 Please join in a moment of centering silence so we can be physically present with each other this morning. And now let's get musically present by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn, which you'll find inside your order of service. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this sun-splashed Sunday here at First Unitarian Society, where independent thinkers gather in a safe, nurturing environment to explore issues with social, spiritual, and ethical significance as we try to make a difference in this world. I'm Steve Goldberg, a proud member of this congregation, and I'd like to extend a special happy hello to any guests, visitors, and newcomers. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I think you'll find that this is indeed a special place. And if you'd like to learn more about our special buildings, we'll be conducting a guided tour after this service, so just gather over here by the windows after the service, and we'll take care of you. Speaking of taking care of each other, this would be the perfect time to silence those pesky electronic devices that might get in your way this morning. So please take a moment to do that, and that goes for all of you listening or watching at home as well. And if you're accompanied this morning by a youngster at the services, we welcome the youngster, but every now and then that youngster might be concerned about you becoming fidgety, and if that youngster would prefer to enjoy the service from a more private space, we offer two options. One is our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium, and then there's some comfortable seating right outside the doorway in the commons from which you and your youngster can see and hear the service. As is the case every weekend, our service is brought to us by a dedicated team of people we call volunteers. And those volunteers are, to be thanked this morning, we're going to announce their names. You can thank them by shaking their hand, giving them a high five, or just saying thank you during the hospitality hour. Thank you to David Briles for handling the sound system today. Thanks to Tom Boykoff for being our lay minister. Thanks to Jeanine Nussbaum who greeted us upstairs as we arrived this morning. Thanks to Anne Ostrom, Nancy Daly, and Gail Bliss for serving as ushers today. Thanks to Colleen Filz and Nancy Kossoff for serving the coffee that we'll enjoy a little bit later on today. A special thank you to Anne Smiley for donating the flowers that you see behind me. And thank you to our tour guide, John Powell. Just a couple announcements before we continue with the service today. Did you know that our elves need help? No, you didn't know that, but now you're going to hear all about it because the FUS Family to Family Holiday Giving Program provides gifts and food cards to more than 130 families in Dane County. That's 130 families. We help that we touch through our gift and food card family to family holiday giving program. Helps make the holidays brighter for these 130 families. And you can start signing up next weekend. So this is a heads up announcement to be matched with a wish list of families who need specific things during the holidays, as well as some tasks that the team that is putting this together needs in order to pull this off. So take a look at the red floors bulletin that you've got in front of you now. And you'll see the link to sign up to volunteer for a specific task or we can wait until next weekend and do it then. And speaking of the holidays, the holiday that's coming up next, somebody remarked that she just got done putting away her Halloween stuff and now she's got to get ready for Thanksgiving. Well, that's what this announcement is about. Our annual Thanksgiving potluck dinner here at First Unitarian Society is, of course, Thursday Thanksgiving Day at 2.30 in the afternoon. It's a great time, an opportunity to spend the afternoon with FUS members, their families and friends, and the dinner will begin promptly at 2.30. So bring your favorite Thanksgiving dish to pass and share, and a nominal donation per person to help fund the dinner. You can contact the organizer, Donna Kangolosi, to learn more about what you can bring, and you can get information as well in the commons at a special information table. The last announcement is the number 153. That's the number of days until the next cabaret. So end of the announcements. It's time now to sit back or lean forward to enjoy today's service. I know that it will touch your heart, stir your spirit, and trigger one or two new thoughts. And hey, we're glad you're here. We're here with a piece entitled A Caregiver's Morning Prayer by an unknown author. As I begin this new day, let me have the courage and the strength to lie what's ahead. Let me practice tolerance and patience. Let me reveal empathy and love. And let me offer sustenance and hope. And let me have the wisdom to know when I need to step forward and when to step back. And I ask of this so that when I come to the end of the day, I might rest, knowing that my time and my energy have been wanted and needed. And yes, I'm asking all of this for my sake, but I'm also asking it for the sake of another. I invite you to rise in body and spirit for the lighting of our chalice. And our words of affirmation are responsive, so if you will join your voices in reading the bolded sections. We would come to this house in an attitude of openness, not knowing quite what will happen, yet daring to receive a new idea, a new experience, sustenance for our minds and hearts. We would come in an attitude of humility, knowing how much we need one another, how alone we can be in the world, how vulnerable if we face life solely by ourselves. We would come in the spirit of joy, seeking reaffirmation and renewal of life, of love, and of hope. And before you exchange a friendly greeting this morning, I need to offer one admonition that I forgot to tell Steve about, which is that if you have parked this morning on the 900 block of University Bay Drive, you will need to move your