Nature is in full bloom this week in Houlton! Driving around town each street has trees and flowers to catch your eye with their colorful display. The photo “Study in Pink” was taken earlier this week of my mother’s crabapple tree in front of her house. A small bouquet of the blossoms were on the altar table last Sunday. I was sitting at her kitchen table one day last week when the wind came up. For a few moments a pink blizzard of crabapple blossoms blew by the window…
This Sunday we kick off Pride Month with a special service in the sanctuary celebrating diversity, inclusion and the LGBTQ+ movement. There will be amazing music, from the heart words, time for both reflection and fun. Service leaders are MaryAlice Mowry, Stephen Kinney, B. Rivers, Regan Nelson and Emily Transue with special music by Nick Foster and Dale Holden.
We will be doing a blessing and hanging of a new Inclusive Pride Flag just following the service. A coffee hour with lots of food and love will follow the blessing and hanging of our new flag on the front of the church.
YouTube Channel content for this week is a continuation of our theme “The Science of Religion and our UU Shared Values” (part 13) as we explore transformation, one of the UU Shared Values and components of religion. As we are winding down our theme for the year, part of this service will be summary and review along with comments on ways of talking about transformation; attainment, realization, evolution of being.
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 zoom coffee hour & check-inTime: Jun 1, 2025 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/86124829981?pwd=Qjcj4CwqxrDO7ecH6qVkeYoBFBLfl9.1
Meeting ID: 861 2482 9981Passcode: 760323
Calendar of Events @UUHoulton
June 1 Sunday Service: MaryAlice Mowry & Friends (Pride Service)
June 4 Aroostook Climate Group meeting in the cafe 6PM
June 8 Sunday Service: Flower Communion David Hutchinson BBQ cookout & party at Randi and Ira’s after the service
June 9 UUHoulton Board Meeting 4PM
June 10 Meditation Group 4PM (online)
June 14 No LGBTQ+ Luncheon this month
June 14 “No Kings” Rally by the Peace Pole in Monument Park 1PM
June 14 “Restore” meeting after the rally in The Cup Cafe 2PM
June 14 Houlton Coffeehouse 7PM
June 15 Sunday Service: TBA
June 22 Sunday Service: TBA
June 24 Meditation Group 4PM (online)
June 29 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
| Moment of Reflection |
| A home surrounded by flowers in Inishmore, Ireland. (© Peter Aschoff/Unsplash+) |
| Image Description: A small white house in a rural setting surrounded by flowers. |
| At the ruins of the Seven Churches Inishmore FloweringLinda Buckmaster Pick a crevice, a homey gap between stones and make it your own. Grow a life here from wind rain and the memories of ancients embedded in limestone. The bees will use you for their sweet honey. The rock will soften under your touch. You will draw moisture from fog and hold it. Your presence will build soil. This is all we have in this life all we own: a flowering an opening a gap between stones for tiny tender roots. |
From our Study Book Love at the Center
“Love is a Circle in Time”
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Ann Parker
President Emerita and Professor of Theology Emerita of Starr King School of Ministry Seminary in SF California.
Beloved Community is created and sustained as a circle in time; manifested in diverse moments and places in which past, present, and future are gathered through love. Love embraces the past through faithful covenant with ancestors. Love looks to the future as people work to build a better world. Love finds immediate realization in the here and now, among those who rejoice in the good that is found, embody compassion and kindness, and engage with what needs to be healed, mourned, or repaired right here, right now.
Love must live in the present. Here and now, in covenant with one another, we can practice and learn the ways of love. Now—not some other time—is when we need loving encouragement, mutual care, and respect for our wholeness and dignity, especially given contexts of injustice and hate. Through love’s spiritual disciplines we can embody Beloved Community as a present-tense antidote to the systemic evils harming our world; we can provide a haven of resistance to the forces of division, of exploitation, of apathy, and even cruelty alive in the world today. We can center joy in the exquisite gifts of diverse life, in “this present paradise,” where struggle and conflict persist but love abides. We can manifest the spiritual stamina to hold fast to that which is good in the face of opposition and threat, even from members of our own community, and can do so with gentle persistence. We can do more than look to the future; we can bring hope home to today.
When I meet you and you meet me, we do not meet in a void. We meet within an all-inclusive reality that wills our good and supports the possibility that we can be present to one another in truth, unafraid. This love holds us to account, calling us to do right by one another and not to harm. If harm has happened, or is happening, this Love empowers us to change, to resist injustice, repair injury, forgive, and begin again.This all-inclusive embrace is new every morning. It is an ever-springing fountain that continually refreshes the possibilities that life can flourish, can heal, can go on toward fullness of joy. There can be moments of illumination, of clear knowing, but mostly arriving at a heart that rests in this love does not happen in an instant. Rather we get there bit by bit, breath by breath, day by day, and generation by generation as we, alone and together, honor the circle of time and keep the faith, through it all, love is at the center.
