of society and in the holy souls of us all.
May we find the one in the numberless,
peace in the conflict,
and calm in the tumult of our times.
AMEN.
Last week (in session eight) I made the first attempt to semi-organize the “components of religion” that we had listed on our flip chart. It was a large and wide-spanning collection that we came up with, and what I’ve done here is consolidate and pair up similar concepts and list them.
The Science of Religion checklist is a way to track additional aspects of components to keep in mind that relate to our topic. This is a fluid process, so component-terms may change, be modified, switch lists or be dropped entirely. Please assist with our process.
Components of Religion
religious pluralism
love – compassion – kindness
transformation – attainment
affirmation – equity
allowance – non resistance – non interference
non attachment – equanimity
intention – manifestation
release – forgiveness
ethics – virtue
giving – generosity – gratitude
justice – service
spiritual practices
checklist;
definition of terms (god, religion, science)
empirical (scientific method, direct experience)
positive approach – hope – curiosity
vibration and frequency
impermanence
interconnectedness
belongingness – beloved community
Study Material
(session nine)
Love Is the Heart of This Church by Dan McKanan
Chapter 22 Love at the Center
Unitarian Universalists have increasingly come to understand ourselves as “love people,” Our enthusiasm for marriage equality is one expression of this. Another is the use of the phrase “side with love” to sum up our vision of social justice. The popularity of Side with Love is one of the main reasons that the Article II commission was charged to put love at the center of our new language. They took this charge seriously. They also retained the social gospel understanding of love as a human duty that must be manifested in social structures as well as interpersonal relationships. The new language affirms that love is a “liberating” power that we can use to “transform the world.” It is also something that requires “discipline” and that holds us “accountable.”
There is much to recommend this theology of love. Perhaps when we say that love is the heart of this church, what we mean is that this is a place where we take all the feelings of connection and caring that come naturally when we are with our family and friends and turn those feelings outward to embrace the whole world. This is not an easy task. It is about doing the work of feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and confronting those who serve power or greed rather than love. It is about doing the work of calling one another to account when we fall short of love’s standard.
“You have always been loved” was the core message of our Universalist predecessors, expressed first in theistic language and later in a more cosmic vocabulary. Across the centuries, the message was always the same: God is love. Love is God. Love will triumph over all…The social gospeler Clarence Skinner, who served one of our predecessor congregations during World War I, asserted that “The Universalist idea of God is that of a universal, impartial, immanent spirit whose nature is love.” For Unitarian Universalists, human love was always in response to the love of the universe. “We believe in love,” wrote one at the time of merger, “cosmic love as the creative force and human divine love as the law of life.”
What do I mean when I say that love is part of the fabric of the universe? My answer builds on the work of theologians who call themselves religious naturalists, process theists, as well as holistic biologists and ecologists. Through some mix of scientific observation and spiritual intuition, these thinkers affirm that every part of the universe yearns for deeper relationship with every other part. Neutrons and protons and electrons want to dance with one another and make atoms. Atoms seek each other out to make molecules. From the very beginning of life on earth, organisms found creative ways to connect. The earliest plants and animals were symbiotic communities of bacteria, each with a unique function that benefited the others. Each new relationship unleashed new creativity, culminating in the beautiful, interdependent ecosystems of the world today. We can experience cosmic love in the beauty of a flower that has evolved to deepen the relationship between plant and pollinator. In my own neighborhood, we can experience it in the persistence of the blueback herring, whose desire for the river leads them up passageways that have been blocked by dams for hundreds of generations. And we can experience it in what E.O. Wilson calls biophilia, or the desire of organisms to be in deep relationship with organisms of other species. Biophilic love, of course, is what leads humans to remove the dams and let the herrings swim free!
These examples should make it obvious that cosmic love is not all-powerful. Ecosystems can be disrupted. Humans, in fact any species, can get out of balance and destroy the other species in our community. But if love is not all-powerful, it is still, I think, the ultimate source of all power we have. Love creates; hate destroys. Cities and gardens, forests and flowers, even our own beating hearts are made of love and by love.The love story began long before we were born, and it will continue long after we are gone. So when I say, “Love is the heart of this church,” I mean that I come to church to be reminded that I am part of the love story of the universe. I come to be embraced by the music we share every Sunday and enchanted by the flowers on the altar. I also come to join others in transforming the world with our liberating love. But that will be possible, I’m pretty sure, only if we first let ourselves be transformed by the world’s liberating love.
Dan McKannan is Emerson Senior Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School, where he has taught since 2008.He is author of six books on religion and social transformation, among them Prophetic Encounter: Religion and the American Radical Tradition, published by Beacon Press.
Find Freedom from Anxiety
Psychotherapist and dharma teacher Trudy Goodman unpacks the root causes of anxiety. Anxiety is part of being human, she says, but we can learn to hold it with a peaceful heart.
My own journey with anxiety began in fourth grade when we were expected to begin making outlines. I was a dreamy, unfocused girl with undiagnosed ADHD, part of a lineage of anxious women in my Jewish family holding generations of historical trauma. With ADHD I had trouble sequencing things, organizing work, keeping track of time, possessions, calendars, and deadlines. This personal struggle and my anxiety about it grew during my school and college years. After I started intensive meditation practice, I could see through my personal situation to find great refuge. Meditation taught me to sit with, tolerate, and then befriend my anxiety. I learned that anxiety is workable and impermanent. Today, I can even say I’m grateful for the anxiety that pushed me to practice so hard.
“As long as we are human, anxiety will arise.”
