“Coltsfoot”    photo by Bruce GlickWe have another photo taken by Bruce Glick in this week’s Support Page of a local spring flower. Coltsfoot is a common, often under appreciated little flower, but its early arrival is a most welcome marker of the season. Bruce included a few short comments:Appearing everywhere even before the grass turns green, Coltsfoot brings the first vibrant colors of spring to the northeast.  “It is unusual in that it produces its flowering stems before the leaves that give it its common name.”  When I turned my close-up lens on the flower I was amazed by the intricacy of its reproductive structures, which draw upon the energy that was stored up the previous year.  May the stored energy of your being help you open up to spring this week.

Mother’s Day is this weekend and we will honor mothers and feminine energy in Sunday’s service. If you would like to bring a photograph of your mother or grandmother, we will have a special place prepared on the altar. The service topic is a continuation of our theme “The Science of Religion and our UU Shared Values” (part 12) as we explore the topic of release and forgiveness, a topic that relates to our mothers and families as well. YouTube Channel content for this week is our annual Beltane Service led by Leigh and Fred Griffith. Their talk provides the history and background of the tradition along with a guided exercise related to Beltane, Leigh reads a poem from a friend of hers (which is included in today’s Support Page) and then we prepare for the Maypole event on the church front lawn. Check out the Maypole photos! 

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

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: May 11, 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

May 11 Sunday Service: David Hutchinson 

May 12 UUHoulton Board Meeting   4PM

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 Houlton

61 Military StreetPoetry Corner:

This NYT article was selected as a followup to the recent service topic on “Belonging” led by Kathryn Harnish.

‘Believing’ and belonging

May 3, 2025

Last week, Dwight from “The Office” called me to talk about God.

Almost. It was the actor who played Dwight, Rainn Wilson. He’d read my essay that launched “Believing,” a project on how people find meaning in their lives — in religion, spirituality or anywhere. He’d written a best-selling book on the topic, one that was so self-aware and funny I actually laughed out loud. He just wanted to connect.

That seems to be a theme.

Since I published “Believing,” I’ve heard from thousands of Morning readers. Everyone has a story to share about belief, no matter how they come at the topic. My inbox is now a microcosm of the internet: MAGA bros, professors, wellness influencers, theologians, climate activists, pop psychologists, grandmothers and a source who sent me an unpublished letter from Pope Francis. I heard from people across America and around the world, including Brazil, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia. In the messages, a clear trend emerged that unites this very disparate group: People crave meaningful connection.

In “Believing,” I explained that religion offers people three B’s: beliefs about the world, behaviors to follow and belonging in a community or culture. Readers seized on the last one. They said they wanted to belong — in rich, profound and sustained ways.

It makes sense. A major, global study recently released by Harvard and Baylor universities affirmed what so much other data has shown: People flourish — they live happier, healthier and better lives — if they have strong social connections. It also found that religions, for all their reputational baggage, can provide people with robust communities.

The power of belonging

In “Believing,” I shared that I once belonged to a strong community — that I was raised Mormon in Arkansas but that I have since left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was vulnerable and weird and hard for me to talk about. Still, it seemed to be a catalyst for connection.

Soon, my inbox was filled with personal stories.

“She began with a personal testament of her own loss of faith, so forgive me if I too bare my soul,” Richard Dawkins, the famous advocate for atheism, replied in a letter to my article.

I heard from Orthodox, secular and Messianic Jews; Catholics, lapsed and practicing; Muslims; Southern Baptists; Unitarian Universalists; Quakers; and Zen Buddhists. I heard from devotees of Alcoholics Anonymous and a secular-humanist organization in Houston. “I also grew up deeply faithful, as the son of a Presbyterian Minister,” the Rev. Duncan Newcomer wrote. “I had a deep love, like you, of the whole thing.”

People said very little about God. The topic was simply a gateway to people’s most intimate worlds: childhoods, divorces, diagnoses, deathbed diary entries, unforgetten books and poems and passages. Bill Goodykoontz, from Maine, encouraged me to research “thin places” — spots in the world where people say they can feel something beyond themselves.

All the messages point to something bigger.

A structural issue

People need to be in strong communities to flourish, defined as being in a state where all aspects of their lives are good. That’s what the Global Flourishing Study found last week. People are more likely to flourish in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, where people report finding more meaning or purpose in their lives, than those in many more-developed nations. “The negative relationship between meaning and gross domestic product per capita is particularly striking,” they wrote. “We may need a reconsideration of spiritual pathways to well-being.”

Kelsey Osgood, an author who was raised without religion, knows this. She converted to Orthodox Judaism in adulthood. She said people in her community offer support to one another reflexively — when someone is sick, hospitalized, grieving. “Everybody knows exactly what to do. Everybody knows where to go. You know what to say,” she said. Osgood said this makes the more taxing elements of religious practice “worth it” to her.

The inverse is also true. When people feel exiled from their religious community — because of their politics, their sexuality or their beliefs — they often lose entire worlds. The grief that follows can be comprehensive. Many people stay away from faith communities, often for good.

