 You know, there's no way. Well, I don't get it. We used to have children like this. He and I had two types of children, which was Dan and I, so we worked with people who were working back here. You know, we had four people like Dan, and she was a little bit stuck. So it was really a great experience. Yeah. But we should look for a time in the game. Yeah. So if you want to maybe I'll break into this office to be able to do that. I'll do it right now. Does that be great? Yeah. Do you want to invite some people? Yeah. Well, I know it's like I told you all of you are supposed to work with us. Yeah. Yeah. He's sorry. I know. I mean, you know, it's very awesome. I don't know if you've seen what I've ever seen, but I'm pretty sure it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. Yeah. Well, no, but I don't I haven't been in any kind of interaction at all. Anyway, what I did was talking for a very long time for like 22 minutes. Over, right? Somebody told me something or something. I didn't have music in them, but they're just drawers that you can look at. And they even have oversize tables and oversize drawers. And it's a long to go for a long time. I forgot. It's about your red shirt. Yeah. Thank you. So, are you okay? I forget. So, come on. Come on. So, anyway, you know, you were almost there. Yeah. Please join in a centering moment of silence so we can all be present with each other this morning. And now let's get musically present with each other by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn, which you'll find inside your order of service. One more time. Happy Father's Day, everybody, and welcome to a special Sunday here at First Unitarian Society where independent thinkers gather in a safe, nurturing environment to explore issues of social, speaking of different things. I'm Steve Goldberg, proud fatherly member of this congregation and in addition to welcoming and celebrating all the fathers and grandfathers here today, I'd like to offer a warm welcome to any guests, visitors, or newcomers. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I think you'll find it's a special place. And if you'd like to learn more about our special buildings, meet over here by the windows after the service and we'll take good care of you. Speaking of taking care of each other, this is the time when we silence those pesky electronic devices that we just will not need for the next hour. And while you're taking care of that, let me remind you that if you're a company today by a youngster and you think your young companion would rather experience the service from a more private location, we have a couple options for you, starting with our child haven and some seating just outside the doorway in the commons from which you and your young companion can hear and see the service. And one reason we are able to hear and see the service is that it's brought to us by a wonderful team of talented volunteers whose names I'll read to you now. Marine Friend is handling the sound system. Thank you, Marine. Anne Smiley is our lay minister. Karen Hill greeted us upstairs when we arrived. Chuck Evenson, Sam Bates, and Elizabeth Barrett are the ushers for this morning. Gene Hills and Lois Evenson are handling the hospitality and coffee that we will enjoy a little bit later. The flowers that you see behind me were donated generously by Anne Smiley in honor of fatherhood. So thank you, Anne. And our tour guide today is Michelle Masson. So end of the announcements. Now is your opportunity to sit back or lean forward to enjoy today's service. I know it will touch your heart, stir your spirit, and trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here, and again, happy Father's Day. Buddhist tradition. Let a person lead, let us forsake, try, let us overcome all those who hold back anger, like a rolling chariot, like real drivers. Other people, they're merely holding the reins. Beware of bodily anger. Beware the anger of the tongue. Beware the anger of the mind. The wise who control their bodies, who control their tongues, who control their minds, they are indeed well controlled. I invite you to rise in body and spirit for the lighting of our chalice. And if you would please join me in the affirmation created in this morning's program. May the light we kindle, like a small defiance of the dark, be an outward symbol of the inner light we may light, that in their way dispel the darknesses we harbor within ourselves. And on this fine, bright Father's Day, please turn to your neighbor and exchange with him or her a warm greeting. Please be seated. And at this point in time, I would like to welcome some company from our young people in the congregation and even some older people if you can sit cross-legged. Anybody? Somebody? Hello. All right, Morris, you're going to have to help Carolyn back up. Or vice versa. So the question is have either of you young folks or any of you young folks have you ever been angry with anybody? Been angry? Did you ever get angry with somebody? So when you were angry at them, did you kind of say that person is my enemy now, right? Because I've been angry at them. Don't like them very well. Well, this is a story about somebody who got angry with someone and made them their enemy and then it's also about this little boy's father who had a solution to the problem. So it's a Good Father's Day story. It's a perfect summer. My dad helped me build a tree house in the yard. My sister was away at camp for three whole weeks and I was on the best baseball team in town