 started out so well. And welcome to the First Unitarian Society. My name is Becky Burns. My pronouns are she or they. And I'm a member here at this congregation. And one of the ways I serve this congregation is as a worship associate. And today I'm joined by one of our ministers, Reverend Kelly Asperth Jackson, and the worship team of Linda Warren, Drew Collins, Heather Thorpe, Stephen Gregorius, and Daniel Karnes, as well as those volunteering as singers, him leaders, greeters, ushers, hospitality providers, sound tech, and lay ministers. And a special thanks to our guest tenor and CRE alumni, Emmett Tom. At First Unitarian Society, we question boldly. We listen humbly, grow spiritually, act courageously, and love unapologetically. If you're visiting us today, welcome. We're so very glad you were with us. And if you'd like more information about First Unitarian Society, please stop by the welcome table located in the commons. And we hope that you'll be able to stay and join us for our coffee hour immediately following the service, also in the commons. And a very special welcome today to Meg Riley, the co-moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association, Cary MacDonald, Executive Vice President of the UUA, Ashley Horan, Vice President for Ministries and Programs, and David Pyle, Regional Lead of the Mid-America Region of the UUA, and all of those others present with us here today and online because of the Mid-American Regional Assembly that just wrapped up here this afternoon. Thank you for being with us today. I now have one special announcement. You'll be receiving this card in the mail this week. Make sure you take note of it when it arrives. Sign up in the commons and a big thanks to Bev for her volunteer crew for organizing and supporting this event. And now we'll hear a very special announcement on behalf of our Children's Religious Exploration Program. Hello, my name is Indy May. I am nine years old and I'm here to talk about CRE. CRE is a great way to learn about our religion and connect together through our faith. I love the games you play in CRE and the projects. My classmates and I have so much fun playing, learning, and being silly. All these things cannot keep happening for the kids of our congregation if CRE does not have teachers. CRE needs support from grown-ups like you. I hope you consider signing up to teach. Come help kids from our congregation have fun, work together, do exciting and adventurous things. Build teams that spend time together. CRE needs your help, so please sign up now. Kids from the congregation, thank you deeply. Love kids from Saturday. And now I invite you to join me in a moment of silence to 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 shoulder 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 sad acidal 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 silt. 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. Blessed we keep the stranger out and condemn ourselves to prisons of our own making. Now I invite you to rise in all the ways that we do and join me in the words of aspiration for the kindling of our chalice. May the flame of this chalice, the symbol of our faith, connect us to all who have come before us. All who are with us in body and spirit and all who are yet to come into being. May it serve as a binder of our unity and connection across all time and space. And now I invite you to turn to those around you and greet each other with signs of love and peace. Good afternoon. My name is Logan Walsh. I'm a member of this congregation and some of the ways in which I serve are as a member of our society choir or as a worship associate and occasional hymn leader. My pronouns are they them and it's a pleasure to meet all of you today. Please rise in body and or in spirit for our opening hymn. Number 61 in the gray hymnal lo the earth awakes again. Who would like to come up and share a story with me today? Glad to have you here. So it's spring now, like really officially, right? And are there any ways that we notice in the world around us that it's spring? What do you got? Flowers blooming. Animals coming out. Yes. It's getting warmer. I like that one. Yes. Baby animals. A good sign of spring. Has anybody noticed a particular among the animals? Birds. Oh, please. I didn't mean to cut you off. Yes. It's getting warm out. Yes. Did you have your hand up too? Okay. Well, yes. Yes. The birds coming back. Yes. You read ahead in the book. Very good. The birds coming back. The birds coming back. And oh, well, the book is called the dancing cranes. And this is a little hint about where I'm headed with this. Has anybody seen a sandhill crane yet this year? I know that they're back. I haven't seen any around. So you have. Yes. Yeah. So you were in the pool inside and you saw one through the window outside. Yes. Oh, already. Good for the sandhill crane. Yes. Very good. Coming around the playground. Yes. Aha. So the ducks in residence at the pond. Oh, I see. It's on the playground. So there's no water. They're just hanging out