Others decide to come back, which seems to be contributing to the pause of secularization in America. Robert Stempkowski, a 62-year-old writer in Michigan, sent me a 36-page document about his journey with belief. He described a time when he was “shooting himself in the foot” as a “failed husband, absentee father and a drunken, former restaurant critic,” he said. “I was out of bullets and bylines.” He ultimately found his way back to church.

I responded to his email and expressed my sincere gratitude that he took the time to write.

He replied: “Thanks for letting me share.”

How to Not Make Stress Worse

by Emma Seppala

No one likes stress, but according to numerous scientific studies, many of the things that people do to reduce it are actually ineffective, or worse, counterproductive.

First, you can’t talk yourself out of stress. Try to talk yourself into sleeping when you are anxious the night before a big interview or exam or performance. Or think about how helpful it is when a friend or manager tells you to “just relax” before you have to deal with a difficult client. That’s not only usually unhelpful, it’s often downright irritating.

Wegner, psychology professor at Harvard University, has shown in several studies that the intention to control a particular thought often breaks down under stress and actually ends up triggering the unwanted thought, undermining our best intentions. Wegner describes this as an “ironic process.” When we attempt to resist a certain thought or action—trying not to eat junk food when on a diet, or trying not to think of someone you just broke up with—our efforts can easily backfire.

Nor can you just “tough it out.”

Research by Stanford Psychologist James Gross demonstrates that suppressing our emotions (e.g., by not showing the emotion on our face) actually leads to the opposite of what we want. By attempting to hide the emotions, we actually experience them more strongly physiologically. For example, anger or stress make your heart rate increase and your palms sweat. Suppressing these emotions actually will increase those effects, and will even impact the physiology of whoever you are talking with by raising their heart level! Suppressing negative emotions on a regular basis actually makes people experience more negative emotions and less positive emotions in general.

Is there a better way? Yes. And the answer lies in our bodies.

Instead of trying to address the supposed cause of stress directly, if you can bring greater relaxation and ease into your body, you will find that your mind starts to ease up. Your perspective changes. You are more capable of handling the challenges coming your way.

This can be as simple as engaging in your favorite physical activity, like yoga, swimming, taking a walk, or even cuddling with your child. Being in nature is doubly effective. In addition to the physical activity, research on awe – a state often inspired by beautiful natural sceneries such as a starlit sky or a vast horizon – suggests that it slows our perception of time (which is the opposite of what happens with stress) by bringing us into the present moment.

The most effective way to do this, though, is to work with breath.

Even if you have an intuitive understanding that our breath can regulate our mind and emotions—everyone’s heard “take a deep breath”— you might not be fully aware of its power. What makes breathing so unique is that it can happen either automatically or through our own volition. It is the one autonomic function you have a say over. By changing your breathing, you can calm yourself down in minutes. When you inhale, your heart rate and blood pressure increase, and when you breathe out, they decrease. Just by lengthening your exhales, you can start to tap into the rest-and-digest (parasympathetic) nervous system—the opposite of fight-or-flight. You start to relax.

According to studies by Stephen Porges, one reason slow breathing has an immediate effect is that, by activating the vagus nerve—the 10th cranial nerve that is linked to our heart, lungs and digestive system—it decreases the activity of fight-or-flight adrenal systems. Abdominal breathing—using the diaphragm—is particularly beneficial, as are lengthened exhales. Exhales slow our heart rates down so the longer we spend on the outbreath, the more our nervous system relaxes.

Here, then, are some strategies to put this research into practice.

The most basic way to develop a relationship with your breath is to bring your awareness to it at different times in the day. Notice if it is fast or slow, if it is deep or shallow. Gradually, you will notice that it shifts throughout the day with your feelings and emotions. For example, you will naturally want to take a deep breath during challenging times or find that your breath quickens with anxiety or anger.

As you develop that awareness, you can use it to gain some control of your breath, and thus of your emotional state. When you feel fear coming on, for example, you may notice your breath speeding up and your breath becoming shallower. Then you can consciously slow it down and breathe into your abdomen to relax. With practice, you will know to take deep and slow belly breaths every time you encounter a challenging situation.

You can also try focused breathing techniques; I teach one on the Ten Percent Happier app called Alternate Nostril Breathing. Our research with Yale students as well as veterans with trauma shows that using long breathing protocols (SKY Breath meditation) can be as effective or more effective than traditional psychological approaches. (I’ll be discussing this in detail with Dan Harris in an upcoming episode of the Ten Percent Happier podcast.)

Whether you opt for breathing classes or other soothing activities that help calm your nervous system, these practices all build upon themselves. Just like going to the gym, it takes repetition and daily commitment to start to see a shift in your nervous system. The key is that they are focused on supporting the body and its natural ability to come back from stress, rather than attempting to banish or suppress stress when it arises. By tapping into your natural resilience, you can learn to reduce stress… even right now.

Brian and Christoph make a fashion statement with their red suspenders!May the Fourth Be With You.

Greetings from Fen & Sylvie in New Orleans!!

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

Concern over the increasing tension between India and Pakistan

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.