 My name is Kelly Crocker, and I'm one of the ministers here. Today, I'm joined by my colleague, the Reverend Kelly Asbrook Jackson and the worship team of Linda Warren, Drew Collins, Daniel Karns. And a very familiar face to many of you, our special musical guest, is our former FUS Music Director, Dan Broner. The vision of First Unitarian Society is growing souls, connecting with one another and embodying our Unitarian Universalist values in our lives, in our community, and in our world. If you are visiting today, welcome. We're so very glad that you are with us. If you'd like more information about First Unitarian Society, please stop by the welcome table located near the elevator in the commons. And we hope you'll be able to stay and join us for coffee hour immediately following the service. That will be outside on the west lawn that is outside the Gabler Living Room. And if you are new here, let us know, because those words mean nothing to you. We will help you find your way to coffee. Our activity for all ages today is a treasure hunt around the FUS grounds to find all kinds of natural objects. And so that treasure hunt is on the clipboards right outside the auditorium door. So if you'd like to go on a treasure hunt during coffee hour, please grab one of those on your way out. And for those of you connecting virtually with us today, welcome. We are so very glad that you are with us as well. We hope that you'll be able to join us for our virtual coffee hour immediately following today's service. The information for joining can be found on the homepage of our website, fussmedicine.org. It will also be on the slide shown at the end of today's service. Our announcement slides will also be shown briefly after the service. We encourage you to take a moment to watch those and learn more about our upcoming programs and activities. And now I invite you to join me in a moment of silence as we center ourselves and bring ourselves fully into this time as we join together once again in community. Open up the doors. Push on looming wooden arches embroidered with ironwork. Brace shoulders against the weight of history unmoved. Slough off the musty smell of unused joy and stored up sorrow. Knock rust off the hinges if you have to and let your breath precede you inside. Open the doors more. Make room for a shaft of sunlight to cross the threshold. Give the dust motes something to dance about. Peek through a single slice of possibility. And name even the half hidden truths you see. Open the doors wider still. Pour yourself through the gap. Strut or sneak or sidle as suits you best. Cleanse whatever scrapes catch your skin and bind up the wounds that keep you from entering hole. Open the doors as far as they will go. Draw on the strength of the stones beneath you. Ground yourself in a firm sense of who you are. Stand as a beacon welcoming the next seeker and shine far beyond the lintel and sill. Open all that you are. Heighten and deepen your connections to the world around you. Broaden your definition of neighbor. Grow into the largest target for grace that you can muster. And pray to become a gateway for even greater love and compassion. Open up the doors my friends. Lest we keep the stranger out and condemn ourselves to prisons of our own making. Come let us open the doors to worship together. And if you will rise now in all the ways that we do and join in our words of affirmation as we light our chalice. We seek our place in the world and the answers to our heart's deep questions. As we seek may our hearts be open to unexpected answers. May the light of our chalice remind us that this is a community of warmth of wisdom and welcoming of multiple truths. So I tell you a story this morning about a kingdom a long time ago and very far away away. And this kingdom was ruled by an emperor. Emperor was a very important person and he wanted to make sure that everybody knew how important he was. So he always had the very best of everything. The best food, the best horses, the best clothes. In fact, he was so famous for how much he cared about his clothing that people would come to the kingdom very far away in order to sell him new clothes. And sometimes he would buy them and often he wouldn't because he knew that if he sent most of them away without buying the clothing he'd get a reputation as someone who only wanted the very, very best. So one day a certain merchant came into the kingdom. He had a cart pulled by a horse. He came to the kingdom, he came to the castle, he came to see the emperor and he said, emperor I have come to sell you some clothes. The emperor said, well all right, I'll look at what you have. And he showed him some fabric and the emperor yawned and he showed him some pantaloons and the emperor shrugged and he showed him some shirts and the emperor just sort of moved his head back and forth and the emperor said, didn't you bring me anything interesting? And the merchant thought, well I have one thing but it's very particular and I don't think it's for you. He said, what do you mean it's so particular? What do you mean it's not for me? I get the best of everything. And so the merchant said, well you have to understand that it's a certain