and it was all really good until Jeremy Ross moved into the neighborhood. I did not like Jeremy Ross. He laughed at me when he struck me out in a baseball game. He had a party with his trampoline invited but my best friend was Jeremy Ross. He was the only person on my enemy list. I never even had an enemy list until he moved into the neighborhood and as soon as he came along I needed one so I hung that enemy list up in my tree house where Jeremy was not allowed to go. Now my dad he understood about things like enemies and he said that when he was my age he had enemies too but he knew how to get rid of them. I asked him to tell me how. I'm not just going to tell you my dad said I'm going to show you how and so he pulled this old recipe book off the kitchen shelf and inside there was this worn old yellow scrap of paper with fading and writing on it and dad held it up and he squinted at it. He said enemy pie. I wondered what exactly was in enemy pie but dad said that it was so secret he couldn't even tell me so I decided it must be magic. I begged him to tell me something anything. I will tell you this he said enemy pie is the fastest known way to get rid of your enemies. That got me to thinking what kind of things disgusting things would you put in a pie for an enemy? I handed dad some weeds and he shook his head. I brought him some earthworms and some rocks. He said no. I gave him the gum that I had been chewing all morning and he handed it right back to me. So I went out to play alone and I shot baskets until the ball got stuck in the roof and I listened inside for the sound of my dad chopping and stirring and blending. Enemy pie. It was going to be awful. Imagine how terrible it was going to smell. But then there was something really really good coming from the kitchen. I was confused now. I went in to ask dad, what is wrong here? Enemy pie shouldn't smell this good but dad, dad is smart. If enemy pie smelled bad he said then your enemy would never eat it. I could tell dad it made enemy pie before. Still I wasn't exactly sure how enemy pie would work. What exactly would it do to an enemy? Did it make their hair fall off? Did it make their breath all stinky? Dad wouldn't tell me a thing but as the pie was cooling he said that I had a job to do too. He talked me very quietly. He said there's one part of enemy pie that I can't do that you have to do. In order for it to work you have to spend the entire day with your enemy. Even worse than that you have to be nice to him because that's the only way that enemy pie will ever work. Are you sure you want to go through with this? Well of course I did. It sounded scary but it was worth a try. All I had to do was spend one day with Jeremy Ross and then he would be out of my hair forever. So I rode my bike over to his house I knocked on the door when Jeremy opened the door he seemed kind of shocked. Can you play? I asked nervously. He looked confused. Let me go ask my mom. A few minutes later he came back with his shoes in his hand. You boys stay out of trouble his mom yelled at us. So we rode our bikes for a while and we played on his trampoline and then we made ourselves some water balloons and threw them at the neighboring girls of course we missed and then Jeremy's mom she made us lunch and after lunch we went over to my house. It was strange. Didn't know what to make of it I was kind of having fun with my enemy. He almost seemed like a nice guy but of course I couldn't tell my father that because he'd been working so hard making all that enemy pie. Well Jeremy liked the basketball hoop at my house and I let him win a game just to be nice and he knew how to throw a boomerang. He'd throw it and it would come right back to him. Well I tried to throw it and it went right over the top of the house. I went into the fence and go into the backyard to get it and the first thing he noticed was my tree house. Can we go in he asked? I knew he was going to ask me that. He was the top person he was the only person on my enemy list and enemies are not allowed in my tree house but he did teach me how to throw a boomerang and he did have me over for lunch and he did let me play on his trampoline and he wasn't being a very good enemy. Okay I said hang on so I climbed up ahead of him and I tore the enemy list off of the wall and then he came up and we played games until dad called us for dinner and dad had made us macaroni and cheese which is my favorite and it turns out it was Jeremy's favorite too. Maybe he wasn't so bad after all I was beginning to think let's just forget about this whole enemy pie thing. But then after dinner dad brought out the pie I watched him cut it into eight thick pieces. It sure is nice having a new friend in the neighborhood. I was trying to get his attention and tell him that Jeremy Ross was no longer my enemy but dad only smiled nodded and gave us each big piece of pie with a big scoop of ice cream on the top Wow said Jeremy my dad never makes pies like this that's when I panicked I did not want Jeremy to eat the enemy pie my friend I wasn't going to let him do it Jeremy I said don't eat the pie it's poisonous or something like that and so Jeremy forked stop just before it hit his mouth he wrinkled his eyebrows he looked at me kind of funny and I felt relieved because I had saved his life I was a hero well if that pie is so bad Jeremy said then why has your dad already eaten half of it and so I turned to look at my dad and sure enough he was eating the enemy pie good stuff he mumbled through a mouthful