“Easter Altar”    (photo by Dave)

Easter is here! It’s been a long haul (with several snowy setbacks along the way), but it looks like we made it. As I’m writing this column on Friday afternoon, it is a wonderful 57 degrees outside. I even saw a few daffodils sprouting through the muddy soil. These are the signs of Spring that encourage the fatigued soul after a long Maine winter.

Our Easter service is this Sunday at 10AM in the church parlor and we’re trying to add as much color as possible to the space, fresh flowers and lots of music. Rev. Dale plays the historic Frisbee organ (we’ll open the doors in the parlor as Dale plays in the sanctuary) and we also have special music from the Unitunes and even a little flugelhorn. The minister’s Easter message is titled “Transformation.”  

There is a lot going on in our community and the nation right now so you’ll notice we have included more articles than usual in this week’s Support Page. We hope that you find them informative and helpful during these demanding times. Easter is a time of hope and change. 

YouTube Channel content for this week is a Palm Sunday Service led by Rev. Dale Holden with congregational music, a special from the Unitunes along with traditional palms waved during the service as we celebrated the beginning of Holy Week. The title of the homily is “All In.” 

We hope you can join us for one of the services online or in-person.

Have a great Easter weekend!

In Ministry,

Dave

LGBTQ+ Luncheon

April 19      Saturday at Noon

We hope you will join us this Saturday, April 19 from 12:00 – 2:00 PM for NOA’s LGBTQ+ potluck luncheon open to all generations and allies! If you would like to bring a dish, you’re more than welcome to but there is no cost to attend. There will be plenty of food to share!We hope to see many of you there! If you have any food allergies, dietary preferences, and/or accessibility needs/requests and feel comfortable sharing, please contact izzy@equalitymaine.org!

Unitarian Concert Series

James Mullinger Show (postponed)

It turns out we will have to wait a little while to see award-winning British-Canadian comedian James Mullinger in Houlton. Due to complicating concerns regarding the US-Canadian border, the James Mullinger Show on May 3rd has been postposed to a future date (undetermined at this point). Online tickets will be refunded this week and locally purchasedtickets can be refunded at The County Co-op & Farm Store in downtown Houlton. We are disappointed that the show did not work out this time around, but we are including a couple of JM videos on The Cup Cafe Facebook Page for you to check out. You gotta keep your sense of humor these days…Message from James:I never cancel shows. I have driven through Canada’s worst storms, I have performed with many terrible ailments and injuries, I have performed the same day as unspeakablepersonal tragedies. But I am afraid I am having to postpone my tour date in Houlton, Maine, USA next month for depressingly obvious reasons. All tickets are being refunded this week. Hope to reschedule when things calm down.

We’ll let you know when James makes it to Maine!!

N.B. comedian fears being ‘locked up,’ cancels U.S. show

James Mullinger was scheduled to perform in Maine early next month

Mark Leger· CBC News 

James Mullinger is always looking for good fodder for jokes, but he may draw the line at being detained by police or border officials in the United States.

The Saint John-based comedian recently cancelled an upcoming show in Houlton, Maine, with reports of entertainers encountering problems in the U.S. during the current trade dispute. 

“I love my job but not so much that I’d want to be locked up for two weeks … although it would probably make for good material,” he joked. “But my wife needs me at home. If I didn’t have people dependent on me I would possibly take the risk.”

The British-born comedian, who moved to New Brunswick more than a decade ago, had the venue and date booked and his paperwork in order, but it “seemed risky” making the trip to Maine in the current political climate.

“It just felt like not the right time,” said Mullinger. “I didn’t want to get swept up in either misinformation or propaganda or necessarily believing everything you hear. But it just seemed risky hearing that there are performers being locked up [even though] they’re there with the correct paperwork.”

Mullinger said he’s never cancelled a show so it’s not a decision he took lightly.

“Whether it be personal injuries, physically or otherwise, personal family tragedies, terrible weather, I will always make sure [the show] happens,” he said.

