 First Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical, and social issues in an accepting and nurturing environment. Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. My name is Karen Rose Gredler and on behalf of the entire congregation, I extend a special welcome to any visitors who are with us this morning. We are a welcoming congregation, so whomever you are and wherever you are in your life's journey, we celebrate your presence among us. May today's service stimulate your mind, touch your heart, and stir your spirit. I invite you now into a few moments of contemplative silence as we settle in and come fully into this time and place together. A belief which cannot be questioned binds us at imperfection in every belief. It is the acid which eats away the false. Let no one fear for the truth that doubt might consume it, for doubt is a testing of belief. The truth stands boldly then unafraid and is not shaken by testing. Truth that could be truth arises from each testing stronger and more secure. Let us not fear doubt, let us rejoice in its help. It is to the wise, as a staff, to the blind, doubt is the attendant of truth. Please join me in the words of affirmation critic in this morning's program. Gather this hour and ask the people of love, Even your heart is to create closer connections, May this weighing you down handle, Stake by our faith, our hope, and our love. In the spirit of that love, I invite you to turn your neighbor in exchange for devil warfare. So we were having a few technical difficulties with the other headset, but it seems like this one actually works. So all of you are on a staycation this week? You know what a staycation is? That's a vacation where you stay home? Oh, you're going to leave and go someplace else? But you're here today, so it's good to see all of you today. So the story I want to tell you this morning is just called I Wonder. Eva loves to look at the moon. And the moon kind of seems to follow her from place to place. It disappears behind the trees and the mountains. It appears again someplace new. Look, mama, there it is. The moon looks so beautiful in the sky. How do you think it follows us, Eva? Her mother asks. And Eva kind of thinks about it and she says, I can't figure it out. Well, it's okay, her mother says to say, I don't know. Because when we don't know something, then we can wonder about it. Eva says, Eva, I wonder if the earth and the moon are friends? Her mother smiles. She said, I like that idea. But mama, how does the moon really stay so close to us here on earth? Well, her mother says there is this invisible force called gravity. And gravity pulls everything in the universe together. Gravity keeps the moon close to the earth. It keeps the planets close to the sun, too. They circle around the sun like this. So Eva understands a little better, but then she starts to wonder again and says, mama, where does gravity come from? I don't know, Eva, her mother says. Nobody really knows for sure. And when nobody knows the answer to something, it's called a mystery. A mystery is something for everybody to wonder about together. How fun Eva thinks to herself, wondering whether, wondering that she could wonder about gravity with everybody else in the world. That would be fun. Eva looks up again and she watches the moon disappear behind the clouds as she walks. And she's kind of excited about what she might see next. Mama, how many grains of sand do you think there are in the whole world? I wonder about that, too, says her mother. There are trillions and trillions and trillions of grains of sand, and nobody really knows how many there are. And so Eva tries to think about all the sand in the whole world. She ever tried to think about all the sand? It feels so big, she says, that I can't even fit it into my imagination. And that makes me feel dizzy, kind of like I'm about ready to fall. I know what you mean, her mother agrees, and I'm sure there are other people that feel that way, too, when they think about something so, so big. Eva walks down another path looking for the moon and suddenly a little orange butterfly appears. And then she notices that there are butterflies everywhere. Mama, where did all those butterflies come from? Well, her mother says those butterflies have been flying around now for a couple of days, but they started out as little caterpillars. And the caterpillars came from eggs, and the eggs came from other butterflies, that's right. There are cycles all around us, Eva's mother says, with one thing ending and another thing beginning. Things are always changing. Do you think of something else that changes, her mother asks? Well, Eva thinks clouds, frogs, and me, she says. Me, I change. And then Eva starts wondering again, she says, Mama, before there were butterflies and frogs and clouds, before everything, what was there? I don't know the answer to that question, her mother says. Another mystery. I like trying to imagine what was here before the beginning of everything, Eva's mother says. What do you think was here, Eva? Eva says, I don't know, but she thinks for a long time and then she says, I wonder if there were feelings, if there were feelings before everything. And her mother really doesn't know how to answer that question. As they're walking home, Eva sees the moon again, glowing brightly over the roof of her house. And she says, Mama, let's go inside, let's see if we can see the moon from the upstairs window. And so they go into their house. We all live in these big mysteries. And when we come upon one of those mysteries, it's really like a little gift, because