Jeremy started eating and dad started laughing and neither one of them were losing any other hair it seemed safe enough so I took a tiny bite and enemy pie is delicious so after dessert Jeremy rode his bike home but not before inviting me to play he was trampling the next day and he said he'd teach me how to do a flip and as for that enemy pie I still don't know what to make of it and I wonder whether if enemies do eat it does it really make their breath stinky but I guess I'll never know the answer to that because today I just lost my best enemy and so now we're going to sing our kids out if you're ready to go to summer fun with our hymn number 315 thanks for listening this morning our first reading personifies the emotion of anger and it comes from the book of qualities by Ruth Gendler anger sharpens kitchen knives at the local supermarket on the last Wednesday of the month his face is scarred from adolescent battles and he's never been very popular his reputation as a fighter goes all the way back to the 7th grade children never understand how anger arrives at the house just in time for dinner we never hear him ring the bell but all of a sudden there he is as soon as my son hears his footsteps he's running for shelter beneath the twin bed in the guest room anger is trying to gain truth friendship and respect anger is a meticulous reporter he's accurate about all the details insistent about the facts he never lies but he rarely understands anyone else's point of view it is true that sharp knives work better than dull ones and they are also safer a cut from a dull knife takes a long time to heal however if you have not used a sharp blade for a while it is easy to hurt yourself so if you must ask anger to sharpen your bread knife now you handle it he's not the only knife sharpener in town anymore only in a unitarian universalist faith community would you hear a reading preceding the sermon from the Ungan humor magazine from 2004 and then reprinted in the Utney Reader with gas prices exceeding $2 a gallon in some areas and gridlock on the rise Detroit's automakers are stepping up of their newest brainchild an anger powered car by tapping into the unbridled temper of the American motorist this new anger powered car will take mechanical advantage of the way that Americans drive GM spokesman said we plan to have these furiously efficient machines careening down America's highways and byways within two years automakers have been researching fury fuels since the mid 70s as early as 1984 they began to look for ways to utilize this limitless supply of bad temper generated daily by American drivers outrage that is currently vented wastefully on dashboards and steering wheels and passengers an engine burning clean white hot hatred will release few harmful byproducts into the atmosphere just bad vibes and perhaps a little vapor combined in the form of human spittle now GM is currently developing two anger powered cars the entry level Chevy tantrum coupe and the larger pricier Buick umbridge meanwhile Ford plans to introduce an anger gasoline hybrid engine for its ever popular Lincoln frown car Chrysler will resurrect the defunct Plymouth brand name introduced the Plymouth Fury we have a delicate balance to strike a Ford motor executive said middle income customers should be able to afford these new cars but the price should be high enough to eat away at them the entire time that they are going to thus end at the readings contributing member of the Sierra Club ever since the late 1970s when I was a graduate student in Berkeley at that time I had first learned about the environmental organization that John Mueller founded way back in 1892 and in recent years the Sierra Club like so many other nonprofits has been sending out these email blasts on almost a weekly basis most of which I merely glance at before hitting the delete key this past Wednesday however one incoming message from the Sierra Club got my attention hold tight to your anger the headline read that's a phrase that was perloined from the popular singer Bruce Springsteen at his song Wrecking Ball the author of this particular piece Michael Bruin serves as the club's executive director and he was commenting in the column that followed on President Trump's recent declaration that cut our country loose from the Paris climate accord and he said if this makes you mad that's good if it makes you outraged if it makes you disgusted that's even better such sentiments as these have become commonplace and are shared by climate change deniers as well as concerned environmentalist by anti-immigration agitators as well as immigration advocates political rhetoric during the past general election observers noted was especially vituperative the electorate as a whole is mad to the tune of nearly 80% of us saying that we are either dissatisfied or angry with the way that our government is functioning Time magazine editor Jeffrey Kluger wrote just before denominating primaries now clearly the outcome to that election didn't do much to bring the public's temperature down did it our society is deeply polarized and while his detractors have become increasingly angry with the president his supporters are equally angry for him one feature that left and right have in common it seems is outrage but is today's environment all that different from what might have prevailed in the past well 40 years ago in 1976 the British essayist Henry Fairley composed a series of articles about the American public on the seven deadly sins and in