Canadian artists losing U.S. opportunities

Angela Campbell, the executive director of the Imperial Theatre in Saint John and a board member of the Canadian Association for the Performing Arts, said it’s unfortunate but understandable that some performers fear crossing the border right now.

“We want Canadian artists to go to the States, we want to introduce them into those markets, we want to give them that access. We want to do the same here [for U.S. artists],” she said. 

“[But] there’s uncertainty right now on how their immigration policies will affect us. We’re seeing some really unfortunate stories about Canadian artists having real trouble once they get into the U.S. and trying to get into the U.S.”

Campbell said performing artists are losing opportunities to perform in the U.S. so need to be supported more at home in Canada.

“It’s one of the conversations we’re having at the national level,” said Campbell. “How do we support Canadian artists … if they are seeing a decrease in touring availability in the U.S.? How do we backfill that for them and support them until they can start touring internationally again?”

Mullinger said Canadians need to more actively support homegrown comedians at a time like this.

“Canadians can do their part this summer,” he said. “When they are deciding what comedy shows to go to, choose Canadian performers. There are Canadian comedy festivals booking solely American comedians … Let’s treat Canadian comedians the same way we treat Canadian food. Embrace them and support them.”

Mullinger said these are not anti-American sentiments. He loves Maine and will return to doing shows there when it feels safe again. 

He also wants to continue to nurture the bonds that exist between people in both countries. To that end, he is organizing replacement shows near the border in St. Stephen and Saint Andrews that he hopes Americans will cross the border to attend.

“I hope we can get the people of Maine and New Brunswick together in a room and we can all laugh together because, really, the things that certainly people in power want to do is divide us. This is a time more than ever for comedy to bring us together and unite us … and all just have a big hug and a big laugh together.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Leger is a reporter and producer based in Saint John. Send him story ideas to: mark.leger@cbc.ca

With files from Information Morning in Saint John

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 coffee hour & check-inTime: Apr 20, 2025 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/83348399635?pwd=cC4JJrpfIOWPb37MSVUsVMZXSTi1xF.1
Meeting ID: 833 4839 9635Passcode: 109968

Calendar of Events @UUHoulton

April 19LGBTQ+ Luncheon    12 Noon

April 19 “Restore” Group Meeting   2PM

April 19    There is no coffeehouse this month  (Hip Hop Event)

April 20 Sunday Service:  Easter Service  David Hutchinson 

April 22Meditation Group  (online)  4PM

April 27 Sunday Service: Kathryn Harnish

May 3 “Restore” Group Meeting  2PM

May 3 Unitarian Concert with James Mullinger is postposed

May 4 Sunday Service:  Leigh & Fred  (Maypole Service)

May 6 Meditation Group   4PM  (online)

May 7 Climate Group Meeting in the cafe     6PM

May 11 Sunday Service: David Hutchinson 

May 17 LGBTQ+ Luncheon   12 Noon

May 17 “Restore” Group Meeting  2PM

May 17 Houlton Coffeehouse  7PM Feature: Just Us   (Janice, Doug & Ira)

May 18 Sunday Service: Randi Bradbury & Ira Dyer

May 25 Sunday Service: David HutchinsonJune 1 Sunday Service: MaryAlice Mowry & Friends (Pride Service)

June 8 Sunday Service: Flower Communion   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

Tend Hope, Take Joy!

By Wren Bellavance-Grace

April 14, 2025

A hundred years ago, T.S .Eliot wrote, “April is the cruelest month,” When I woke up mid-April to snow on the ground, I thought T.S. had gotten it exactly right. It seems fitting to mention this is also National Poetry Month.

But did you know that April is also the National Month of Hope?

Neither did I.

April in New England is supposed to be squarely in the season we call spring, but too often surprises us with one more winter storm. I should know it’s coming, but every year it feels like the cruelest trick. This time it feels like the cruelest trick in the cruelest year. To wake every day to witness many of the principles and values we love being degraded; so many of the people we love being otherized. We may feel untethered, our emotional responses to daily indignities bouncing us between anger, determination, fear, resilience, despair, and yes, even hope.