there. Oh, okay. Yeah. You know, we've got a lot of turkeys here too. And sometimes they get on the roof. And I think it's funny, but Tom doesn't like it. Yes. Oh, there were ducks on the roof. Very nice. Yes. You gave them. Okay. So these two honorary mascots for your school that are both sandhills cranes. What are their names? Glen and Dale. Very, very, very innovative. I like that. Yes. Mm hmm. You see this. You get to see. Yeah. Now I confess it wasn't this year, but once really and truly I was walking not that far from here over closer to the university and I saw a sandhill crane just standing on the sidewalk like it was waiting for the bus. Honest to goodness. So here is my little story. There's a crane involved. Well, a couple of cranes involved. You will find. So this story takes place a long time ago in China. Did it really happen? I can't say. This story is about a man named Lu Dongbing. And Lu Dongbing was a very wise person. He was a very kind person. And at this point in the story, he had no money. I mean like really no money. So when he came to town, he went around looking for a place and establishment, a restaurant, a tavern, perhaps where he could eat and drink and spend some time and be in good company and not have to pay anything for it. And that took him a while because he was very transparent with people that he wanted to come into their establishment and to eat and drink and spend time there, but he was not going to pay. So he got turned away a lot, but eventually there was one tavern, one sort of place where people come to eat and drink and congregate and spend time with each other where the owner said, yeah, all right, just enjoy yourself. And that's what he did. Oh, he had a nice meal and he had some nice things to drink. And he spent good time with the people there. And he enjoyed himself quite a bit. And when he left, he didn't pay. And so this happened once. And about a year later, Lou came back through town and he came back to the same place this time. He started there, sort of ending there. And the owner said, oh, yeah, I remember you. Yeah, it's all right, just enjoy yourself. Well, he did that a second time and then a third and on the fourth time, the fourth visit where he had not paid any money at all for all of the good food and good company that he had enjoyed in that place. He said to the owner, you have been so generous with me and so kind with me. I want to do something for you in return. So he took out a paintbrush and he went to the wall and he painted some cranes. And not only did he paint the cranes, he said, if you play music for these cranes, they will dance. The owner didn't really believe him. He was impressed by his artwork. He had to grant him that but thought, well, you know, this guy's kind of a character, right? But then they played music and you know what happens? The cranes climbed right down off the wall and they danced. How do you think a crane dances? I'm thinking like sort of on one leg, flapping its arms. Yes, how do you think? Sort of a teeter-totter motion? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah, this is my, this was the best photograph out of all the crane photographs I looked at in terms of dancing. I tell you what, yes. Do you want to see the crab? Oh, so, boy, did this help with business. I tell you what, because people love coming to the tavern where the cranes would dance if you played music and people would show up to watch the cranes dance and sometimes they would dance with the cranes and sometimes they would just keep on dancing. And for years and years and years this is the way that it went. The tavern was one of the most successful in the city. People always wanted to be there late into the evening enjoying themselves, buying food, buying drink, singing songs, playing music. And then one day years and years and years later, Lou came to the tavern and he asked the innkeeper, have I paid you back what I owed you? Have I given you back what you gave to me in return? The innkeeper said, oh, you give me way more than I gave you. And Lou said, very good. And he took out his paintbrush again and he painted right over the cranes. So they weren't there anymore. Now, do you think the tavern keeper was unhappy about? Yes. I mean, I think that's a reasonable reaction. I'd be disappointed too. They were a beautiful piece of artwork. They'd become the signature element of his tavern. But that was not how this person responded. He said, thank you. It was a generous gift that you gave me. I was glad for it. And now I accept that it's over. And the people, the people who had come together over and over night after night in order to spend time with the cranes, watch them dance, play music, enjoy themselves, they kept coming to that tavern even though the cranes were gone, because they had gotten to know each other. They had gotten to enjoy each other. And it was worth coming back for that, even if there weren't any magical dancing cranes on the wall. Thank you so much for listening to my story. We're going to wait there