Earth Day is the largest non-religious holiday in the world (a truly global event). April 22 is the official date of Earth Day, but in recent years its observation and events associated with the ecological movement have expanded into what we now call Earth Week and Earth Month. Since its early beginnings in 1970, Earth Day has evolved into an event that celebrates our ecological home as well as an educational opportunity to explore the challenges we face in caring for our planet today and in the coming years. This week we will recognize Earth Day in the early part of our Sunday Service with special guest musician Bertrand Laurence, who composed a special song for the occasion. Kathryn Harnish delivers the message of the day (which is not Earth Day related) titled “Belonging Begins with ‘I See You’” which includes a video of The Highwomen singing “Crowded Table”. In the news this week, Pope Francis died on Easter Monday at the age of 88 at Domus Sanctae Marthae in Vatican City. With the release of his Encyclical “Laudatory Si” in 2015 “On Care For Our Common Home,” he became known as the Environmental Pope and a powerful voice for the planet and its inhabitants. We’ve included several articles in this week’s Support Page with that in mind.
YouTube Channel content for this week is our Easter Service in the UU parlor; Rev. Dale plays the historic Frisbee organ, special music from the Unitunes and even a little flugelhorn. The minister’s Easter message is titled “Transformation.” Easter is a time of new life, hope, renewal and change.
We hope you can join us for one of the services online or in-person.
Find ways to celebrate Earth Week!
In Ministry,
Dave
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 27, 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 27 Sunday Service: Kathryn Harnish Special Music: Bertrand Laurence
April 29 Meditation Group 4PM (online)May 3 “Restore” Group Meeting 2PM
May 3 Unitarian Concert with James Mullinger is postposed
May 4 Sunday Service: Leigh & Fred (Maypole Service)
May 7 Climate Group Meeting in the cafe 6PM
May 11 Sunday Service: David Hutchinson
May 13Meditation Group 4PM (online)
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 Hutchinson
May 27 Meditation Group 4PM (online)
June 1 Sunday Service: MaryAlice Mowry & Friends (Pride Service)
June 8 Sunday Service: Flower Communion David Hutchinson BBQ cookout & party at Randi and Ira’s after the 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 Hoult
on, 61 Military Street, (US Route 2), Houlton. ME 04730
PoetryA poem by Linda Pastan from her collection “Insomnia”
Imaginary Conversation
You tell me to live each day as if it were my last. This is in the kitchen where before coffee I complain of the day ahead—that obstacle race of minutes and hours, grocery stores and doctors. But why the last? I ask. Why not live each day as if it were the first— all raw astonishment, Eve rubbing her eyes awake that first morning, the sun coming up like an ingénue in the east? You grind the coffee with the small roar of a mind trying to clear itself. I set the table, glance out the window where dew has baptized every living surface.
Connecting faith and environmental action
On this Earth Day, the Bible has been on my mind.
I’ve been working on an article about evangelical Protestants in Indiana who are trying to help heal the planet. The relationship between the Bible and environmental efforts came into sharper focus with the death of Pope Francis, who used his enormous platform to exhort humanity to take better care of the Earth.
For Francis and those evangelicals, the mission is rooted in Scripture.
“When we talk about the environment, about creation, my thoughts go to the first pages of the Bible, to the Book of Genesis,” Francis said to the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square in June 2013.
“Cultivating and caring for creation is an instruction of God which he gave not only at the beginning of history, but has also given to each one of us,” Francis continued.
Most U.S. adults, including majorities of Protestants, Catholics and people of other religions, believe that the Earth is sacred and that God gave humans a duty to protect and care for it, a Pew Research Center survey found in 2022. But there is often a disconnect between that belief and environmental action. On average, the survey found, people who are less religious tend to be more concerned about climate change.
Leaders from many religious traditions have sought to change that by raising awareness in their communities about global warming and biodiversity loss. Francis was undeniably the most prominent example.
On Monday, the day he died, tributes poured in from environmentalists of all stripes.