special cloth from a place far from here and only people with very good taste can see it. Well the emperor said, well of course, obviously I'm going to be able to see it. So show me, show me this clothing. So the merchant went into his cart and he had a little bit of a panic attack inside the cart. It's like, okay all right, I'm deep in it now. I don't have what I said that I have. So he's trying to be a big shot. All right, well the only way out is through. So he pantomimed putting a roll of cloth on his shoulder and he came out of the cart and he went over to the king, the emperor, and he unspooled nothing at all. But he did a pretty good job with his miming, you know. It's an acquired skill, you got to work at it. And the emperor said, oh that's quite pretty. And then all of his advisors, all the people hung around his court who'd been sort of like, what's going on here, looking at each other. Like, yes, it is quite pretty. And the whole mood of the room changed. And the merchant, feeling pretty lucky about all this thought, all right, well here's my price then for it. And you know what, the emperor paid it. So after a little while, you know, enough time to sort of sell the act, he turned the nothing that he was pretending was a roll of magical cloth into nothing that he was pretending was a fine suit of clothing and presented it on a naked mannequin to the emperor. The emperor still trying to keep up the ruse, trying to keep up the sense of like, yeah, I see there's cloth there, I have good taste, okay. He said how beautiful it was, how impressed he was about it. And everybody else in the courtroom nodded along. And so finally, he took off his clothes and stood there in his underpants and put on nothing at all. And then he went on a walk through the city with his scepter and his crown and a nice pair of shoes and his underpants and nothing else at all. And the people had been prepared, you know, they'd been talking for a while about how the king was going to have this new magical set of clothing. So everybody else was saying how beautiful it looked and how much it set off the gleam in his eye. But somewhere out in that crowd, there was one young child who just called out, the emperor has no clothes because that's the truth. Now this is the way the story was told to me and I've heard it a million times before, but you know I didn't find out until recently? You know what the end of the story is? No one listens to the child and the emperor goes right on walking. That's the original ending of the story. But of course, in our lives, we get to decide how the story ends. I invite you into the giving and receiving of today's offering. We give freely and generously to this offering in order to sustain the ongoing work of this community. You'll see on the screen that you can donate directly from our website, fussmedicine.org. You will see our text to give information there as well. There are baskets at the exits of the auditorium for those of you here in person. We thank you for your generosity and for your faith in this life we create together. So I want to tell you, it comes from West Africa. It's about Anansi, the spider. Anansi loved to tell stories. One of the reasons why he liked telling stories so much was that people would listen to him and there'd always be in the story there'd be some insight or some general truism or some explanation about the way that the world works. And afterwards, people would say, Anansi, you are so wise. There was so much wisdom in that story. And he liked hearing that. He liked feeling like he was a wise person. And well, there are sort of two ways you can go. When you get used to somebody complimenting you, you can feel better about yourself and more confident or you can start to worry about what, what if the compliments go away? What if people don't think that you're the way that they've been saying that you are at some point? What if you run out of wise stories to tell? So, Anansi went that direction. And so he, he had a pretty good plan. He went to go see God. And he explained to God, people think that I am wise and I would like for that to be true. And God said, all right, well, I'm going to take all the wisdom in the whole world and I'll put it in this big pot. How about that? Have at it. Anansi was very pleased. I mean, it's a pretty easy solution, all things considered. So he took the pot, which was very large, and he took it back down to earth and he looked inside the pot. And every time they looked inside the pot, he learned something new, something about the way the world works or the way that people are. He was very pleased to have gotten exactly what he asked for. But he got worried again. And here's all the wisdom in the whole world, all in this pot. What if somebody else found it? Then he wouldn't be the wise one anymore. So he decided he needed to do something to make sure that no one else could find the wisdom. He tied the pot around his neck to help him carry it a little bit better. And he decided to climb up to a tall tree. He could hide it in the branches way up there when no one would find it. But he had a problem because the pot was really big and it was hard to climb around it. It was so large. I