Meanwhile, the natural world obeys its own calendar. Peepers begin to sing their marshy peeps – April snow or no. Goldfinches are growing and showing their yellow plumage. Crocuses have pushed their heads above the mud in spite of overnight frosts. Hope in every color, shape, and sound emerges. There are spiritual lessons for us in every peep and each unfurling bud.

As people of faith, we are called to respond to cruelty with hope. Our flaming chalice is an enduring symbol of our shared commitment to keep the flame of hope alive. Forged in the fires of World War II, the artist Hans Deutsch centered sacrifice and love in his design. 

As people of faith who draw inspiration from many sources of wisdom across continents and through the ages, we believe in the Hope that spring promises. There is a reason that it is in springtime that Demeter waits to welcome Persephone back home. There is a reason that our Christian forebears anticipated and celebrated the Resurrection in spring. Here in New England, where there are now more hours of sunlight in every day, hope feels a wee bit easier to find.

The spiritual challenge for us this now is not only to tend this hope, but also to take joy when and where we can. Joy is a necessary corollary to Hope. Sometimes it comes easy; sometimes we fight for it. In these times, I look to scholars of Black Joy, like Brandy Factory, who writes, “Black Joy affirms that…I am an agent of change. It rejects the idea that violence,… injustice, discrimination, prejudice, and dominance over others are normal and acceptable actions.”

Beloveds! Hades will always be readying his chariot to reclaim Persephone. So while she is here with us, let us feast. Let us sing.

Empire will always seek to snuff out Hope’s light. While it abides, let us adorn ourselves with violet crocuses, make headbands of forsythia to prepare the way for May’s Flower Moon. Let us dance.

It may feel somehow wrong to insist on Joy when so much is breaking and broken. It is an act of faith to insist on Joy, and it always entails some level of risk.

Just as the crocus pushing through mud risks an April snowfall, we are also part of the nature of things that rise up from the muck over and over again – season after season, singing as joyfully and full-throatedly as an ocean of peepers, as a sky-full of Canadian geese joyfully reclaiming their summer homes.

Tend to Hope, beloveds, and take heart. Take joy, wherever and whenever you can, together. As the poet Mary Oliver of blessed memory has written, “If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it…..Joy is not made to be a crumb.”

Wren Bellavance-Grace

UUA Staff

What’s Happening Is Not Normal

April 17, 2025

By David Brooks

Opinion Columnist

In the beginning there was agony. Under the empires of old, the strong did what they willed and the weak suffered what they must.

But over the centuries, people built the sinews of civilization: Constitutions to restrain power, international alliances to promote peace, legal systems to peacefully settle disputes, scientific institutions to cure disease, news outlets to advance public understanding, charitable organizations to ease suffering, businesses to build wealth and spread prosperity, and universities to preserve, transmit and advance the glories of our way of life. These institutions make our lives sweet, loving and creative, rather than nasty, brutish and short.

Trumpism is threatening all of that. It is primarily about the acquisition of power — power for its own sake. It is a multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men, so of course any institutions that might restrain power must be weakened or destroyed. Trumpism is about ego, appetite and acquisitiveness and is driven by a primal aversion to the higher elements of the human spirit — learning, compassion, scientific wonder, the pursuit of justice.

So far, we have treated the various assaults of President Trump and the acolytes in his administration as a series of different attacks. In one lane they are going after law firms. In another they savaged U.S.A.I.D. In another they’re attacking our universities. On yet another front they’re undermining NATO and on another they’re upending global trade.

But that’s the wrong way to think about it. These are not separate battles. This is a single effort to undo the parts of the civilizational order that might restrain Trump’s acquisition of power. And it will take a concerted response to beat it back.

So far, each sector Trump has assaulted has responded independently — the law firms seek to protect themselves, the universities, separately, try to do the same. Yes, a group of firms banded together in support of the firm Perkins Coie, but in other cases it’s individual law firms trying to secure their separate peace with Trump. Yes, Harvard eventually drew a line in the sand, but Columbia cut a deal. This is a disastrous strategy that ensures that Trump will trample on one victim after another. He divides and conquers.