“His humble leadership on the climate crisis sparked a moral movement that will continue to light the way forward for humanity,” wrote Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president and a climate activist.
Bill McKibben, another prominent climate activist, called Francis “perhaps the world’s greatest environmental champion.”
Francis’ death comes at a time when despair has been biting at the environmental movement. The Trump administration is denying climate science and promoting fossil fuels, the main driver of global warming. The United States is in the process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, a pact that Francis supported.
The pope’s last day on Earth was Easter, a celebration of life after death and hope in the face of despair.
On Monday in Indianapolis, the Rev. Katy Lines, a pastor at Englewood Christian Church, had the day off after a busy Easter Sunday. She was tending to her native plant garden and reflecting on her gratitude for Francis’ contributions.
“Anytime someone that is a person of influence speaks on behalf of nonhuman creation, I relish that,” Dr. Lines said. “And when it comes from a person of deep faith who has a place of power and a voice, I think it makes it even stronger.”
For Oscar Soria, a Catholic environmental activist, Monday was a day of mourning and steely hope. He first met the pope three decades ago, he said, when Francis was a bishop in their native Argentina. He recalled an interaction they had five years ago, when Mr. Soria told the pope how dispirited he was by the lack of progress in global biodiversity negotiations.
“He took my hands and told me to never give up, never get tired of serving, never,” Mr. Soria said. “It was tender and yet challenging, and I will never forget that because I think that is what he’s been saying to all of us.”
Humble Francis
A memory of transcendent humanity in Rome
| TIMOTHY SNYDERAPR 21 The one time I was to meet Pope Francis, I had to wait. Others, more knowledgeable than me, will write memorials today. I want to share a single detail from one day in Rome, in January 2018. The site was a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, St. Sophia; the occasion was the conferring of the honors of the Blessed Martyr Omelian Kovch. The namesake of this distinction was a Greek Catholic priest who rescued Jews during the German occupation, and who himself died inside the Majdanek concentration camp. While in Majdanek, Kovch wrote that he did not wish for anyone to intervene on his behalf, since he wished to minister to the needs of the dying: “They die in different ways, and I help them cross this bridge into eternity. Is this not a blessing? Is this not the most splendid crown that God could place on my head? Precisely so. I thank God a thousand times each day that He sent me here. I ask nothing more of Him. Do not be troubled, and do not lose faith on my part. Instead, rejoice with me. Pray for those who created this concentration camp and this system. They are the only ones that need prayers.” The award was for courage in ecumenical understanding, and it was a great honor to be among a small group of distinguished east Europeans that day, Ukrainians and a Pole. I was moved by the golden beauty of the interior of St. Sophia, and overwhelmed by the occasion. Perhaps naturally, I was thinking of myself, of what I would say to the pope when he arrived. Our common language was Spanish, which I speak very poorly, and I was rehearsing in my mind what I wanted to say, which was to thank him for recent statements about ecology, and to describe the little book I wanted to give to him. As I understood over the course of the morning, everyone wants to give something to the pope.Awaiting Francis, I was sitting with the other honorees in a pew towards the front and on the left. The church was very full of people, sitting and standing. I noticed, though, that the people with disabilities were led carefully to the first pew on the right. In this setting, I was reminded of the practices of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, which is dedicated to the “martyrs and the marginalized,” including the service of the disabled. I do not know whether Francis would have expected this particular arrangement when he entered the church. I can only report on what he did.Francis was led down the aisle, resplendent in white, very erect, walking slowly and greeting people along the way. Just before he reached the sanctuary, he halted suddenly and turned to his right, noticing that pew. Then, as the rest of us waited, he walked to its far end, and bent himself to speak. He greeted each person in turn, touching them. As the people with whom he was conversing could not rise, he had to lower himself. So, over and over, Francis knelt down to look someone in the eye and to hold both of their hands in his. This took about fifteen minutes. It was a moment to think about others, and in that sense, for me, a liberation, from my own anxiety and selfishness. Many words and much grandeur followed. But that moment is what I remember. None of us is perfect. Even Father Omelian Kovch was not perfect. Pope Francis was not perfect. The institution they represented has much to answer for. But imperfection can represent itself as service, in the acknowledgement that we can transcend ourselves when we see others first. “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” When Francis made the rest of us wait so that he could greet the less fortunate, of course he was doing something symbolic. But such symbols matter, because in them we can glimpse something higher through something human, something that remains even as the memory of white garments and golden artifice fades. Timothy Snyder meeting Pope Francis |
A Spring Prayer
Shozan Jack Haubner presents a prayer for the chaotic awakening of nature that is spring.