mean, he has, he's a spider, right? So he has more arms and more legs than I do. And even then he was really struggling with it. And while he was doing this, sort of trying to make his way up a very tall tree with a pot that was too big for him to get his arms around, strapped to his neck in front of him, one of his children was watching from the outside. One of his children was watching from the house and cried out, shouldn't you tie it to your back instead? Now, the child had a very good point. But you know how sometimes when someone has a very good point, it's worse than if they had no point at all? At least it feels that way. So when Nancy was very frustrated now trying to climb, couldn't get his arms around the pot, someone else over here is giving him advice that he doesn't want to take. And well, the rope around his neck came loose and the pot fell to the ground and broke. All that wisdom spread out over the ground and then it started to rain. And the rain washed it down to the river. The river took it to the sea. The sea spread it out all over the world. So that now there's wisdom, well, pretty much everywhere if you look hard enough for it. And Nancy was just left wondering, if I had all the wisdom in the world, how come I didn't think to tie the pot to the back instead of the front? Let's rise and body and our spirit to sing together our middle hand, 318 we would be one. It is something we desire, but also often fear. We cannot live without some understanding of what we know to be true. And yet there are some truths in life that seem hard or even impossible for us to live with. As Unitarian Universalists, we are dedicated to a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. But that search is rarely easy and it almost never leads where we expect it to. So Raymond Chandler is one of the authors credited with inventing the hard-boiled detective genre, defined by a grim wit, dangerous intrigue, and hard-nosed protagonists out to uncover the truth, whatever the risks or the costs. In his first novel, The Big Sleep, Philip Marlowe, a stone-faced, hard-drinking private eye takes on the seemingly simple case of a wealthy family being blackmailed, but it quickly leads him into a tangled web of murder and intrigue. As the numerous guilty parties start killing to cover their tracks, the stakes of the affair rise higher and higher. Bit by bit, the pieces begin to fall into place until, finally, with a closing twist, the last of the puzzle is solved and the grizzled gumshoe gains the satisfaction of solving the grand mystery. The book was eventually made into a movie starring Humphrey Bogar. While it was in production, Raymond Chandler received a telegram from the studio. You see, they'd sat down with his book to go over all its twists and turns to make sure that the story all came out right on the big screen. But there was one fraction of the case that didn't seem to square with the rest. As the tension mounts and Marlowe begins to realize the case he's working is far stranger and more dangerous than he originally thought, he gets a call telling him the latest twist. The chauffeur of the wealthy family he's working for has been found murdered. But that particular part of the case is never clearly solved and the folks at the movie studio couldn't come up with any obvious explanation as to which of the many villains might have done it. Thinking that they must have missed something, they sent word to the author asking him to clue them in. Chandler got their telegram, thought about it for a while, but his answer wasn't particularly satisfying. He couldn't figure out who the killer was at. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try to fit the puzzle together, the answer eludes us. There are questions that human beings have been asking themselves and each other for thousands of years. No perfectly definitive end-to-all debate answer should be expected on these anytime soon. More personally, there are other more particular questions we ask ourselves, the why's and what if's of our losses and wins for which no easy answer or simple truth exists. The ambiguity and uncertainty we are left with in the absence of solid facts or clear explanations can be frightening. We can be seduced into taking refuge in the comfort of self-deception when a marriage ends or a loved one dies or some other grave loss or deep disappointment befalls us. Thinking that there is a neat explanation for exactly why things happened as they did or exactly what we or anyone else could have done to make them happen differently. There is danger in being dishonest with ourselves in settling into believing anything other than what we know to be true. As we let go of the truth, even to protect ourselves from it, we open a door that is difficult to close. It is like the story of a man who lived alone in a simple house. It wasn't much, but it was all that he had. One day, a sly fellow came to his door and asked if he could buy the house from the man. He offered more money than the man made in a month, but far less than the house was actually worth. The man refused, of course. If he sold his house, he would have nowhere to live. So the visitor made a different offer. He