reflecting upon the prevalence of the fifth deadly sin he lamented that we live in an age of wrath 1976 Watergate was only a couple of years behind us and a disgruntled American public had just elected a new president a little known peanut farmer from South Georgia some years after that similar take on the 2004 election in which the leading Democratic candidate Howard Dean let forth his famous yell after he lost the Iowa primary and that yell torpedoed his campaign at any moment Sterobin wrote, Dean looks ready to sink his teeth into the nearest available thigh he's banking his campaign on the I'm mad as hell vote and other Democrats he said to imitate his snarl the angry voter is back Polster John Zogby reported he and she have seemingly been on sabbatical it seems then that the currents of anger coursing through today's politics is nothing particularly new I'm old enough to remember the angry fractious protests that accompanied Chicago's Democratic convention at the height of the Vietnam War and the turmoil unleashed by the assassination of Martin Luther King just a few months before that anger Rebecca Solnett recently commented is a staple of American social and political discourse it is the go to emotion she says because it is inherently reactive and volatile and easy to provoke and easy to direct it has become a kind of commodity she says to select customers and so anger provoke content it's more likely to stick not least because you must imagine that anger itself is a way that the mind gets stuck as Americans we may be particularly susceptible to this kind of marketing because far from being regarded as a sin anger is often presented to us in more positive terms if Trump's rejection of the Paris climate agreement makes you outraged Michael Bruin emphasizes that's even better whatever our political leanings we feel that fury is the appropriate response to all those malign forces that have got our cherished values in their crosshairs anger is an equal opportunity emotion as the shooting of a Republican congressman and several others by an overwrought progressive activist demonstrated just this last week have we been culturally conditioned to be this angry to leap into the fray when someone pushes the least of our buttons much of what passes for humor these days contains this underlying note of hostility our humor is often sarcastic and mocking and diminishing anger stalks the nation's playing fields provoking bench clearing brawls parental diatribes aimed at the referees in their kids' soccer games the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh describes this as habit energy because it erupts so frequently and like a bad habit it does not easily yield to conscious control so whatever happened to the sin of anger you know many evil Christians believe that it was deadly why because the consequences of holding on to your anger were so grim if you died not having repented of or atoned for the damage that was inflicted by those angry outbursts then you would forfeit God's grace you would subject yourselves to a great deal of future suffering today dire warnings like those that are regarded as somehow quaint and they do little to deter wrathful behavior now of course traditional religious teachings on the subject are far from consistent which also makes a difference quite often the way that anger is presented in western religious literature that would convince us that it's normative that it's even virtuous notice how routinely righteous anger is displayed by actors in the Jewish and Christian scriptures Robert Thurman says that in the Bible the angriest person around seems to be God which would appear to give the emotion some kind of cosmic sanction wouldn't it examples of divine displays of peak are legion its victims include Adam and Eve their eldest son Cain the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah the Egyptian first born a few thousand of Moses' followers Saul the first ruler Israel among many many others anyone who was indoctrinated by sacred texts in the image of such a God could be forgiven if he or she thought that anger was an excellent energy and manifestation as long as one is powerful enough to overcome the enmity that anger stirs up in others and God obviously is powerful enough to do that right the great prophets and even Jesus himself are also given to these disturbing outbursts of anger so in the book of 2 Kings the great prophet Elijah summons two she bears great big bears out of the woods to maul a company of children who had dared to tease him in the gospels Jesus curses that fig tree causes it to wither to die because it was not bearing fruit to satisfy his anger his hunger rather and support for anger can be found in other non-biblical sources as well. Aristotle Greek philosopher for instance he held that without anger a warrior would not be able to muster sufficient courage in order to fight and to overcome his enemies Aristotle felt that the inability to feel or to express anger was a grave human failing in a similar vein Paul argues that the presence of anger can indicate a society's moral and political well-being and the absence of anger in a society would be a worrisome sign of complacency so according to this school of thought anger is a natural even a desirable human response to the threat of injury or injustice its value these commentators suggest should not be sold short and so much has been written in recent years about anger management and that seems to be based on the premise that anger can manifest