Slowly, many of us are realizing that we need to band together. But even these efforts are insular and fragmented. Several members of the Big Ten conference are working on forming an alliance to defend academic freedom. Good. But that would be 18 schools out of roughly 4,000 degree-granting American colleges and universities.

So far, the only real hint of something larger — a mass countermovement — has been the rallies led by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But this too is an ineffective way to respond to Trump; those partisan rallies make this fight seem like a normal contest between Democrats and Republicans.

What is happening now is not normal politics. We’re seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to — Democrat, independent or Republican.

It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.

Peoples throughout history have done exactly this when confronted by an authoritarian assault. In their book, “Why Civil Resistance Works,” Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan looked at hundreds of nonviolent uprisings. These movements used many different tools at their disposal — lawsuits, mass rallies, strikes, work slowdowns, boycotts and other forms of noncooperation and resistance.

These movements began small and built up. They developed clear messages that appealed to a variety of groups. They shifted the narrative so the authoritarians were no longer on permanent offense. Sometimes they used nonviolent means to provoke the regime into taking violent action, which shocks the nation, undercuts the regime’s authority and further strengthens the movement. (Think of the civil rights movement at Selma.) Right now, Trumpism is dividing civil society; if done right, the civic uprising can begin to divide the forces of Trumpism.

Chenoweth and Stephan emphasize that this takes coordination. There doesn’t always have to be one charismatic leader, but there does have to be one backbone organization, one coordinating body that does the work of coalition building.

In his book “Upheaval,” Jared Diamond looked at countries that endured crises and recovered. He points out that the nations that recover don’t catastrophize — they don’t say everything is screwed up and we need to burn it all down. They take a careful inventory of what is working well and what is working poorly. Leaders assume responsibility for their own share of society’s problems.

This struck me as essential advice for Americans today. We live in a country with catastrophically low levels of institutional trust. University presidents, big law firms, media organizations and corporate executives face a wall of skepticism and cynicism. If they are going to participate in a mass civic uprising against Trump, they have to show the rest of the country that they understand the establishment sins that gave rise to Trump in the first place. They have to show that they are democratically seeking to reform their institutions. This is not just defending the establishment; it’s moving somewhere new.

Let’s take the universities. I’ve been privileged to teach at American universities off and on for nearly 30 years and I get to visit a dozen or two others every year. These are the crown jewels of American life. They are hubs of scientific and entrepreneurial innovation. In a million ways, the scholars at universities help us understand ourselves and our world.

I have seen it over and over: A kid comes on campus as a freshman, inquisitive but unformed. By senior year, there is something impressive about her. She is awakened, cultured, a critical thinker. The universities have performed their magic once again.

People flock from all over the world to admire our universities.

But like all institutions, they have their flaws. Many have allowed themselves to become shrouded in a stifling progressivism that tells half the country: Your voices don’t matter. Through admissions policies that favor rich kids, the elite universities have contributed to a diploma divide. If the same affluent families come out on top generation after generation, then no one should be surprised if the losers flip over the table.

In other words, a civic uprising has to have a short-term vision and a long-term vision. Short term: Stop Trump. Foil his efforts. Pile on the lawsuits. Turn some of his followers against him. The second is a long-term vision of a fairer society that is not just hard on Trump, but hard on the causes of Trumpism — one that offers a positive vision. Whether it’s the universities, the immigration system or the global economy, we can’t go back to the status quo that prevailed when Trump first rode down the escalator.

I’m really not a movement guy. I don’t naturally march in demonstrations or attend rallies that I’m not covering as a journalist. But this is what America needs right now. Trump is shackling the greatest institutions in American life. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

In the summer of 2011, I went to a protest against economic injustice in New York City. I’ve gone to a lot of demonstrations over the decades, and this one was as forgettable as most of them are–they’re good, they contribute, they aren’t landmark events, you’re basically flossing your democracy so it doesn’t decay. Then on September 17th, 2011, another protest against Wall Street was called that seemed like it might have been just like the one I attended. But it wasn’t. 