20 APRIL 2025
On the mountain where I live, the weather can be incredibly bipolar, which is great fun. In the winter we get snowed in and in the summer the sun burns us all to hell. A big fan of the “middle way,” though, my favorite time of year is… today, as it turns out: Spring (which has arrived painfully behind schedule this snowy, soggy, foggy year).
Spring is when the mountain comes alive. If there’s been a lot of snow, and suddenly there’s tons of sun, things start crawling out of the earth, stirred to life by the contrasts in their surroundings. The hills basically go nuts. You’re walking down the gravel driveway under a canopy of chirping treetops and suddenly a pair of chipmunks falls on top of you. “Sorry dude,” their little scampering body language says. “But something’s goin’ down on this mountain and we’re just part of it!”
It’s always great fun to discover bugs fornicating, don’t you think? They seem so composed and concentrated, their motionless ends connected in that weirdly dispassionate yet somehow touching configuration. Well, during the spring here you discover whole bug orgies, three or four hundred of them going at it in the rock field, or on the dirt steps as you try and make it to the office. There’s nothing like a confluence of beetles in flagrante to remind you that the whole animal kingdom is having more fun than you…
But the fun doesn’t stop at pornographic bugs: there’s a surplus of purple and yellow wildflowers; sap-sparkling pinecones the size of footballs; a species of squirrel whose chirp resembles a fire alarm that needs a new battery-cheep!… cheep!… cheep!…and, finally, some damned mammal that keeps shitting directly on our walking meditation path.
And let’s not forget those more formidable beasts — the ticks, black widows and tarantulas, scorpions, rattlesnakes, bears, and perhaps the most difficult and dangerous animal of all: residents from nearby Los Angeles. Their voices waft in through the open windows of our Zendo as we try and sit Zazen, proffering poignant springtime observations such as:
“Oh my God… I didn’t know bugs do it!”
“Of course bugs do it. Everything does it.”
“I bet those monks in that meditation hall there don’t do it,” & etc.
“It’s so beautiful here… it’s so beautiful here… it’s so beautiful here…” I hear this again and again and again from folks visiting the mountain this time of year. I want to say, “You should stop by when there’s six feet of snow or a blistering mid-summer heat wave. What you’re witnessing is the rare and precious fruit of the ongoing argument this mountain has with itself in the form of sun and snow.” When neither party is winning, when the wet, chilly hills are warmed and the sunlight is cooled in the damp earth, the result is a perfect balance of natural opposites-the “middle way” incarnate. Then, instead of arguing with itself, the mountain seems to be… how to put it tactfully?… “knocking itself up.”
And it’s knocking me up too. I’m full of life — wild inside. Not at all the staid and starchy monk I appear to be on the surface, especially when dealing with random visitors, who tend to regard me as just another “natural curiosity” on a mountain full of them. In fact, I kid you not, they often pat me on my bald head as though I’m a friendly mountain goat, all but trying to feed me peanuts and get me to lick tin cans clean.
“What do you study here?” they invariably ask, sizing up our bleak and banal stone and wood cabins. Perhaps you were expecting Shangri-La with Zafus? I want to ask.
“They call it the Middle Way,” I tell them, for lack of a better answer.
They nod, totally bored. “So are you like all peaceful inside?”