itself in positive ways in constructive ways and so our challenge as a society then is to respect its potency while developing strategies for keeping anger like atoms in a nuclear reactor contained and in this way the energy can be tapped for commendable purposes rather than unleashed for destructive purposes and this it seems to me is what the community activist Alex G the pastor of fountain of life covenant church had in mind when a couple of years ago he launched his justified anger initiative here in Madison in response to our glaring racial equity gap justified anger and even that apostle of non-violence Martin Luther King admitted that he drew strength and inspiration from his anger if I wish to compose or to write or to pray or to preach well Martin Luther King admitted I must be angry and then all the blood in my veins is stirred and my understanding is sharpened but even if we grant that some good can conceivably come out of properly managed anger it is hard to dispute that ours has become an anger saturated culture and yes it is still classified as a deadly sin but for most people that particular classification functions like a stop sign that we could just kind of coast through or a speed limit that's so unevenly enforced that we can safely ignore it and even if some of that anger that we're feeling can be justified as righteous well it still behooves us to ask whether if as Americans this is what we want for ourselves this is what we want for our children this is what we want for our society now Buddhism has a sophisticated insight any number of them into the human psyche and I believe it offers an approach to anger that is worth considering here anger is not treated as a moral failing it is not treated as a punishable sin it's more like an addiction an ingrained pattern of responding to the world's unpleasantness and because it hinders our efforts to achieve equanimity and poses a threat to our own well-being as well as the well-being of others anger along with greed and delusion is described in Buddhism as a root poison there is no evil as harmful as anger the Buddhists say in the book of Dada your mind cannot rest when anger stirs within you to revenge yourself on your injurer things that ordinarily cause you pleasure even cause you joy all of them immediately lose their appeal the moment you become angry so in some he says there's no way to live happily while you are burning with the fire of anger think back to your own experience and see whether that's true because of its addictive tendency Buddhism holds that anger has the power just like substance addiction to take possession of us and to operate outside the sphere of our conscious control we do not will ourselves to be angry do we and once we are in its grasp we have very little choice other than to let it run its course anger is hostile to understanding Rebecca Solnit writes it prevents comprehension of a situation and of the people that you are opposing it is not for nothing she says that we call rage blind now in African Masai culture anger is quite naturally associated with the color red according to tribal teaching adolescent boys are naturally red and so in the early phase of life this redness they believe needs to be indulged so Masai youth are allowed to strut around and to posture and to get into fights to be arrogant and to be quarrelsome but with maturity the Masai man is expected to move into the white phase a phase in which there is a new found sense of social responsibility and generosity and tenderness and these qualities serve to balance and to moderate that early redness to play with it but to balance it and then much later in life what enters the black phase where wisdom and generativity and leadership qualities begin to emerge as well the complete man is red and white and black total package now without a culture that recognizes the need for and supports this kind of transition the individual is likely to get stuck in the anger phase the red phase and thus a youth may not be able as an adult to exhibit self control to show respect for others to develop a sense of humility they will be prone to flare up at the slightest provocation to pick fights to assume an adversarial stance toward the world the Masai say no one trusts a red man very far does it not seem that our own society is stunted by the red phase in terms of our cultural norms have we not given to our citizens men and boys in particular permission endlessly to indulge their redness through weaponized cars concealed handguns unhinged twitter postings although it does classify anger as an addiction Buddhism does not advocate its elimination if the poison can be distilled then anger's potent energy can then be brought under conscious control and utilized for peaceful purposes we will wield that fire with wisdom and turn it to creative ends Robert Thurman writes in the recommended process for distilling anger is patience the application of patience and that begins with developing a recognition of anger's authority over us the way that it clouds the mind the way that it impedes executive function and once that problem has been recognized then there's an analytic process that can kick in we try first of all to get in touch with the anger understanding anger's not the same for everybody is it we do not routinely have to erupt in rage in order to qualify as an angry spirit if we feel routinely a sense of annoyance irritation frustration, indignation generally aggrieved then that's the kind of anger energy that we have to