“Pride Candles”   (photo by Dave)

The first Sunday in June was Pride Service at UUHoulton and our service leaders supplied a rainbow of special colored candles to use for our Candles of Joy and Concern ritual. It certainly jazzed up our usual white candle look and it appears we’ll have enough to use for the entire month of June. Several members remarked on the colorful candle bowl after last week’s Open-Pulpit service so I took a photo for today’s Support Page (sixteen candles if you look closely). What an amazing display! This Sunday Kathryn Harnish speaks at the service and YouTube Channel content is an “Open-Pulpit” Service which covered a broad range of topics, and since it was Father’s Day there were also many tributes and remembrances about Fathers. Stephen Kinney shared a story about photographer Dodo Knight who he worked with when he was publisher and editor of a regional magazine Northeast Horseman. Several people talked to Steve during coffee hour expressing an interest in finding out more about Dodo, so Steve sent me a magazine article he wrote in 2020 titled “Dodo Knight; The Persona Behind the Pictures.” I will send it to our Support Page mailing list in a separate email today. Steve also mentioned an article he wrote that appears on the Houlton Historic and Art Museum website about local Arabian horse breeder Jake Bates in Linneus. The link is included below, along with a delightful photo of Stephen on one of the Arabian horses. 

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

Enjoy the first weekend of summer!

In Ministry,

Dave

Happy Summer Solstice!

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)

THE LINK WILL GO OUT LATER IN THE DAY

HERE IS THE ZOOM LINK FOR SUNDAY COFFEE HOUR:
Topic: UUHoulton zoom coffee hour & check-inTime: Jun 22, 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 22 Sunday Service:  Kathryn Harnish

June 24   Meditation Group   4PM (online) 

June 29   Sunday Service: David Hutchinson

July 3 Midnight Madness     4-8PM 

On the Church Front Lawn 

  Chicken Curry, drink specials and more!

July 5 “Elbows Up” Rally  10AM

July 6 Sunday Service:  Open-Pulpit Service

July 13 Sunday Service:  David Hutchinson

July 14 UUHoulton Board Meeting   4PM in the parlor

July 19 LGBTQ+ Luncheon   12 Noon

July 19 Houlton Coffeehouse   7PM

July 20 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, Houlton, ME 04730

Correspondence from Stephen after Sunday’s Open-Pulpit Service:
Dave
The photo of your grandfather and the pair of draught horses reminded me of the story in the link below. Jake Bates, Maine’s Pioneer Arabian Breeder was a story I researched and wrote during COVID. Bates was a post-WWII potato farmer in Linneus. I met his granddaughter Linda Stewart here and she had family photo albums. The link is from the Houlton Museum which posted a condensed version of the story. The longer version is full of analysis for pedigree nerds and was published on Arlene Magid’s international blog about Arabian pedigrees.
It may spark your curiosity to know this happened here all those years ago. When i was a kid you couldn’t throw a rock at a horse show in Maine without hitting a horse bred by or descending from Bates’ original imports to this little town.

https://www.houltonmuseum.org/jake-bates
PS-My first horse was bred by Bates–registered Kabarra, we called him Kubby. My parents dressed me, it’s my only excuse!

photo of Stephen Kinney at a horse show  circa 1969

Poetry Corner

This poem was written by Ashley Bodin from Island Falls and she shared it in last week’s 

Open-Pulpit service. Members of the group requested that it be included in thisweek’s Support Page and here it is!

I Resistby Ashley Bodin

I resist. 

It’s not about fighting, not about fists

It’s not checking boxes or making lists 

It’s not the flying of flags 

or the posts on your page

Not the feelings of hatred or emotions of rage

It’s not the signs in your yard, 

Or the stickers on your car 

Or the T shirt you wear, 

or the color of your skin or your hair. 

I resist. 

Because if I do not, we all cease to exist. 

Resistance is kindness, and planting a seed

A smile or a hand to someone in need

Tiny actions of little consequence

All tied together and lined up on the fence 

Like a talisman warding away evil indeed

We don’t know just what we can grow 

Until we plant our seeds

Like ripples in time, 

things could look so different one day if only we divine

To make it so. 

The Buddha says life is a struggle

The only way out is to help your fellow

So why are we tearing him down? 

Why are we letting her drown? 

We are your neighbors, your children, your friends

And we’ve seen this before and we know how this ends

Nothing survives a world made of hate

What directions are YOU following to those pearly gates? 

This is not the way. 

We are screaming and gasping and calling for reason,

But you want our heads on a platter for treason

All we want is to stand by your side

And ask you what’s wrong

I don’t care about pride

If we can’t work together, we all fail. 

