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laceypots tiles and buttons, pamela bosco wrap jewelry, dietlind vander schaff, heather abt, rickie bogle, ed lutjens and kevin daley at merrill street studios annual holiday sale and gathering, thursday, december 9th, 5 to 9 p.m. - music, chair massage, food and wine, 70 merrill street on munjoy hill, take left at blue spoon. please call 450-5767 with questions or email me at lacey@laceypots.com

DaPonte String Quartet December Concerts
Friday, December 3, 7:30 PM, Second Congregational Church, Newcastle
Saturday, December 4, 7:30 PM, Saint Mary's Church, Falmouth F'side

Sunday December 5, 3:00 PM, United Methodist Church, Brunswick

Join the DSQ for a discussion about the music one hour prior to each concert.
The program:
Haydns Op 33 No.3 Quartet in C Major The Bird
20th century Australian composer, Peter Sculthorpe's Quartet no. 8
Beethovens E Flat Major, Op 127
Free Christmas Concerts: Sunday, December 12, 3:00 PM, Second Congregational Church, Newcastle

and 7:30 PM, Kellogg Church, Harpswell
      Subscription or individual tickets are available in advance ($22 individual or $100 for five, $18 for seniors or $80 for five) at the Maine Coast Bookstore in Damariscotta and the Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick, Books, ETC and The Book Review in Falmouth, and Longfellow Books in Portland. (Anyone twenty-one or under is free).
      The DSQ is a partner of Down East Magazine, the magazine of Maine. The concerts are sponsored by the Friends of the DaPonte String Quartet, a nonprofit organization aimed at bringing excellence in chamber music to worldwide audiences through performance, education and personal contact. For more information, see www.daponte.org.

The First Parish in Portland, Unitarian Universalist, will present the 84rd Annual Pageant of the Nativity, Sunday, December 12, 2010 at 4:45 p.m.in the historic Meeting House at 425 Congress Street, just off Monument Square in downtown Portland. First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church has been staging its Pageant of the Nativity for 84 years now. The Pageant sports a cast of nearly 80 people, most of whom are adults, and many of whom have been in this pageant, in one role or another, for nearly all of their lives. There are no words spoken by the actors in this pageant. Indeed, the actors are never named. Rather the story of the Nativity is told in music and scripture while the actors, one by one, create a tableau in the candlelit sanctuary that is sculpted to replicate a Fra Angelico painting. Light bulbs in the 30 odd sconces in the church are replaced by candles and the scriptural "story" of the birth of Jesus is read by the minister who is hidden off to the side and unseen by most of the audience. In addition, history is honored by the fact that some of the costumes have been created from fabrics brought back from Palestine by nieces of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Non-denominational in nature, this event makes no political or religious statement. Rather it uses a combination of music, historic text, and tradition to honor the birth of one of history’s great prophets. In short, it is a truly magical 60 minutes in which we stop, quiet our hearts, and remember the reason that this holiday exists. Please plan to join us this year on December 12 and see for yourselves! (11/23)

The Dzogchen Buddhist Meditation Center Presents:

On Knowing Reality: The View and Practice of Buddhist Meditation
Buddhist meditation is simply looking directly at our conscious awareness. From the Buddhist yogi’s point of view, our mind’s true nature is also the nature of all phenomena.

“Everything that arises is merely the play of the mind…” Trungpa Rinpoche

This is called ’resolving our true nature”. The first step on this path is to see thoughts as the dynamic expression of awareness rather than being caught in the storyline of discursive thinking. Once we are able to be aware of ’thinking’ without being caught in its discursive web, we are able to recognize conscious awareness itself and study its nature. This is the path of meditation. The nature of this awareness is actually the experience of ’sacredness.’ Hence the path of spiritual training in meditation is the highest expression of our human nature -- “Unborn, unceasing, with a nature like the sky”
This will be a weekend retreat December 11th and 12 at our center in West Bath
Saturday 9-12 Dzogchen Meditation
12-12:30 Oryoki Lunch in the Shrine Room
1-4 Dzogchen Meditation
Sunday 9-12 Dzogchen Meditation and Closing Chants
The Program is free, a vegetarian lunch will be served on
Saturday for $10.00.
The Dzogchen Buddhist Meditation Center
4 Armstrong Way, West Bath, ME
(207) 443-3842 nmrc@comcast.net
Tashi Armstrong is a ngakpa or lay practitioner/ yogi of the Dzogchen and Mahamudra schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Tashi was a student of Trungpa Rinpoche in the 1980’s, attending Vajrayana Seminary in 1986 and living in residence for 4 years at Karme-Choling and Rocky Mountain Dharma Center. Tashi is also a student of Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, a Dzogchen and Kagyu master and abbot of Ka-Nying Shedrup Ling monastery in Boudhnath, Nepal. (11/23)