work with milder, seemingly innocuous varieties of anger they can be just as problematic as it's more overt expressions and so Roshi Nancy Baker says in dealing with anger we first need to discover our own particular version of it then through the patient application of mindfulness we become more and more familiar with that impulse it is like taking the hand of a little brother Thich Nhat Hanh says the purpose here is not to banish your anger but to place its energy in the service of human need and that work has to be done compassionately not judgmentally because we have to understand that while there may not be a sin unbridled anger is a cost for considerable suffering transforming it therefore represents a major step that we all can take toward liberation now he was not a Buddhist practitioner but Nelson Mandela had plenty of time to reflect on his own patterns of behavior while he was languishing for a quarter of a century in a South African prison he was intensely read when he entered that prison by his own tradition but he emerged as a black man in the sense that the Maasai used that term he had kicked the habit of anger he had broken the addiction and thus that energy became available for healing and ultimately for nation-building what in the end does anger really accomplish for the individual that expresses it a catharsis perhaps studies indicate the opposite within a short period of time most people regret their outbursts and they experience a loss of self-esteem and there are physical consequences as well evidence suggests that hard driving type A personalities are not at greater risk for a heart attack than other folk unless their aggressiveness is accompanied by hostility so for our own sake as well as for the sake of others we are better off if the causes we care about are not contaminated with anger now some will undoubtedly argue that displays of anger are sometimes necessary because otherwise people won't take you or your concerns very seriously you gotta get mad for people to pay attention but then that presumes that we are skillful enough to be able to control our anger that we can deploy it without causing resentment or alienation and from my own personal history with anger I can tell you I do not think that is true anger as the Roman statesman and writer Seneca put it anger always makes it harder to get things right is it possible then to achieve more without anger than with it the story with which this service began suggests as much and we can let that enemy pie serve as a metaphor for the careful patient process of transforming the urgency of anger into the energy of friendship and even even if conflict seems inevitable the writer Kent Nerburn once counseled his son this way he said if you must fight then fight without anger you must act he says with a passionate involvement of a physician because you are seeking a cure you are not punishing the carrier of the disease if the fight finds you avoid it or undertake it in a way that will allow you to walk away whole in body and whole in spirit may it be so and at this time in our service it is time for the giving of your offering and your gifts will be directed to the support of this institution both its ministries within and its ministries without please be generous week is a community of memory and a community of hope to this time and this place we bring our whole and occasionally our broken selves we carry with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past seeking here a place where they might be received so we would pause now to acknowledge several entries in our cares of the congregation book Jean Berry says for our beloved barber Mr. Rudd who recently had a heart attack at a very young age we wish him well and then also she writes for Christina a dear friend whose mother's battle with cancer has recently become more complicated and more scary so our thoughts are with Jean and with her family who passed away yesterday and keep her daughter Alice in your thoughts Liz Wessel writes please keep my dear friend Randy Wexler in your thoughts she suddenly lost her father and her mother has recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness and then finally Liz says keep my brother Sandy and his wife Nancy in your thoughts they are mourning the loss of their Scotty dog Moses was a rescue and despite their best efforts and patience he was unable to transition into their family so they returned him to the rescue society with hopes that he will find a new life for those of us that have beloved pets we understand what that family is going through as well so in addition to those mentioned we would acknowledge any unexpressed joys or sorrows that remain among us and that we hold with equal concern in our hearts as a community just a moment or two in the spirit of empathy and of hope so by virtue of our brief time together today may our burdens be lightened and our joys expand I invite you now to rise one more time in body and spirit for our closing hymn number 335 please be seated for the benediction and the postlude these concluding words from the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh treat your anger with the utmost respect and tenderness because it is no other than yourself do not suppress it simply be aware of it because awareness is like the sun when it shines on things they become transformed when you are aware that you are angry your anger in that awareness is transformed dealing mindfully with anger is like taking the hand of your little brother bless it be