would pay the same considerable amount of money to buy just one nail in the wall of the man's house. The rest of the building would remain undisturbed, but the nail would belong to the stranger to do it as he pleased. Thinking that the visitor was quite foolish and himself quite lucky, the man agreed to sell the one nail in the wall and to allow its new owner to do with it as he pleased. The stranger paid him the money, hung his coat on the nail in the wall, and went on his way. That night, there was a knock at the door, and the sly stranger came in to collect his coat and left a bag of potatoes hanging in its place. The man who lived in the house thought this was strange, but he had to admit that the nail's new owner was within his rights. The next morning, the sly visitor returned and replaced the bag of potatoes with a sack of rotting meat. Eventually, the owner of the house was forced to abandon it. But following the facts and sticking by what we know, what we know is right, can be quite satisfying as well. Consider the story of Benjamin Cody, a seventh grader who went with his mother about 11 years ago to New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art. He noticed an error in a map of the Byzantine Empire and reported it to the museum staff. They didn't take Benjamin's concerns very seriously. Who would you be more likely to trust about the borders of the 1500-year-old empire, the professionals at a major museum or a 13-year-old? But he filled out the paperwork. Apparently, the museum has a form for visitors who believe they have corrections to offer. And then, the next winter, Benjamin got an email from the museum's curator for Byzantine art, congratulating him on spotting the mistake and giving him the opportunity to correct it. In all the difficulties which will arise in life, Olive Shreiner wrote, fling yourself down on the truth and cling to that as a drowning man in a stormy sea flings himself onto a plank and clings to it, knowing whether he sink or swim with it, it is the best he had. The truth is, finally, all we have. I do not mean the truth is, the truth as distinct from the other great virtues such as love and justice. I mean the truth is the root of those virtues. Human beings, frail and imperfect as we are, can manage to find good in one another and to love and care for each other, despite any struggle or pain. This is the highest truth that I know. Sometimes, we try to clothe something hurtful or cruel in the garment of truth. That dress looks awful. This food tastes terrible. You are a spectacular failure as a stand-up comedian. We take our shot and duck for cover behind the argument that we were only telling the truth. But it is never the whole truth. Because if we were to express the whole truth, we would have to include the fact that the person in that tacky dress with the burnt casserole and the corny jokes is a wondrous and unique being, impossibly, indescribably valuable and worthy of our compassion and respect. Anything said of anyone that does not take that into account could never be the whole and real truth. Abner Nieland is remembered when he is remembered as the last man ever to be jailed in America for blasphemy. Well, last for now. He was a universalist minister in the first half of the 1800s whose theology and understanding of the truth as he saw it evolved to a point that most of the other universalists of his era could not tolerate. Under tremendous pressure, he resigned his fellowship in ministry and went on to serve as the leader of a group called the Society of Free Inquirers in Boston. His lectures drew thousands and his publications had a notable circulation, though it was perhaps driven as much by his opponents as by his supporters. The free and very public expression of his ideas eventually led to his trial for blasphemy. He was convicted and after several appeals eventually spent 60 days in jail. During the initial case, the prosecuting attorney in his remarks to Abner's jury declared that if he was not punished for his dangerous ideas, prostitution would become endemic, the institution of marriage would collapse, and private property would be erased. Some of those attacks sound familiar, don't they? The judge and prosecutor at Abner's first trial and the chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, which heard his final appeal and upheld his original conviction, were all unitarians. It was back in the days when we sort of ran Boston. So what was so appalling in Abner Nieland's beliefs that they were found illegal and held to be generally unacceptable among both universalists and unitarians? What was so terrible about Abner Nieland? Here is what he said. He proclaimed that scripture was not divinely inspired, but the product of human authors telling stories to make sense out of their own lives. He believed that God was not a being with thoughts and feelings and other attributes of a person. Instead, he called himself a pantheist and understood God as synonymous with nature and the world of which all are apart, saying, I believe that in the abstract, all is God. Abner's enemies saved their harshest words and deepest concerns not for his theological ideas, however, but