I resist.

Because resistance is strength,

Building a muscle in size and in length 

Just to reach you

A soul transcends

It knows no gender or race or split ends

We are all the same, but they want you to forget

They want you to harm us and have no regret

They want the power, and they know

If you’re looking at us, their transgressions won’t show

United we stand, divided we fall, 

Have you forgotten our founding fathers gave us their all? 

That flag you’re flying has history, you see,

That thing you’re trying to erase from memory?

The Constitution for which that flag once stood

It was not perfect, but maybe we could

Make it better?

Instead of tearing it down

Burning everything we love to the ground

I resist. 

Even when it’s tough,

Even knowing my words are not enough,

Not truth or fact or loss of our liberty

What will it take to make you see 

that we are all the same. 

We share two feet, a heart and a brain

So why don’t we care when others feel pain?

Because we are born in different lands,

Literally a line drawn in the sand

Impermanent. Irrelevant. 

Lines do not define us, 

not the lines in the sand or the lines on our faces

Where would you be if you had to switch places?

No more backyard barbecues, only survival

Living at the wrong end of a rifle

You can not imagine the suffering and fear

For generations things have been different over here

Because long ago people died for your freedom

But now those amendments, ah we don’t need them?

I resist. 

And there truly is enough

If these damn billionaires would just give some of it up

They are the ones keeping us poor,

But you look at me fighting for my rights and call me a whore

We are their fodder, just a means to their ends

Numbers and data and nobody’s friends

Humanity has been reduced to algorithms and trends

But they don’t know us as well as that computer suggests

They would not survive a spring here at best

Generations thriving in this remote region

Living off the land with every new season

You are the people who inspired the greats

Thoreau and Emerson and King of late

This is not a feat accomplished alone

We rely on each other, even after we’re grown

We were not designed to do life on our own

I resist.

By not spreading hatred or fear

And doing my best by all of you here

You can tell me I’m wrong, but I will plant my seed

I’ll water and trim it and pull up it’s weeds

I’ll see it through winters and floods and fires

A symbol of dreams to which we all aspire

And one day soon when that tree provides shade,

I’ll join you there with a glass of lemonade. 

03.26.25

No Kings

Freedom

TIMOTHY SNYDERJUN 16

It was a thrill to march at the No Kings Rally in Philadelphia on Saturday with friends and about a hundred thousand people. On the stage, I led a chant of “no kings — freedom,” and I tried to explain three things that slogan or that sequence can mean.

1. The logic. We don’t want kings — or autocrats or oligarchs — because they will represent themselves or their families or those who finance them rather than us, the people. They will take away not only our rights but the functionality of our government, the safety of our streets, the possibility of social mobility, and the integrity of our environment. So freedom means no kings — but is also means all of the good things. It means a government that works, it means the right of people to be left alone, it means the American dream, it means harmony with nature.

2. The history. I talked a little about the Liberty Bell, which wasn’t know as such in 1776. If it rang in 1776 it was against a king, to be sure, but the liberty part, the freedom part, took time. It was the abolitionists who called the Statehouse Bell in Philadelphia the “Liberty Bell.” And then later the activists of the woman suffrage movement did the same. It was the people who faced the challenge of slavery and the challenge of disenfranchisement who taught us all to speak of liberty. No kings first, and then freedom. The historical sequence teaches us that freedom is a struggle, and that it is a struggle in which we need allies. And we need to listen to them.

3. The practice. The “no kings” protests come first, and then we do further work for freedom afterwards. We protest to show ourselves that we can. We protest to show others that we do not think that all of this is normal. And we also protest as the beginning of other actions. Whether that be with Indivisible, or Interfaith Alliance, or labor unions, who helped organize; or just with any small initiative where we know something and are together with other people and find ourselves doing something rewarding we weren’t doing before.

Philly was wonderful and it was big, but it was just one of thousands of protests in which about five million people took part. There were probably more people just in Philly alone than at Trump’s birthday parade in DC. All in all there were about one hundred times more protestors on Saturday than there were people watching Trump’s self-celebration. We can be proud of that. And then do the next thing.

Timothy Snyder is an American historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust. Snyder has written many books, including On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017), The Road to Unfreedom (2018), and Our Malady(2020)

“No Kings” Rally in Market Square on June 14(over 150 people and pets participated!)The group marched from Monument Park to the Square and then back again. 

The American Flag from the Unitarian Church sanctuary leading the way!(if you look closely there are only 48 stars)

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 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 at Eastern Maine Medical Center

Prayers for those affected by the tragic airliner crash in India

Prayers for Peace in the Middle East as the conflict between Israel and Iran escalates