car or you will get a $40 ticket, as I did last Sunday morning. Shorewood has recently restricted all parking on 900 University Bay Drive to only permit holders. We are actually talking to them about revising that policy, but as of right now, University Bay Drive is not a parking that's available to us on Sunday mornings. Now, please exchange a warm greeting, unless your car is out there. I invite you to join me now in the spirit of meditation. From many places and many conditions of the spirit, we come seeking here a center for our lives and a sense of greater wholeness. From dry places where words and knowledge seem broken into brittle fragments that do not cohere. From overfilled places where information abounds but there's no real depth of understanding. From hard places where feelings are dulled and from lonely hollow places where meaning seems thin. Here in this caring and supportive community and in this time of quiet reflection, we come from all of these states of being to be emptied of the clatter and the confusion of the information we once thought was all-sufficient, emptied, and then filled with the spirit that flows in and among us and that can be for us, a reliable source of solace and of insight. In this time of quiet, let us center our spirits, ground our being, that we might find the power that already lies latent within us, power for love, power for creativity, power for hope and power for transformation. Given this brief reprieve from daily pressures, may we learn once again to appreciate that every inch of space is a miracle and every instant is a wonder and an opening for new opportunities. At this very moment, then, may our hearts be open to compassion, our minds be open to insight, and our spirits be open to grace. Let us continue on in a moment to more of silence. Blessed be, and amen. You may remain seated as we sing together our next hymn, number 326, and if there are any of our older children still in the congregation, this would be the time when you would depart for your classes. We do have children's chapel this morning, so I know the younger kids are over in the other auditorium. James Miller and Susan Kutchall's book, The Art of Being, A Healing Presence. Being present is not a complicated matter. All you do is wake up. You open your eyes, you look around, you come to your ordinary senses, and once you are awake, you stay that way for as long as you can. You wake up where you are, taking in all that's around you. Sometimes you survey the entire panorama, other times you focus on the details, paying attention to lines, shapes, colors, textures. And following your natural curiosity, you simply open up to as much as possible. And you wake up not just to your surroundings, but to what is going on in those surroundings. Is there movement? Where is it? What sort of movement is there stillness? What is its quality? Are there sounds? How many? What kind? What do your senses gather and convey? Being really present includes being awake to yourself. What's happening within yourself while all these things are happening around you? What's your body telling you and your feelings? What are you thinking? Another person or persons may be present, so you try to awaken to them too. Who are they? What are they like? What are they doing? What's going on between the two of you? When you are completely present, you stay awake to each unfolding moment. You give yourself fully to the present instance, letting go of what was and choosing not to anticipate what will be. You don't do presence, you are presence. It's as simple as that. Nevertheless, it is not necessarily easy. For in today's world, most of us are busy. Too busy. We overfill our days with activities until those activities overfill us. The multitasking attitude that we fall into in every day moments and work-a-day situations, that can interfere with simply being present. We unthinkingly presume that these moments that are passing are so ordinary that we can take them for granted. We see a tree, or we see a sky, or we see a particular person so many times day after day after day that we forget. We forget how truly amazing a tree is, how truly spectacular the sky can be, how truly unique and what a miracle another person can be. So we lose sight of the extraordinary as it lies hidden in what we call the ordinary. Once we allow that to happen, it's difficult to reawaken, to consciously discover the wonderment and the vitality all around us. And yet, the more we practice being completely present, the more natural it becomes. The more we wake up to what is around and within us, the more we are inclined to stay that way. In the second reading, kind of a prose poem from Mary Oliver's book, Dog Songs. And she writes about her own dogs, a succession of dogs that she has had. And in this particular poem, there's an imaginary dialogue going on between her and her dog, Ricky. And there's also a reference to a former dog of hers named Percy, and a reference to Mary Oliver's partner, Anne. Follow that? Ricky, can you explain how it is that Anne and I can talk with you as we did with Percy too, and that we all understand each other? Ricky, is that a kind of miracle? It's no miracle, says Ricky. It's actually simple. When you and Anne talk, I listen. When I talk, you listen, as you did with Percy. Of course we listen. No, no, I mean really listen. Here's a story, and you don't have to visit too many houses to find it. One person is talking, the other isn't really listening. Someone can look like they are, but they're actually thinking about something that they want to say next. Or their minds are just wandering. Or they're looking at that little box that people hold in their hands these days. So people get discouraged, and they just quit trying. And the very quiet people, you may have noticed, they're often sad people. Ricky, you've really thought about this, haven't you? So we can talk together because we really listen. And that's because, yes, said Ricky, because we care. So as some of you probably know, one of the busiest intersections on the