for a second while we listen to some music. Good afternoon. My name is Heather Thorpe. My pronouns are she, her, hers. I am the director of the Children's and Teen Choirs here at First Unitarian Society. At this time, please rise in body or in spirit and join me in singing hymn number 308, The Blessings of the Earth and Sky. Earth's crust is full of noise, the sounds of wind and water, of animals moving about and calling to each other, the innumerable sounds created by human beings and all our artifice. However, out beyond our planet's atmosphere in the vast gaps between the stars, which compose most of the cubic footage of the cosmos, it is a different story. Waves and particles still do fly about. It is beautifully mysteriously complicated up there, but the human ear is evolved for our environment down here, such that there is very little for us to literally hear in space. In a sense, the world is loud, but the universe is quiet. So now, in order that we might commune for a time with the vast cosmic silence, let us spend this moment together resting in reverent quiet. Amen. It must have been hot when they set out into the desert. The spring in Egypt is not what I would call mild, and although the local climate has shifted somewhat in 3,000 years, the Sinai was a desert then as it is a desert now. In the story of the Exodus, of the liberation of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt, the possibility of freedom comes abruptly and is almost immediately revoked. It is a daring, urgent struggle, a desperate flight into the wilderness seeking to outrun the grasp of oppression. And in addition to the strain and the toil and the fear of that moment, it must have been hot because the story goes that the people had no time to let bread rise and bake conventionally. They just flattened the dough and carried it on their backs, letting it bake in the sun. That is the reason why the Jewish Festival of Passover, which commemorates the story of the Exodus from Egypt and which begins this coming Monday night, is also known as the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Now, being a Jewish holiday here in the context of Unitarian Universalism, some number of us celebrate Passover, and most of us do not. Our tradition is shaped and informed by many different strands of human spirituality. And one of these is Judaism. We do not all need to share a given practice or particular theology in order to engage with it and learn from it. This vast breadth to our tradition is among its most distinctive and vital qualities. When we engage it deeply and with care. Here at FUS, our spiritual theme this month is interdependence, the ways in which our lives and the freedoms and purposes which give those lives meaning rely upon each other. So with Passover about to begin, and as a Unitarian Universalist and a Jew for whom this holiday holds deep meaning, I am inviting you to join me in considering some lessons that we might draw from the particularities of this festival and the story that animates it. First, just some reminders about the bare bones narrative. Once the children of Israel were a single family, like they were called the children of Israel because there was one man named Israel and his children and their associated households. That family settled in Egypt where they were welcomed and over generations they grew numerous until the pharaoh, the king out of fear or greed or malice or all three decided to subjugate the children of Israel, the Hebrew speaking people in his midst. They became slaves and there was suffering and death for a very long time until the cry for freedom rose to heaven. The demand for justice reached the pharaoh and he refused again and again. And with each new refusal, life got worse for everyone, even the pharaoh. So that one day he relented and the people fled quickly in case he changed his mind, which he did. He chased after them trying to recapture them to force them back into slavery, but pharaoh failed and the people got free. This is not a history. It is a type of story older and more powerful than that. It is a myth. And while history is full of details that have no discernible larger meaning, every element in a myth matters. At the triumphant moment of the Exodus story at the edge of the desert, the people are certainly hot and probably tired, but they are free. And who is they? According to the story, the people who left Egypt were a mixed multitude, not just Hebrews, but many other Egyptians besides perhaps due to connections of family or other close relationship, maybe just because getting out of Egypt then seemed like a good idea to a whole lot of people. There's no freedom in a slave-holding society. There's just the people you can step on and the people who can step on you. So when they left Egypt, they left as a coalition. This is the central event that Passover celebrates, literally the point at which its signature lack of leavening enters the narrative. And who is it for? A diverse community, not a uniform group, but all sharing in the realized