Transform Your Community with These Five Spiritual Practices
In this quick guide, Rev. Shige Sakurai uses elemental symbolism to represent each area of focus designed to facilitate long-term change.
SHIGE SAKURAI 3/6/2025
Discerning, dreaming, crafting, deepening, and refreshing.
Spirit, water, fire, earth, and air.
For twenty-five years, I have helped people navigate the complex work of culture change. These endeavors are about more than just individuals and one-time shifts. True transformation involves sustained practices and communities.
To facilitate this work, I have identified five key areas I recommend individuals and congregations engage with together for long-term success: discerning, dreaming, crafting, deepening, and refreshing. As a nature-based spiritual practitioner, I use the elemental symbolism of spirit, water, fire, earth, and air to represent these dimensions of transformation work.
DISCERN (why/spirit)
Goal: Discern clearly why transformation is a profoundly sacred matter of the spirit.
Example practices: Storytelling and information sharing. Meditation. Conversation. Forest bathing. Deep listening. Reflecting on profound questions about what it means to be alive.
Personal and community clarity can unlock powerful, liberatory possibilities. Change processes are full of natural cycles. We live in social ecosystems that require sustained nourishment. How will we foster change through leaders and the grassroots? How do we catalyze change without controlling others? How will we empower those most harmed by our current approaches? Why does good process matter? Understanding awakens us to the ways power dynamics show up in both interpersonal interactions and institutional structures.
DREAM (what/water)
Goal: Dream of what worlds we could design, flowing in the water of creativity.
Example practices: Deep rest. Music, poetry, and arts. Brainstorming. Journaling. Sharing and co-creating plans for developing communities of greater love and liberation.
We can’t foster a better future if we can’t dream it. Artists and prophetic thinkers point us towards possible futures we could create. Against the culture of productivity, we must rest. Rest creates space away from the buzz, where we can conceptualize future communities, processes, outcomes, and cultures we might seek. What ways can we build relationships and community? What ways of worship can truly enhance belonging? What can we plan together for greater equity and justice, using more transformative and restorative approaches?
CRAFT (how/fire)
Goal: Craft together how we live out our values, sparking the fire of transformation.
Example practices: Action learning groups, committees, and councils. Trainings and programs. Book groups. Shifting resources. Activism. Conferences and networks. Religious education. Behavior changes.
Take action to share material resources, foster learning, advocate justice, and empower those of us who have been most disenfranchised. Align actions with our discernment and dreams. Sometimes we are so fixated on what is wrong that we fail to leverage what is working or seek available opportunities. We often are curious to learn from books, but can we turn book learning into action learning, changing behaviors of individuals and institutions? Checklists and progress dashboards can be helpful, but they don’t replace the humanness of being present with each other. We need craft, not factory production.
DEEPEN (who/earth)
Goal: Deepen our sense of who we truly are, rooted in our shared earth and existence.
Example practices: Ritual work, ceremonies, and celebrations. Actions of social witness. Community care and expression. Policy changes. Membership and leadership development. Shifting power.
Transformation is not just about what we do. It’s about who we are and who we become, together. We must infuse and meld changes into the very structural and cultural contexts around us. Change is not an add-on; it’s a continuous grappling with the deep “why” underneath our justice and equity work. Relationships are the glue. We can build our momentum and commitment by harnessing and applying energy, symbolism, and rituals in our change work.
REFRESH (when/air)
Goal: Refresh ourselves when we must renew transformation with the air of possibility.
Example practices: Breathing activities for relaxation and letting go. Ringing bells. Gathering input and conducting assessments. Sharing humor and joy. Healing trauma and anxieties.
As we continue to try new ideas, some things will work, and others might not. Change happens in seasons and cycles. Rather than deciding we are done or tapering out, we can celebrate our wins and reflect. Take notice of how our very processes for transformation could improve. We can integrate transformation cycles into liturgical cycles. We can leverage what works and release what does not. We can take calculated risks and encourage experimentation, breathing in healing and repair. These moments of reflection can help us rebalance and consider what we might centralize or decentralize, what we might approach anew.
I have listed these five elements of transformation in an order that could constitute a full cycle of practice, but real life is always more complex and less linear than any model. I encourage you to take, leave, adapt, or add to these suggestions as fits your congregational and community contexts.
Ultimately, the loving and liberatory work of community transformation must be sustained and nourished, as we continuously discern, dream, craft, deepen, and refresh together.
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 recent governmental (and policy) changes in DC
Concern over the increasing tension between India and Pakistan
Prayers for those affected by the recent tornadoes and storms in the American Midwest and South
Prayers for those affected by the Canadian wildfires in Saskatchewan and Manitoba
Prayers for our friend Joe Hogan who is in the Houlton Regional Hospital
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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