west side of Madison is at University Avenue and Midvale Boulevard. During the morning and evening commute period, traffic can back up for a couple of blocks in either direction. And the stop lights on University Avenue feature arrows for those intending to make a left-hand turn, either onto Midvale or for eastbound traffic into Shorewood Hills. The latter, however, is a very short duration, allowing only three or four cars at most to execute their turn before the light changes. Now because I live in the village of Shorewood Hills, I am a frequent visitor to that intersection. On most occasions, I am able to beat the light. But occasionally, there will be a car in front of me whose driver is simply not paying attention. I suspect that most are busy checking their smartphones or sending a text. What they are not doing is watching for the green turn arrow to illuminate, thus leaving both them and those behind them stranded and frustrated for another several minutes. Such behavior is, of course, rather inconsiderate. And yet it is becoming more and more common, despite repeated admonitions from transportation officials to leave the cell phones alone while you are operating a motor vehicle. Now I don't believe that people intend to cause inconvenience to others. They are simply inattentive. And they don't appreciate that attention is, at a minimum, a responsibility, a courtesy we owe to others, and at other times, it can be a precious gift that we all have the ability to bestow. And I understand, of course, that this can be a challenge in a society that competes for our attention every waking minute. Writing last spring in the New York Times, Matthew Crawford shared his own discomfort with today's capitalist who, as he puts it, seemed determined to dig up and monetize every bit of private headspace by appropriating our collective attention. Crawford describes his experience in major metropolitan airports, where, as he puts it, fields of view that have not been claimed for commerce are getting fewer and fewer. Once one cannot move, he says, the moving walkway at O'Hare without being distracted by advertisements for Lincoln financial group that have been applied to the handrail. Televisions tuned to CNN are ubiquitous, almost impossible to avoid. And thus, there is less and less space left for travelers to attend to and conceivably engage with one another. What is lost, Crawford laments, is the public space that is required for sociability, the kind that depends on people not being self-enclosed. The airport lounge was once rich with possibilities for those spontaneous encounters. And even if we did not converse, our attention was free, free to alight on one another and to linger there. We encountered another person, even if in silence. And so the author goes on to suggest that we may need to begin treating our attention in the same way as we treat our air, our water, and our soil. Attention is a resource to be protected from the predations of those who would expropriate it for the sole purpose of making a buck. We have a right not to be addressed by those commercial interests, to be shielded from those who address us face to face, but not from those who'd never show their faces to us. Yes, attention is a precious and limited resource, and we do well to shepherd it and direct it toward those activities, those objects, and those individuals that are most worthy and deserving of it. It is, after all, the rare person who does not crave attention. I have the feeling that in today's world where it's increasingly hard to get attention for free, we often resort to paying for it. Do we suffer from a deficit of attention from friends and family? Well, then there's always counselors and fitness trainers and personal coaches who, for a fee, will step in and fill the void. Now, to be sure, these people also have expertise to offer, but they also reliably provide a human touch that is in itself of considerable value. Francis Weller, an authority on traditional and indigenous methods of healing from grief and from loss, he argues that for thousands of years human beings were emotionally and spiritually nourished by other members of a closely connected community. People would gather around the fire. They would listen as the elders told stories. They would sing together. They would share meals in the evening, come back and share their dreams in the morning. They would support each other in times of bereavement. And so according to Weller, the community satisfied these primary human needs. But today that need for intimacy, for connection, often goes unmet, which means that people try to cope by turning to secondary satisfactions. We know what those are, status, wealth, privilege, or more problematically, addictions. We need attention from the groups to which we belong, Weller insists, especially when we are hurting, especially when we are under stress. But we also need each of us to grant attention as a participant in a reciprocal self-sustaining process. And this is, I would suggest, what many of us look for when we become a part of a faith community, and attentiveness that we try to maintain and share with one another in this privileged, commercial-free setting. And truthfully, we do not, in our own community, always succeed in these efforts. Because many of us have just gotten out of the habit, or we unconsciously repeat the inattentive patterns of behavior that we have acquired in the outside world. But here, at least, we recognize the importance of attention, and we do our best to practice it. Pope Francis, writing in his most recent encyclical, Lauditeau Say, says, what we are speaking here is an attitude of the heart, one which approaches life with serene attentiveness, which is capable of being fully present to someone without thinking about what comes next, which accepts each moment as a gift to be lived to the full. And for inspiration and for instruction in this discipline, I can do no better, as with Mary Oliver, than observing our own dog, Sasha. For her, as for Ricky and for Percy, attention. It seems to be a