possibility of liberation. Now, the lessons I have to offer you from this are probably already obvious. About how the struggle for liberation from oppression can unite us across differences and variations. How powerful we can become together when we do not make sameness the precondition for belonging. In the text of the Torah, the central account of this ancient story, the message is incredibly hopeful. The mixed multitude is blessed and embraced. The whole body sets out together with one common good between them, one destiny in front of them. And the sad truth is that it does not last. A millennia or two later, it would become relatively common as an idea in Jewish thought to blame certain offenses committed and woes experienced by the many generations after the Exodus on its mixed quality. Recasting as weakness or corruption, the hallmark of the most transcendentally joyful moment in the tradition's very origin story. Now, a lot of people across time and space have buttressed their fears and prejudices with bad theology. That human tendency is not news to us. So I pointed out not to spoil the hope and the possibility of that mixed multitude, not to discourage us from embracing the power of our differences, but to remind us that the scapegoating impulse about anyone and everyone who got here or got over a minute or more after you did is hack material. That joke was played out before the printing press was invented. Now, from mythology, sometimes mistaken for history, let us move to a matter of history too often misunderstood as mythology. You probably know that the Seder, the ritual meal of Passover has a ritual plate that holds and displays certain crucial foods important in conducting the meal and telling the story through it. There are six elements usually considered traditional, although that tradition actually has a long history of evolution and change. And for instance, there used to be a fish, which is a whole different sermon, although ironically also having to do with the erasure of women leaders as this one is about to be about. Some number of us have heard this story before. I am sure of why it is that some people, each Passover, place an orange on their Seder plate. For those of us who haven't, it goes something like this. It's some synagogue, somewhere, some time in relatively recent history, a woman was giving a scholarly talk on a topic of interest to the congregation. Occasionally, when this story is told, she has a name, but usually she doesn't. In order to deliver her talk, she was standing on the Bima, a phrase grounded in the configuration of Jewish religious space that you can get the gist of by mentally swapping it for in the pulpit. During the proceedings, a man in the audience stood up. This character is always anonymous. Sometimes he's a rabbi, but often he's just a man who, like so many men in our society, needs no particular credential to know intrinsically that his is the most important voice in the room. This anonymous wag interrupted the scholar in order to loudly declare, a woman belongs on the Bima, like an orange belongs on the Seder plate. And that, children, is why every year at this time, we put an orange on our Seder plate as an act of brazen defiance against the patriarchy. Defiance demonstrated by allowing a momentary, impulsive act by a single anonymous man to essentially dictate a change in ritual practice for generations to come. Now, some of us know that this story is also not the real story, that it did not happen, and that there is a different origin for the orange on the Seder plate. I said before that the woman on the Bima sometimes has a name, and when she does, it is usually the correct one, Dr. Susanna Heschel, the contemporary scholar and professor of Jewish studies. But the man in the story doesn't have a correct name because there is no man in the actual story. The actual story is that in the early 80s, Dr. Heschel visited Oberlin College, and she encountered there a particular Haggadah, Haggadah is the book that provides the stories and prayers to guide a group through the Passover Seder. This Haggadah had been composed by a group of students to express their intersecting values of feminism and queer liberation. As one expression of this, the text called for placing a crust of leavened bread on the Seder plate, a sign of radical inclusion and solidarity with Jewish lesbians. Today, we might extrapolate this to members of the LGBTQI spectrum generally. And they had been told, as they had been told, time and again that they could not belong in Judaism, that they had no place in Jewish space, the crust of bread was meant to symbolize the exact opposite. Dr. Heschel was moved by the concept but found the implementation too transgressive. That crust of bread is the most fundamentally forbidden thing during the holiday of Passover. To her, its presence on the Seder plate was a desecration. It would invalidate the Seder itself and it would reinscribe the contempt for and intolerance of queerness in that it was trying to answer. So, she devised a