“Sure,” I tell them, gesturing widely, putting on my best St. Francis grin. “About as peaceful as this mountain.” This they seem to get, nodding and snapping cell phone pics of flitting finches and swaying, majestic conifers: “It’s soooo peaceful here.”
Anything can happen during this time of year. Spring is a free-for-all.
“Get the snake catcher!” a nun cries just then from up by the compost pits. I leap the stone steps two apiece and discover a six-foot rattlesnake coiled atop a mountain of moldering eggplants. There’s a half-ingested squirrel hanging from its mouth. Within minutes I’ve got the enraged blur of scales and fangs by its neck via our crude, metallic snake-catcher claw; I seal it off in a bucket, and drive it down the hill with a fellow monk to release it by the creek. It is hissing wildly in the bucket in my lap-the sound of a hose with an enormous amount of water pressure that has suddenly sprung a massive leak. Ssssssssssssssss! Maybe it’ll jump out, burst through the top of the bucket, pull an eyeball out of my skull as my monk peer squeals in terror and drives off the edge of the cliff.
I am terrified. I am thrilled.
Anything can happen during this time of year. Spring is a free-for-all of life.
Later that evening I will kill two scorpions: one that has fallen from a pair of jeans I’m sliding into, and one scrambling right over my electric toothbrush in the upper camp washroom. The way I see it, I will whisper inwardly to their dead scorpion souls, if you come into this world with pinchers for hands and a monstrous stinger rising up over your armored fanny, expect to leave it as you lived in it-violently.
After my dual homicide I will return to my cabin, open the windows, smell the night, and listen in the dark as the row of cars beyond our tree line returns to civilization, signaling the end of the city folks’ day trip to the mountaintop.
And if I listen really closely, I can hear their voices-or at least I imagine I do…
Those monks were creepy.
How can they live there?
What do they do all day?
I want to blast out the cabin door in my boxer shorts, a bald, pale thing, rail-thin and wild. I want to jump between their cars shouting, screaming — a madman, a prophet: Burn your Mercedes! Put a fist through your wide-screen TV! Fire your shrink! Punch a hole in the waterbed! Join me on this mountain. You’ll live more life here in five years than you’ll live in twenty-five down in that godforsaken city, with its cannonball boob-jobs and Twittering celebs and acres of traffic and mini malls and all the sad pretty actresses and gay men with those small, yapping dogs…
But alas-beneath all my Kerouac-meets-Hakuin hubris I also hear my ex girlfriend’s sobering voice; the voice of family, friends, of those I left behind when I moved here…
You’re just running away from life… You’re afraid of the real world… How long are you going to stay up there… What will you do when you return, as you must, as all Rinzai Zen monks eventually must… What will you put on your résumé when you try and get a job: “I can sit really still in one spot for long periods of time”?…
These negative voices coalesce into a Symphony of Terror: Condescend to us at your peril, mountain monk. We are the world, we are unavoidable, and we are waiting for you-with a nametag that says: “Welcome to Taco Bell,” and your name printed on it (your ordained name, in Kanji of course)…
Finally, through an act of radiant will — or maybe I’m just tired — I crush all these imaginary voices — these byproducts of a brain bursting and teeming and straight-up mad with spring fever… and I just lay there in the dark; and close my bleary eyes; and let sing me to sleep the sonorous and melancholic chirp of jelly-bean-bellied crickets: trillions of them from the sounds of it, all looking to get laid. But first, before losing consciousness, I compose a prayer, the Spring Prayer, to see off our visitors as the soft surf of tire rubber and road laps backwards, downhill, until there is silence…
May something small, green and beautiful grow
In the emptiness
Of your hearts
Shozan Jack Haubner is a Buddhist monk in the Rinzai tradition and author of Zen Confidential: Confessions of a Wayward Monk (Shambhala). He writes under a pseudonym.
Spring Photos:
Katahdin this week (notice the yellow flash of color on the right)
Early Signs of Spring in Linda’s garden
Two deer in the field on my Friday walk
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 for those affected by the recent 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.
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