People decided not to go home, and more people came and more, and they ended up staying in their tents and community kitchens into November, capturing the spotlight, creating space for the telling of stories of lives ruined by subprime mortgages and medical and education debt, inspired hundreds of sister Occupys to spring up all over the US and the world and changed the political conversation about economic exploitation and debt in this country. No one knew it was going to happen, but when it happened it was like a release valve had been opened, and so much energy poured through, changing the national conversation, creating communities, stirring hopes, inspiring the founding of the Debt Collective and the campaigns against abusive debt systems, launching many statewide and local initiatives and improvements.

In Chile in 2019, a small rise in the cost of subway fares in Santiago, the capital, prompted protests that somehow grew and rose and became an uprising that spread across the country and led indigenous people to topple statues of conquistadors and much else to transpire and a fair amount of police violence, some of it fatal, some of it robbing people of their eyesight, against protestors. CNN reported at the time, “As the protests intensified, [then President] Piñera declared a temporary state of emergency throughout the country. Daily curfews were put in place in the capital Santiago and soldiers deployed to the streets. He also asked all his cabinet ministers to resign, and promised to impose social and economic reforms that were at the heart of the protests.” Which is a reminder that even if they impose martial law or its equivalent, protest can have and often has power. 

The current president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, who is 39 and left/progressive, rose to prominence in those and earlier student protests, which weren’t really about subway prices but the larger issue of economic inequality. We show up, we protest, we speak up, we keep our solidarity and our determination intact, and then sometimes, somehow something happens and it’s not just another protest, it’s history, it’s transformation, it’s insurrection. 

I tell these stories because I think we are all on edge, watching the atrocities and outrages of the Trump Administration, and feeling that something more than the current protests must happen, something decisive, something transformative. I tell them because I know we don’t know exactly how and when it will happen, but I suspect it will, and I suspect it will start with something small, with a “one more thing/one last straw” kind of incident. No one knows  when or where. 

Meanwhile, we’re in a new kind of war. The administrative branch of the federal government is attempting to destroy the United States by dismantling the departments, services, and programs of the federal government. I never thought I’d write that sentence, but DOGE/Trump is like an autoimmune disorder, a part of the body politic attacking the whole. They’re also attacking individuals in this country–the immigrants, from poor refugees to PhD candidates they’ve grabbed and deprived of due process. They’re attacking the Constitution and the rule of law. And abroad, they are waging the kind of war it is when you suddenly pull away the things people need to survive.

In Zambia, NPR reports, ” People are falling ill because the U.S.-funded clinics where they got their HIV medications and care have suddenly been shuttered. The staff is gone. The electricity has been shut off. Some patients have already run out of their daily pills that keep HIV at bay — and they have started to feel the physical consequences of the virus surging back.” The Associated Press reports, “The Trump administration has ended funding to U.N. World Food Program emergency programs helping keep millions alive in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and 11 other impoverished countries.“This could amount to a death sentence for millions of people facing extreme hunger and starvation,” WFP said on X.”  

Here in the USA, things are ramping up, our things as well as their things. Harvard refused to surrender to the outrageous demands of the administration. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports, ” Faculty-senate leaders at several institutions are calling for the creation of “mutual-defense compacts” to guard against what they describe as “legal, financial, and political incursion” by the Trump administration. Four senate bodies — at Rutgers University, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, the Indiana University at Bloomington, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst — have passed resolutions advocating for such an alliance, and several more will consider doing so in the coming weeks.” The Washington Post published an editorial by Mahmoud Khalil from his ICE prison in Louisiana, profound in its morality and poetry, astonishing to have been written in such brutal circumstance. The courts smacked down more lawlessness.

Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland flew to El Salvador to try to find out what happened to his constituent Kilmar Abrego Garcia not long after Cory Booker spoke with passion against the Trumpists for twenty-five hours without a break. Amazingly, Van Hollen just met with Garcia (there are photos) and will be reporting more soon about his condition and situation. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders’s speaking tour, much of it to red states and counties, is attracting record crowds. Some members of congress are starting to act like we’re in an emergency. 

Independent Senator Angus King was supposed to talk to Heather Cox Richardson about Paul Revere, but he instead went into a powerful denunciation of the Republicans and the Trump Administration: “There are three guardrails, Heather, and one of them is the Congress, and they’re failing miserably.” The courts, he added, “are doing pretty well but they need to know they have the support of the American people and the congress. The third guardrail is the American people.” He worries about waiting for the midterms because “I believe the overreach is getting worse every day.”

Moderates are speaking up and there are some murmurs of Republican defection, notably in Congress where twelve signed a letter objecting to defunding Medicaid. Alaska’s Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski just copped to what’s holding some of them back: “We are all afraid…I am oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real.” Which isn’t really news–we’ve known that at least since Trump arrived, the party is run like, well, maybe MS-13, with threats and punishments for defectors and dissidents. Talking on CNN, Republican Congressman Jared Goldman chimed in, “Think about whether any of us want to vote a certain way but because we fear for our personal safety, we decide to vote differently. We are no longer representing our constituents. We are representing something else, more like the bully threatening us. That is more like Vladimir Putin operates.”

But what I’m here to say, is that the pressure is building. There are protests and strikes scheduled and good people organizing and organizations like the Sunrise Movement, Indivisible, and Third Act standing strong. Not just the visible pressure of these public events but the interior pressure of moral distress, outrage, fear, disgust, horror at the destruction being wrought and the harm being done. It’s no longer radicals and progressives alone; it’s moderates and centrists and even people who voted for Trump but didn’t understand they were voting for this. 

When does the pressure break, the dam crack, the earthquake fault slip, the ferment explode the bottle? No one knows. But we can prepare for it, we can build toward it, we can lay the groundwork for it. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the summer of 2025 exceeds the intensity and scale of the summer of 2020, the summer of the Black Lives Matter George Floyd protests. But I don’t know. Neither do you. No one does. All we can do is keep showing up, keep speaking up, keep donating, keep connecting, keep our values close and our courage strong and keep an eye out. And not give up, including not settling into this as though it’s normal or permanent or we’re helpless. I think I said here before that it’s like we can pile up the fuel for the bonfire but it’s lightning that will ignite it. 

I know a lot of people these days are uncomfortable with uncertainty, but I’ll take the true knowledge that is we don’t know over the false knowledge that we do. No one knows the future. But we do know the past, which tells us that things happened no one anticipated, that history itself is made out of surprises that only seem obvious or inevitable in retrospect. This administration has destabilized the world and intends to rule it. But I don’t think all the surprises will be to their benefit. 

By saying surprise, by saying lightning, I make it sound like “it happens,” and it comes from somewhere else. It comes from us when we find ourselves, our values, our courage say no more to the crimes and harm, it comes from us when we come together as civil society, it comes from us when like the countless droplets of a wave we wash over government and institutional power to show that greater power that can start it all over again.

As Seamus Heaney wrote:

History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

There have been many such “once in a lifetime” waves in my lifetime, including the Good Friday Agreement in Heaney’s native Northern Ireland, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the liberation of the East Bloc countries in the revolutions of 1989, the Zapatista uprising of 1994, the creation of the huge indigenous-governed province of Nunavut in Canada in 1999, the color revolutions in Eastern Europe in this century. All the decolonizations in Africa in 1960 and after I’ve been reading about. It’s a ballad full of rhymes, and while I don’t know what will happen or when, I know it will rhyme again and it might soon. 

Rebecca Solnit is an American writer and activist. She has written on a variety of subjects, including feminism, the environment, politics, place, and art.

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 this affected by the tragic aircrash in Washington DC

Prayers for those affected by recent governmental (and policy) changes in DC

Prayers for those affected by the earthquake in Myanmar

Prayers of those affected by this week’s shooting at Florida State University

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.