natural attribute, one that dogs have developed over thousands of years of partnership with human beings. At least some of the literature on dogs speculates that it was this very ability to attend that endeared this species to us, humans. They study us. They look for cues in our eyes, hands, posture, our tone of voice, in order to give us what we want, in order for us to give them what they need. And nothing seems to harm a dog emotionally more than to be neglected, to be ignored. That's when you notice that pitiful hang dog expression. Now, of course, I do not wanna press the connection between human and canine attention too far, for we humans face challenges in this regard that dogs do not. As creatures of the modern age, we are fated to spend a good bit of our time in our heads, preoccupied with thoughts and daydreams and storylines that neither dogs nor earlier generations of human beings had to cope with. We don't have to have a cell phone close at hand to suddenly find that our attention has wavered, that we've tuned out a conversation or that we have missed that green turn arrow. According to Kay Lindahl, author of The Sacred Art of Listening, while we do spend about 45% of our time actually listening, the average person is distracted or inattentive for three quarters of that process. 22 seconds. That's about how long, without making a concerted effort, most of us can hold our attention steady. Being attentive takes practice. As the manager of one large business told Kay Lindahl, I've always prepared myself to speak, but I've never prepared myself to listen. But the benefits of paying attention are considerable, whether one is the object or the person doing the attending. For instance, in studies that have been done on effective salesmanship, those men and women who enjoy notable success are the ones who take the time and are able to listen carefully to customers as those customers explain their needs. Rather than push their product on an unfamiliar prospect, the smart salesman steps back, asks questions, draws the person out, and therefore convinces the seeker that this salesman is someone who wants to understand and satisfy their needs. Of course, that can be overdone. Attentiveness should always be accompanied by sensitivity. We want our presence and we want our interest to be affirmed, but we don't want them scrutinized. When interest is too intense, it can make the other person uncomfortable as if they're being examined under this microscope. And so a healthy interaction always involves a deep respect for personal boundaries. Alan Woefelt, a noted grief counselor, underscores this point when he notes that in companioning those who have suffered a loss or someone who is actively dying, we must always let that person call the shots, respecting their need to be alone some of the time, allowing them to express their thoughts and feelings without forcing the issue if they seem reluctant to do so. Don't try to raise the person's spirits by offering cliches, but just listen and provide assurances of your own care and concern for their welfare. Woefelt writes, give your friend permission to express feelings without fear of criticism. Learn from your friend. Don't instruct, don't set expectations about how he or she should respond. Think of yourself as someone who walks with, not behind, not in front of, the dying or the grieving person. Now it's hard to underestimate the advantages that the act of consciously attending can confer. A number of years ago, the psychologist and family therapist, John Gottman, decided to observe newlyweds in a clinical setting, what he called a love lab. And Gottman wanted to see if he could isolate certain behaviors, whether negative or positive, that might help him to understand why it is that certain marriages fail and why certain marriages succeed. And the most meaningful gesture between couples that he could observe was what he called turn toward. In other words, when one party to a marriage comes to the other wanting to share something, the other quickly dropped what they were doing, redirected their attention and turned toward their partner. And couples who were good at doing this Gottman labeled masters. While those who evinced irritation or resentment over being interrupted, he called those couples disasters. Couples who were still together after six years of marriage were adept at turning toward each other 87% of the time. And to illustrate the difference, Gottman offered the example of a spouse who comes home bursting with excitement, anxious to share some good news, perhaps acceptance at a prestigious graduate program. Now the partner might respond half-heartedly, glancing at his or her watch, shutting down the conversation with a simple, that's nice dear. By contrast, the masters practiced what Gottman calls active, constructive responding. If a partner reacted to good news in this way, Gottman writes, he stopped what he was doing, engaged wholeheartedly with him or her, saying, that's great, congratulations, when did you find out? Did they call you? Or some such language? And according to Gottman's findings, the only salient difference between couples who were still together after six years and those who had broken up was active, constructive responding. The partners made an effort to pay attention to each other and thus showed that they prioritized the relationship. Between couples, in families, among friends, the dividends of paying attention are typically shared, both parties benefit. The person being attended to feels validated and despite the effort that might be involved, the person doing the attending experiences a deeper than usual sense of well-being. As the renowned Harvard psychiatrist George Valiant found out after tracking a large sample of Harvard graduates for over three decades, sustainable happiness correlated much more closely with a meaningful connection to others than with any measure of personal success. Sometimes the rewards are quite tangible. Rachel Naomi Raymond, a pioneer in the field of integrative medicine, tells the story of