every mystery is something for everybody to wonder about together. And so what are some things that you wonder about? You don't have to answer that question right now, but you know, in our church school classes, we try to talk about some of the things that we all wonder about. So we're going to have class today and we're going to sing you out with our next hymn. Have fun. It's fun. Please be seated. I invite you now to join me in the spirit of meditation and intercommunion, the fickle spirit of the springtime weather, the greening grass and the soggy soil help us to understand that we belong to something so much greater, so much grander than ourselves. Increase our appreciation for the intricate cosmic web into which our own ephemeral lives are woven. And when we find ourselves frustrated and impatient with the slow pace of winter's retreat, when we are eager for shorts and shirt sleeves and oppressed by the weight of winter clothes, may we then alert ourselves to the larger picture because the crocus, after all, is content to wait and is in no rush to bear its fragile blossoms. And the fish will still spawn when the ice is gone and the robin lay her powder-blue eggs when instinct tells her it's safe to do so. Despite what Scripture might imply, the world was not meant to serve at our pleasure or on our timetable. And yet our world has become the victim of just such an assumption. If, per chance, nature did accede to our winter weariness, everything would be out of kilter. No sap would flow for maple syrup. Our skin would feel a mosquito's unseasonable prick, and tired fields the urgent bite of the farmer's plow. Spirit of life that maketh all things new. Give us a lesson in compassion and humility that we might see beyond our own immediate self-interest and become an integral part of your perennial plan for restoration and renewal. Let us continue on in a moment or two more of Silent Meditation. Blessed be and amen. We have two readings this morning. The first from the field of science and medicine. The second from the humanities. Michael Specter writes, C. Everett Coop is one of the most famously right-wing men ever appointed to a senior position in the public health service. In 1991, when President Ronald Reagan nominated Coop to the position of Surgeon General, Coop was a noted pediatric surgeon from Philadelphia with the beard of Abraham Lincoln and a strident opposition to abortion. Even today, his 1979 book, Whatever Happened to the Human Race, remains a touchstone for those who are opposed to legal abortion. But C. Everett Coop had no public health experience. Surgeon generals are usually quickly confirmed and then instantly forgotten. And before Coop, few Americans could have named one. No public health official in American history generated more controversy, however, than C. Everett Coop. Liberals on Capitol Hill denounced Reagan's choice for what it was, a blatant attempt to place ideological fealty over the demands of public health. And the battle for Coop's nomination dragged on for nearly a year, and at the end, he was confirmed. And Coop then proceeded to alienate nearly every supporter he had on the religious and political right. To fight the growing epidemic of AIDS, he recommended a program of compulsory sex education in the schools, and he argued that children should be taught how to use a condom. He campaigned vigorously against smoking in public places and raging the tobacco companies. And when President Reagan asked him to prepare a report on the psychological effects of abortion, the conservatives finally felt sure that they would have a positive result. Yet after meeting with activists on both sides and reviewing hundreds of scientific publications, C. Everett Coop declined to say that abortion was always more dangerous than the alternative. The administration was shocked. Coop said, you know, I never once changed my stripes during all that time. What I did in that job was to do what any well-trained doctor or scientist would do. I looked at the data and I presented the facts to the American people because in science, you cannot hide from the data. The second reading from the Austrian poet and essayist Raina Maria Rilke wrote these letters to a young poet. He is responding to a letter from this young poet who he is mentoring and his response contains these lines. He says, your doubt may become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing. It must become critical. And ask it. Ask it. Whenever it wants to spoil something for you, ask it why something is ugly. It proves from it. Test it. And you will find it perplexed and embarrassed perhaps or perhaps rebellious. But don't give in. Insist on arguments and act this way. Watchful, consistent, every single time. And the day will arrive when from a destroyer doubt will become one of your best workers, perhaps the cleverest of all that are building your life. You took the words right out of my mouth. So with respect to this doubt thing, that all too human propensity to question and to challenge those assertions that do not square with our own experience. With respect to those doubts, the Bible delivers a decidedly mixed message. The Gospel of John may be the most overtly hostile toward those who have a skeptical turn of mind. Of the four canonical accounts of Jesus' ministry, this is the only one that includes a post-resurrection interchange between Jesus and the disciple, Thomas. Now, as you may recall, Thomas was not present when the crucified Jesus suddenly and unexpectedly brought himself to his compatriots. We have seen the Lord. They report excitedly to Thomas. But Thomas is doubtful. Wishful thinking can cause people to visualize things that really aren't there. Unless I see in his palm the print of the nails. Unless I can place my hand in the wound in his side, I will not believe, Thomas tells them. Time later, Jesus makes a second appearance and he challenges Thomas to inspect the risen body. And abashed, Thomas quickly confesses his faith in the Lord, at which point Jesus upbraids him. Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed. It would not take many more years for this lesson to take hold. It is a symptom of spiritual weakness and human willfulness. For subsequent generations of Christians that meant accepting the Gospels at face value and resisting the temptation to quibble about even their most dubious claims. Do not doubt. Now, by contrast, the author of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, also known as Kohalith, invokes his own life lessons in much of what passed for conventional wisdom in those ancient times. It simply is not true, he says, that good people invariably prosper, that justice is always meted out fairly, that wealth and power will assure human happiness. All of this, Kohalith says, is poppycock or, as he puts it, mere vanity and a striving after wind. Now, the creator of that ancient text does no cynic, however. He urges his readers to find pleasure in life's small graces and to live righteously but without illusion. As Jennifer Hecht says, the teacher makes a simple appeal to experience the evidence of history and of our own senses. Ecclesiastes was almost certainly composed by someone imbued with the questioning of the biblical mood of Greek philosophy, which was very much in vogue in 3rd century BCE Palestine. And there are also tantalizing hints of Buddhist thought as well. Buddhist thought also places a premium on personal experience and careful discernment. Annie Tenzin Palma was a teacher in the Kagyu Order of Tibetan Buddhism and she recounts an ancient story where the villagers seek out an audience with the Buddha. And the villagers say to him, many teachers have come to us and each one of those teachers has his own doctrine and each one claims that his particular philosophy, his practice is the true one, but they don't agree with each other. So we're totally confused. What do we do now? And the Buddha listens sympathetically to the villagers and he says, you know, you have a right to be confused. This is a confusing situation. And then he offered the following counsel. Do not take anything on trust, merely because it's been passed down through tradition or because your teachers say it is so or because your elders have taught you or because it's written in some famous scripture. When you have seen it and when you have experienced it for yourself to be right and true, then you should accept it. So here again, the teacher points to the primacy of personal experience, which is not to say that those ancient scriptures have nothing worthwhile to say to us or that the sage does not deserve an open and respectful hearing. The kind of doubt both the author of Ecclesiastes and the Buddha recommend is more like the fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone truth may be found. And that saying, of course, has guided students and faculty at the University of Wisconsin since 1890. This is also the kind of doubt that I as a Unitary Universalist subscribe to. It is a commitment to that process, as Robert Weston put it, that eats away the false while simultaneously revealing precious nuggets of truth. Now, to be sure, we should not place doubt on too high a pedestal, for then our faith risks becoming a caricature of itself. The British novelist and Unitarian W. Somerset-Mann had just this to say as he justingly described his Unitarian co-religionists this way. He says, they are people who very earnestly disbelieve in almost everything that anybody else believes and they have a very lively sustaining faith and they don't quite know what. So we should not presume that doubt ever and always is profitable to us. An open mind, curiosity, a healthy skepticism are essential preconditions for the cultivation of wisdom and deeper understanding. But just as faith can become arrogant and exclusive, so can doubt. I expect that we have all met people who doubt not in the constructive spirit of the Buddha or Raina Maria Rilke, but rather in the condescending manner of the early 20th century essayist H. L. Menken who once dismissed faith as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. As reverent doubters, we Unitarian Universalists employ this tool in order to become more discerning and secure holders of not absolute, but provisional truths that can always be improved upon. And so the ultimate objective, as Jennifer Heck puts it, the ultimate objective is enlightenment. It is to teach us to live well and awake in this strange place that we occupy between meaning and meaninglessness. Nevertheless, even as people who prefer to live the questions rather than passively submit to preordained answers, sometimes we may rue that choice and regret it, because doubt can be rather discomfiting at times. And more than a few times I have heard staunch UUs during my 40 years in the ministry declare that it would sure be nice to have a bedrock belief system like those fundamentalists to fall back on. You ever felt that way? The good news, though, is that people who are cautious in their certainties and who are open to alternatives are less likely to be severely traumatized when that bedrock of belief buckles under the weight of all that