for the social teachings that he drew from them. 100 years before the constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote, Abner championed the rights of women, the right to vote, to keep their own names once married, to hold their own bank accounts and to use birth control. He argued for the abolition of slavery and the establishment of full equality under the law and in society for people of all races. He spoke out for the right of divorce and for the legalization of interracial marriage. We Unitarian Universalists are a varied and assorted lot, but both in his social values and in his personal theology, Abner Nieland is as close to our general consensus as I can imagine. Anti-racism, equal rights, birth control, scripture is something that can be considered and challenged rather than unflinchingly obeyed and God as the wholeness of the universe rather than a human like super being. You might not agree with all of that, but I would be willing to bet that you can find something in it that you value or at least do not hate or fear. In the ideas for which Abner Nieland was jailed. In less than 200 years, our understanding of the truth has changed. In fact, it happens all the time. The world is in some ways like a great detective story. To make our way through it, we must seek out the facts and our own practical experience. But particularly because our world contains so much uncertainty and many of our questions have no answers or no definitive ones, we need most of all to know what is deeply true in us. True down in our bones and to follow that when all else fails. You are a precious and wonderful creature. So is everyone around you. Everyone you love and everyone you despise. Everyone who is kind to you and everyone who mistreats you. Everyone you know and everyone you do not know. It is not quite that we are in a story where the Creator does not know everything that is going on. It is rather that we are in a story which is still being written not by a single hand but by each of us writing together. So let us devote ourselves to something beautiful and true. Where we can share the celebrations and the sorrows of our days. This week we light a candle for Eva Wright, former FUS assistant music director, longtime FUS member and a shining light in our days. This past week Eva entered hospice care and so we are holding Eva and her husband Bob, their children and their grandchildren in our hearts as they journey together. May Eva feel the love and the support surrounding her and may all the love and compassion that she has given throughout these many years be returned to her many times over in the weeks ahead. And we light a candle in solidarity with the people of Ukraine both in their suffering and in their struggle. Together we yearn for peace for them and for all people for an end to all wars of conquest anywhere and everywhere on earth. And if you'll join me now in a moment of prayer with these words from Vanessa Southern. There is so much undone so much to do so much to heal in us and in the world so much to acquire a meal a healthy body a friend a home a job a better job proof we have and are enough just around the corner of now and up against it is the reality of all that falls short and the limits of today we honor the limits if your body won't do what it used to for right now let it be enough if your mind won't stop racing or can't think of the word let it be enough if you are here utterly alone and in despair be all that here with us if today you cannot sing because your throat hurts or you don't have the heart for music be silent the world won't stop spinning on her axis if you don't rise to all occasions today love will not cease to flow in your direction your heart won't stop beating all hope won't be lost you are a part of the plan for this world salvation of that I have no doubt the world needs its oceans of people striving to be good to carry us to the shores of hope and wash fear from the beach heads and cleanse all wounds so they can heal but oceans are big and I am sure there are parts that don't feel up to the task of the whole some days rest if you must like the swimmer lying on her back who floats or the hawk carried on cushions of air rest in the seats made to hold weary lives in space carved out for the doing of nothing much but being perhaps then you will feel in your bones in your weary heart the aching healing sense that this is enough even this that we are enough you are enough enough may we hold this and all that resides in our hearts this morning in a moment of blessed silence blessed be and amen is our closing hymn number 1003 where do we come from we will sing it as a round we'll sing it one time through all together taking all the repeats and when you see the four lines of text each of those is repeated then we'll sing the second time those on my left and the left my left side of the hall will begin and on that side of the center aisle will follow let's rise and body and our spirit together please let our lives be a prayer that waters dry souls men's broken hearts refuses to be terrorized seeks this world's beauty and carries us through its storms blessed be go in peace and please be seated for the postlude