In fact, we might all offer a bow of thanks to both fear and anxiety for our survival; they function as our bodyguards. We can learn to recognize the difference between acute fear, which is a helpful response to present danger, and chronic fear, which is anxious vigilance in response to real or imagined future dangers. We now understand that adverse childhood experiences and trauma can change the wiring of our stress system so that we are more prone to anxious alarm and vigilance as adults. Fortunately, modern science has shown that meditation and psychotherapy can help turn the dial down on anxiety.
We live in a time of great cultural fear about the present and anxiety about the future. Climate change and environmental injustice, war and divisiveness, poverty and global inequality, racism, homophobia, and sexism—it’s a lot to hold in our hearts.
Personally, we worry about our security, our family, our work, our body. Repeated fears can run through our minds: Will I find someone to love who will love me? Will I be able to find meaningful work? Will I have enough money? We worry socially. Will people like me? Will they respect me? Where will I fit in? Worrying about falling short, we criticize ourselves: Why can’t I handle this better? What’s wrong with me? At other times, it seems easier to deflect our anxiety by judging others in a moment of self-righteousness.
Anxiety can manifest in many ways: as restlessness, irritation, a feeling of being overwhelmed, sleep problems. It can be amplified by uncertainty and the unknown, but most of all, anxiety is a symptom of being disconnected from your truest self. The gap of disconnection between who we think we are supposed to be and who we truly are creates anxiety that exiles us from our heart of hearts. And sitting with anxiety is like sitting with poison ivy, so the understandable reaction is to turn away from the intense discomfort it brings. Unfortunately, this only makes things worse. When we don’t face the anxiety, we react in ways that temporarily relieve the feeling but, in the long run, don’t work. Both Western psychotherapy and dharma practice encourage us to turn toward the feeling of anxiety with a tender heart. Then we can see how it arises in both personal and universal ways.
Our essential nature is free and compassionate. When we practice observing anxiety with loving awareness, we may be surprised to see that it arises not only from mistaking who we truly are, but also from a deep caring. Beneath the maladaptive defenses against the feeling of anxiety—like substance use, distraction and obsession, and the impulse to judge ourselves or want to fix others—there is genuine concern. The truth is we care. Take a moment to let yourself feel this. Underneath all the worry and shame and anger and blame is the vulnerability of great caring. Tune into it, feel it as an expression of love.
The deepest root of anxiety is universal, and it’s described in the Buddha’s teachings as the first noble truth. This truth says that life inevitably includes suffering. Our life is insecure. We experience aging, sickness, and death, gain and loss, praise and blame, pleasure and pain. Life follows the truth of impermanence—although we wish we could last, we will not. No matter how we feel about it, we can’t control our vulnerability, mortality, and wishes for things to be different. When we cling to stability where there is none, this is a recipe for anxiety.
As long as we are human, anxiety will arise. With curiosity and presence, it becomes clear that the thoughts and emotions generated by anxiety are not our true identity. We can shift to become more of the Buddha that we truly are. We can breathe and kindly acknowledge anxiety, with its stories and uncomfortable sensations. We can ground ourselves, let our feet and body settle on the earth. We can take a walk among the trees and feel their steadiness and benevolence, or carefully place all our worries in the lap of the Buddha’s wisdom, in Guanyin’s compassion, or in the healing energy of Mother Earth. Consider lighting a candle and making a simple daily ritual of bringing mindful, loving presence to your body, heart, and mind. Remember that you don’t have to fight against anxiety; it is part of human incarnation. Sometimes it is hard to be human! Conflict and concerns are a part of life. But so are love and connection.
With wise understanding, timeless freedom can be found right where we are. We can shift from being “the one who is lost or afraid” to become “the one who sees it all with compassion.” We can hold it all with a trusting heart. Of course, we can work to tend and repair the world. But we can do so with a heart of caring and peace. The present moment is where both anxiety and freedom live. With practice, they can peacefully coexist.
The world of impermanence, joy and sorrow, birth and death, can all be held in a heart of freedom. The third Zen ancestor counselled us to “live without anxiety about the imperfections of the world.” In other words, things inevitably fall out of balance, and yet this can be against a backdrop of vast peace. As Suzuki Roshi said, “When we realize the everlasting truth of ‘everything changes’ and find our composure in it, we find ourselves in nirvana.”
Trudy Goodman, PhD, is the founder and guiding teacher of InsightLA. She has practiced Zen and Vipassana meditation since 1974 and has trained extensively in psychotherapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction, which she taught with its creator, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn. She was the co-founder of the original Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the first center in the world dedicated to integrating these two disciplines. She teaches retreats and workshops nationwide.
Here are photos from last weekend’s March 1 “Restore” Vigil by the Peace Pole in Monument Park. Over 55 people and animals werelined along the sidewalk showing their support. Several UUs werenoted in the assemblance…25 people met in the UU church basement after the vigil to warm up, drink coffee and discuss the day’s event.The group (at this point still unnamed) plans to meet the first and third Saturday of each month from 2-3PM in the UU basement. All concerned and curious citizens are welcome to attend.
Mac had surgery on Monday and has been recovering this week in Bangor. Mac is doing well (his sense of humor still intact) and he will be returning home this week.
Prayer List
For those working for social justice and societal change
Pray for peaceful action and democratic process in our nation
The war in Ukraine continues
Prayers for the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza
Prayers for peace in the Middle East
Prayers for those affected by the terrorist event in New Orleans
Prayers for those affected by the recent fires in Los Angeles
Prayers for this affected by the tragic aircrash in Washington DC
Prayers for those affected by recent governmental (and policy) changes in DC
Prayers for those seeking food and housing security during the cold winter
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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