new ritual. She placed an orange on her family's Seder plate as a symbol of everyone excluded from and marginalized within the tradition. It was not there just to be looked at but to be eaten, to be peeled and divided up into sections and shared around the table so that everyone could taste the sweetness of it. So that everyone could practice expanding the circle of inclusion to something that had not been included before. And so that everyone would have to spit out the seeds symbolic of the patriarchy, of homophobia, of queerphobia, of all other dimensions of bigotry and bias that we must spit out of ourselves and overcome in our society. The actual story and the more fulsome practice that goes along with it offers us some strategies for building solidarity with one another, being willing to create and adapt new practices, holding an intentional place for those people and identities who have been pushed to the margins, understanding the confrontation with intolerance as something that requires concrete action and begins within ourselves. It also counsels us to be mindful of the actual stories of things. Without some rigor in attending to the who's, where's, and why's of things, our stories can drift from the challenging towards the comfort, away from disruption and complexity and towards simplicity and complacency. And let me add, because spitting is usually frowned upon at the dinner table, sometimes the work of confronting injustice means that we're going to have to do some things that other people find slightly rude. Like most progressive Jewish people in America, I keep this practice. Whenever I host a Seder, there is an orange on the plate, even if I often struggle to find one that actually has seeds in it. But there is a third layer to this story that I think we should trouble ourselves with. And that is to sit with the question of whether or not that transformation of the crust of bread into an orange was actually the same sort of change as the one that turned a woman's scholars considered innovation into a reflexive reaction to the prejudice of a single anonymous man. Each change renders its subject less radical, less challenging, less a confrontation with the underlying assumptions of the system that it is embedded in. A story about feminist practice becomes centered on a man. A story about transgressive solidarity becomes a new affirmation of the tradition it was originally transgressing against. I do not know, but it may well be that there was someone, somewhere for whom something powerful was lost in Dr. Heschel's innovation. Someone who might say, I was never so lucky as to be treated like an orange. Surprising, but not unwelcome, sweet, and worthy of a place at the table. No, it's the crust of bread that represented my experience. Cast out, anathema, forbidden. When I looked at it, I saw myself there in the ritual for the first and only time. I do not say this to criticize Dr. Heschel or the gift of practice that she has given to contemporary Judaism. I practice it and follow it myself. I say it to name a question that I do not have an easy answer for, but which I believe we all need to make time to sit with. Every practice of inclusion entails some transformation for the group doing the including. Where is the right boundary line precisely between transformation for that in-group and acclamation for the newly included? Rounding the bend now and noticing that this whole message really has been about some of the finer points of Jewish story and practice, I am willing to bet that there is at least one of you who is wondering what does this actually have to do with me? I can enjoy the intellectual stimulation of a lecture on comparative religion from time to time, but I am not Jewish and this whole thing has gotten pretty deep in the weeds and it's all right if you feel that way. I still love you. My liberation is still bound up with yours, but I have brought this to you both of these detailed specific examples from some of the stories and rituals that deeply shape who I am because they are both about and pass over so far as I'm concerned is about and Unitarian Universalism is absolutely about welcoming the wholeness of every precious individual person into an arrangement of full belonging with the larger whole. Which means that sometimes we hear stories we didn't know before and if we're honest not every one of them is going to speak to us. Sometimes we share practices that feel unfamiliar possibly even uncomfortable, though to be clear bodily integrity and a baseline psychological security is always a fair expectation. Our creedless faith refuses to make coerced sameness a precondition for a place at the table, which means that we get the opportunity and bear the responsibility to learn from each other in all our differences and specificities. The traditional Haggadah and nearly all of the less than traditional ones I have encountered contains a formula. The leader indicates the matzah the unleavened bread at the table and pronounces in part. This is the bread of affliction which