disconfirming evidence. It's a safer place to be. And so the bottom line is that, despite some reservations, we UUs see doubt as a very good thing, a highly serviceable tool as we try to make sense, like those villagers of the many truth claims that keep crossing our path. As Alfred Lord Tennyson, the great 19th century British poet once wrote, There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in all the Christian creeds. It should also be pointed out that despite the bad press that doubting Thomas receives in John's Gospel, not all Christians think that his reservations were misplaced. So take see Everett Coop, the former surgeon general whose story I shared a few moments ago. Coop was a conservative Christian. He was appointed to that post with the expectation that he would establish public health policy on a strictly ideological basis. What they didn't count on is that Coop was also a scientist. And like any self-respecting scientist, he entertained his doubts. And he ended up taking a direction that neither he or anybody else had expected. So his early supporters took him to be a true believer first in a medical practitioner only secondarily. But as he later said, I never changed my stripes. I did what any well-trained scientists would do. I just followed the data. It's unfortunate that more religious conservatives have not followed Dr. Coop's example. When he was the president, George W. Bush, a self-described evangelical, claimed to be guided by God in his decision to invade Iraq. The original pretext was, of course, the need to discover and to destroy Saddam Hussein's stockpile of WMDs, weapons of mass destruction. But if President Bush had relied on the data that had been painstakingly gathered, rather than on his faith in God's guiding hand, he would have let Saddam's floundering regime just topple of its own accord. Because, of course, there were no WMDs as numerous experts had predicted prior to that invasion. Jim Wallace is another evangelical leader with a more progressive outlook. And he tried to engage President Bush on this issue, but Bush rebuffed him. And later, Wallace said, you know, faith can cut so many ways. And when it's designed to certify our righteousness, then faith can be very dangerous. And so 15 years later, the people of Iraq are still living with the fatal consequences of too little doubt. But here's the thing. So far today, I've been discussing honest doubt. Doubt employed for the purpose of exposing error, deepening our understanding, creating more legitimate and trustworthy institutions. But in recent times, we have been witnessing a species of dishonest doubt, the kind of doubt that's deliberately designed to sow confusion, to build mistrust, and to manipulate public opinion. The fact is, some things deserve our skepticism more than others. And when well-established theories and facts are called into question, it leads, as Russell Shortle writes, to a world that is riven by doubts and confusions without any arbiter, without any rules. And examples of this abound from the fruitless debate over Barack Obama's birth certificate, to the alleged criminality of undocumented immigrants, to the hollow Second Amendment claims of the NRA, to the unsettled science of climate change. Our current president sows doubt continually. Doubts about the integrity and fairness of the media. Doubts about the motive and character of a whole host of dedicated civil servants. Doubts about our allies abroad. Doubts about Hillary Clinton's margin of victory in the 2016 popular vote. It is no wonder that so many Americans feel bewildered and eager for some source of authority that can cut through all the confusion. So what happened to bring us to this perilous point in our history? Well, perhaps not the whole, but at least part of the answer may lie in a strategy that American tobacco companies began rolling out in the 1950s to protect their financial interests. And it is a strategy that succeeded amazingly well for several decades. The last chapter of that story is detailed in the 1999 film The Insider in which Russell Crowe plays a biochemist employed and then harassed by the Brown and Williamson tobacco company. But a fuller summary of that sordid tale is contained in a recent book by Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway, a book entitled Merchants of Doubt. A realizing that a growing body of scientific evidence confirmed the harmful effects of smoking and of secondhand smoke as well, the executives of Big Tobacco knew that no ordinary publicity campaign was going to save their bacon. Because if consumers became convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that smoking was dangerous, then they'd try to stop or they wouldn't begin at all. And there goes our profits. And thus, as Oreskes and Conway write, the industry manufactured an artificial debate over smoking. Convince the mass media that responsible journalists have an obligation to present both sides of the issue. And the industry said, we don't need to win this debate, we just need to keep it going. Doubt is our product, explained a tobacco executive's 1969 memo. Doubt is the best means the memo continued of competing with that body of fact that exists in the mind of the general public. It is the means of establishing an ongoing controversy. Now, tobacco products sold in this country today are accompanied by clear warning labels on their packaging. Tobacco advertising is banned from the airways, smoking is prohibited in most public facilities, and yet the tobacco strategy of sowing doubt lives on. Now, some of the same scientists