a colleague who provided healthcare on an Arizona Indian reservation. One day, a native woman, well into her 90s, was brought to the clinic by her daughter. The physician, Elizabeth, did everything she could for this non-agenarian from a medical standpoint. She addressed her urinary tract infection. She managed her diabetes. She reversed her incipient heart failure. She ordered a goodly number of lab tests. She mobilized social services to help the daughter out and she even located an agency that could provide some additional monetary support for the family. She did due diligence. After the old woman finally succumbed and died at the age of 96, Elizabeth received an unexpected call from a researcher at the University of Arizona. This researcher was planning to write a book on Native American medical traditions, traditional medical traditions, and he was aware of this woman practitioner who had recently passed away. This lady had received the lineage and she was one of a handful that remained who had kept alive the ancient ways of Native American healing in the Southwest. The researcher had contacted the family of this woman but the family had referred him to Elizabeth because, well, Elizabeth was a healer as well. The two women knew each other well, the daughter said. She presumed that Elizabeth and her mother had discussed many things having to do with medicine during their frequent encounters. Not so much. Despite her solicitous and impeccable professional approach to the woman's medical issues, she had never once inquired into her background and since Elizabeth had never asked, the old native healer had never offered to share her wisdom. I've never forgotten it, Elizabeth said ruefully. I think of her sitting there all those months watching me shuffling papers and tracking my data and knowing what she knew. I wonder what was going through her mind. I've been so busy with my numbers and with my tests. What could I have been so busy with that I couldn't have given her an hour or two? I give anything to have that hour now to ask her all of my unanswered questions, to have her perspective on suffering and loss and illness and death or maybe simply to ask for her blessing. You have to be present to win, Raymond says. And by winning, she's not referring to any particular opportunity but winning at the game of life in general. Attention is in the end a form of love and in fact, attention can serve as a fulcrum for love that can even serve to generate love. In her book, All Joy and No Fun, The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, Jennifer Sr. disputes the classical assumption that we care for our children because we love them. Parental love, she writes, is about time, it's about engagement, it's not just about biology. We love our children because we care for them. Both assertions are probably true. And taking care of kids can be, as any parent knows, a thankless task at times. But often that is because a part of us when we're taking care of those kids, a part of us wants to be somewhere else doing something else. And so we refuse to give our full attention to the child sitting there before us. And if we do so, invest in them our full attention. We may at some point discover that love and attention are indecisible. They go hand in hand. The one is always contingent upon the other. May we always be cognizant of that association as parents, with our partners, with our pets, and here in this community with one another. Blessed be. And as you can see, our offering today will be shared with Dry Hooch Madison, which is an agency that serves veterans, particularly veterans who are recovering from substance abuse. They have a table out just beyond the middle doors and we invite you to stop by and grab some literature and talk to the folks who are staffing it. Every week as a community of memory and of hope. And to this time and this place, we bring our whole and sometimes our broken selves. We carry with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past and seek here a place where they might be received and celebrated and shared. And now in the spirit of presence, we would pause to acknowledge Patricia Leonardo. With sadness, we announced that she passed away on Friday afternoon due to complications of multiple myeloma. We will miss her bright spirit, her creativity, her deep and immense generosity and love. We are holding her partner Linda McAfee and the many Leonardo's in our hearts and the services planned for December 19th at 1 p.m. in our landmark auditorium. Many of you would have known Patricia because she coordinated our cabaret service auction for quite a number of years so effectively and so enthusiastically, among other things. And our hearts are also with Biss and Ruppnitschke as they heal from a recent car accident. Biss had very successful surgery on Thursday as being released this afternoon. We send our prayers to her for strength and healing. And then on a joyful note, we as a congregation congratulate Sasha Ostrom who was yesterday at 11 o'clock ordained into the Unitarian Universalist Ministry. Sasha, as you know, was our intern last year and I had the pleasure of delivering the sermon at her ordination in Raleigh, North Carolina. And also I had the discomfort of arriving back in Madison two and a half hours late last night. And so I'm a little jet lagged but very, very happy for Anastasia. In addition to those mentioned, we would also acknowledge any unexpressed joys and sorrows that remain among us and as a community we hold those with equal concern in our hearts. Let us now sit silently together in the spirit of empathy and of hope. And so by virtue of our brief time together this morning may our burdens be lightened and our joys expanded. Our closing hymn in the Teal hymnals is number 1,012. Go now in peace, deeply regard each other, truly listen to one another, speak what each of you must speak with candor and compassion and be ready at any moment to disarm your heart and always live as if the reign of love had begun. May it be so. Please be seated for the postlude.