our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are in need come and celebrate the Passover. The terms that we set for belonging at least explicitly for moving into relationship with us in our congregations and spiritual communities are very nearly as vast and as generous and open as this ancient invitation is. Our promises have already been made. The work as ever is only for us to live up to them. Angels' feet have dropped. The beautiful, the beautiful. With the saints by the shining red sun of giving and receiving. Where we give freely and generously to this offering which sustains and strengthens our communities here and also our outreach offering recipient who this week is Array at Forward Fund. A project that FUS initiated with our partners at Renew Wisconsin. Array at Forward provides advice on financing and energy efficiency as well as seed money for solar energy projects for non-profit organizations. With your help this program will continue to provide the gift of green energy for years to come. There are multiple ways for you to share your gifts this afternoon. Baskets are now being passed here in the auditorium for cash or checks and you will see on the screen that you can donate directly at our website fussmattason.org. You will find our text to give information there as well. We thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life we create together. The joys sorrows and hopes we hold our own pain and celebration together with those of the ones we love. We share these here knowing they are held gently in care and support. We light a candle of memory and mourning for Barbara Ellen Strong who passed from life last week. Barb was a very long time member of FUS a fierce supporter who made heroic efforts to be with us in person into her very late years. Private Memorial was held for Barb this past week and a public celebration of her life will be planned for later this spring. The lives that she touched be strengthened and heartened by her memory. We light a candle for all those who feel isolated by grief by chronic pain by mental illness and all others who are alone and lonely. To you we extend our compassionate hearts. We light a candle of ongoing lament for the violence which plagues our world fervently we yearn for peace here at home and around the globe. We light a candle for all those joys and sorrows, hopes and dreams that remain unspoken in the silent sanctuaries of our hearts. I invite you now to turn both inward and outward with me and join an attitude of meditation and of prayer. Now in the season of spring as the rains fall gently on the angry and the fearful the joyful and the sad alike and as the earth gives forth its greenery once more let us turn our hearts towards those who need our care. We think of those whose faces are now wet with tears in this season of falling waters. Whether they be tears of grief or lights gone out of the world or tears of pain or sufferings of others or of their own. May those tears give sustenance to some new possibility as the spring rains help to melt the snow on the mountaintop and feed the rushing river below. Spirit of hope, current of life that draws us ever onward, teaches to be patient with ourselves and others and show us courage in our crying. We think also of those who want for the stuff of life in the season of blossoming renewal. May the rebirth of the natural world foretell a rebirth of the human heart as well. Resuscitation of mercy and justice and loving-kindness until to help all who need it is our guiding goal. Spirit of love, heartbeat within every heartbeat. Teach empathy to us and help us never to forget it. We think finally of those who are not free in these days that celebrate freedom whether that bondage comes from outside or with him. May every chain be broken, every tyrant deposed, may every yoke be lifted up and every message of self-hatred be wiped away clean. Spirit of freedom, wind that blows from all directions unfailing and undaunted. Teach us to remake our world into a place where all are free. May the meditations of our hearts lead to the work of our hands. Amen. Hello, my name is Drew Collins. I'm music director for First Unitarian Society. My pronouns are he, him. I also conduct our adult choirs, among other things. I'm so glad we have so many guests and so many folks here today. Would you please rise and body and door in spirit so we can sing together our closing hymn number 318. We would be one. Ancestor Theodore Parker prayed for us. Be ours a religion which like sunshine goes everywhere. It's temple all space. It's shrine the good heart. It's creed all truth. It's ritual works of love. It's profession of faith, divine living. So I charge you to show your faith by living it. The work of our religion is whatever love demands of you. Seek and believe all of and only the truth. Worship at the altar of every heart you meet. Move as gently in the world as you do in this place. Go forth and carry this spirit with you everywhere. Amen. Blessed be. Go in peace and please be at rest for the post.