who shield for big tobacco subsequently went to work for, guess who, ExxonMobil. And they were given the task of poking holes in the data that was related to climate change. A similar strategy has been employed by the forces that are seeking to undermine the Affordable Care Act, public education, and a host of other programs and policies that are designed to serve the general public but that raise the hackles of powerful vested interests. And so dense has this cloud of doubt become that it's almost begun to feel like we're all being gaslighted. That's a psychological term that served as the title of a 1938 stage play and later a suspense film starring Ingrid Bergman, in which a sociopathic husband tries to convince his wife with all these little tricks and maneuvers that she is going crazy. Gaslighting is defined as strategies, behaviors, and statements that a person uses to cause another person or persons to doubt their memory, their perceptions, or their sanity. There is an extensive literature on the subject, and therapists can now help clients to determine whether a co-worker or a partner or an acquaintance is acting or speaking in such a manner as is designed to create serious disabling self-doubt. Not just individuals, but groups can be gaslighted. Charismatic cult leaders practice gaslighting so that their followers will lose faith in themselves and place all of their trust in that charismatic leader. It's also a strategy that dictators like Vladimir Putin use masterfully to command the loyalty of the masses. And so the long and short of it is, doubt can be a double-edged sword. Yes, we can lose our freedom and independence of thought by binding ourselves too tightly to certain beliefs, but also by allowing wholesale doubt to overwhelm our powers of private judgment. Both pose a threat, but it may well be that the latter is the graver threat that we face today. So if we must have faith, and we must, and if we must trust, and yes, we must, let it be with our eyes wide open. And although we must never cease from questioning, let it be with due diligence and with respect for the wisdom of the ages. As Sir Francis Bacon, the eminent British statesman, scientist, and philosopher put it some 400 years ago, if we begin with certainties, we may end up with doubt, but if we will be content to begin with doubt, we just may end with some certainty. Blessed be and amen. Our offering today for the second week will benefit the Unitary Universalist Service Committee who is doing work to spread peace, justice, and sustainability throughout the global community. So please, be generous. We very much appreciate your monetary gifts. They are a boon to First Unitarian Society and to many of our partnering organizations. And we also appreciate the gifts of service that our members render. And today, those who have been serving as a part of our worship service include Karen Rose, of course, as our worship associate, David Briles, Alex Manville, handling our sound system, Lois Evenson, our lay minister today, our greeter, Claire Box, Pamela McMullen, our ushers Chuck Evanson, Daniel Bradley, Brian Channis, and Mary Savage, and serving our coffee after today's service, Biss Nitschke and Blaise Thompson. We also appreciate the service and the efforts that are being put forth by the Interim Minister Search Task Force, and they will be interviewing the applicants for our Interim Minister, who shall be with us from the time that I step off this stage, and a permanently settled minister comes to join you in 2020. So what qualities would you, as FUS members, want and value in an Interim Minister? What do you think that that person should know about our community? So please stop by the table in the commons after the services to have a little chat and to pick up a nice piece of chocolate. We also gather each week as a community of memory and of hope, and to this time and place, we bring our whole and at times our broken selves. We carry with us the joys and the sorrows of the recent past, seeking here a place where those might be received and celebrated and shared. And so now we would pause to acknowledge Doug Hill, who has chaired our music director search team, who had surgery recently at St. Mary's Hospital and has been discharged and is now home. I spoke to him yesterday and he's recovering very nicely and does not anticipate needing any further treatments for the condition that was surgically removed. And then we recently received word that longtime member Al Canner died of multiple myeloma that he'd been struggling with since 2010. He was a resident of Attic Angels. There will be a gathering in Al's honor on Sunday afternoon, June 24th at Attic Angels. In addition to those just mentioned, we would acknowledge any other unspoken joys or sorrows that remain among us and as a community of caring and concern, we do hold those in our hearts as well. So let us be a community of silence for just a few moments in the spirit of empathy and hope. And so by virtue of our brief time together today, may our burdens be lightened and our joys expanded. I invite you to rise in body and spirit one last time for our closing hymn, 345. The mysteries of life are many and there is so much that we cannot yet explain. But let this not deter us from yearning and working for the good. May we feel our strength. May we be of good cheer. May joyful laughter and beneficent power be ours. And may a sense of our own blessings fill our hearts and brighten our days. Our worship service is about to conclude. May our service to the larger world begin. Please be seated for the choral closing.