 Let's gather for a moment of centering the the words are printed in your order of service. Good morning. Welcome to the 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 Dorit Bergen and on behalf of this congregation I would like to extend a special welcome to visitors. We are a welcoming congregation so whoever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life journey we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library which is directly across from the center doors of this auditorium. Bring your drinks and your questions. Members of our staff and lay ministry will be on hand to welcome you. You may also look for persons holding teal, stoneware, coffee mugs. These are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community who would love to visit with you. Experienced guides are generally available to give a building tour after each service. So if you would like to learn more about this sustainably designed addition or our national landmark meeting house please meet near the large glass window on the left side of the auditorium immediately after the service. And do we have actually a person to guide a tour? And do we have anybody who would volunteer to guide a tour? Okay I will. I'll meet you over there. We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service but if a child needs to talk or move around the child haven or commons are good places to retire. The service can still be seen and heard from those areas and speaking of noise this would be a good time to turn off all electronic devices that might cause a disturbance. I now like to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly. Our sound operator this morning is Mark Schultz. Our greeters were March Schweitzer and Carol Angel. Our ushers are Tom Dolmage and Anne Smiley and coffee is being made for us by Gene Hills and Sharon Skradisch. Please note the announcements on the red floors insert in your order of service which describe upcoming events at the society. I do have a few special announcements but now says the once-ler now that you're here the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot nothing is going to get better it's not. From Dr. Seuss the Lorax. There's a spot for you and for me and maybe even the Lorax in one of 176 slots in 13 service Saturday projects. Many are family friendly including arboretum prairie restoration, cookie baking for a homeless shelter, storm sewer labeling, John Muart elementary school gardening, Alan Centennial garden help and talk, a Farley Center work party, letter writing, literacy council assistance, a veteran's hospital visit and more and who can resist the congregational picnic at 430 back at the church with Celtic musicians. There are only six days until August 26th. See the commons table for more information or sign up on the FUS website. The music director search committee is beginning the process of finding our new music director and they want to know your thoughts regarding music and its role here at FUS. There is a table set up for you to visit as you mingle between and after the services today. Please do visit that table to discuss your thoughts or to fill out a note sharing your ideas and your wishes. The outreach pride parade is today at 1pm. We will gather as Madison Unitarian Universalists in the 600 block of State Street behind our standing on the side of Love Banner. If you would like to carpool there from FUS meet at the front doors to the atrium immediately after the 11 o'clock service. If you would like to join our pride bicycle caravan meet at the green bike rack near the center doors immediately after the 11 o'clock service. Again welcome. We hope that today's service will stimulate your mind touch your heart and stir your spirit. The order of service says that our opening words are from Walt Whitman they are not. Instead we have some words from a prayer written by Maureen Killaren spirit of life in this time of turmoil and pain in our country and in our hearts. We pray this day for the courage to be humble in the face of inequity outrage and pain to know that the power has been given to us to make a difference. We pray for the courage of endurance to keep acting to keep trying to keep hoping. May courage give us patience and may we ever know love's healing presence at the heart and center of our days. I invite you to stand now for the lighting of the chalice and if you would join me in the bolded text existence is beyond the power of words to define terms may be used but none of them are absolute in the beginning of heaven and earth there were no words words come out of the womb of matter and whether we dispassionately see to the core of life or passionately see the surface the core and the surface are essentially the same words making them seem different only to express appearance if name be needed wonder names them both from wonder to wonder existence opens and now would you turn to your neighbor for some friendly greetings number eight our lay minister Karen Rose Gredler will read the message for all ages please be seated and if we have any children who would like to join us up front it's a good story any children of any age are welcome oh good here comes up yay you're a nice big boy yes oh goody and tim oh great come on this is a good book i love it it is called this moose belongs to me i'm so glad you're here wilfred owned a moose and the pictures are up there too well he hadn't always owned a moose the moose came to him a while ago and he knew he just knew that it was meant to be his he thought he would call him Marcel and he hung a name tag on his antlers and that's silly he began following Marcel explaining the rules of how to be a good pet much of the time it seemed as though the moose wasn't actually listening but wilfred knew he was mostly because he followed rule number four very well not making too much noise while wilfred plays his record collection those are antique things that your parents and grandparents might remember uh sometimes the moose wasn't a very good pet he generally ignored rule number seven going whichever way wilfred wants to go the moose had a very good sense of direction and wilfred did not and because the moose was particularly poor on rule seven subsection b maintaining a certain proximity to home wilfred quickly learned to bring some string along on their outing so he could find his way back again do you see the ball of string there that he takes with him and unrolls it kind of like leaving breadcrumbs except birds don't eat your string so that's a smarter idea sometimes the moose was an excellent pet he had no trouble at all with rule number 11 providing shelter from the rain or rule number 16 knocking down things that are out of wilfred's reach see there wilfred standing under him during a rainstorm and Marcel is knocking down apples probably for himself but wilfred assumes they're for him to eat good work he says one day as wilfred discussed their plans for the coming year on a particularly long walk he made a terrible discovery until you hear this someone else thought she owned the moose rodrigo you're back she exclaimed wilfred was dumbstruck this moose was marcel not rodrigo the old lady was mistaken and wilfred thought it only proper that he correct her so he explained this moose belongs to me and to prove it he called marcel wait i didn't show you that picture did i for you guys it's good to have him down here he called marcel kind of like you'd call a dog he said heal marcel heal well the moose did not respond he seemed more interested in the old lady who gave him an apple could rodrigo she said he um well said wilfred embarrassed and enraged wilfred rushed off for home however in his haste and miles from anywhere he tripped over his string and got all tangled up whoops look at him there ah he goes flying all tangled in string well and there he lay wilfred was beginning to get a bit worried it was getting late and dark and he was afraid some monsters would come out soon he had just ruled out the last of his options for escape when along came the moose see that moose did you see it okay well the moose performed rule number 73 brilliantly rescuing your owner from perilous situations he seems to have scooped him up the giant antler there he is saving him or eating an apple whichever one you want to think is happening well all was forgiven and perhaps wilfred admitted he'd never really owned the moose anyway with that in mind he had the moose reach to compromise the moose would agree to all wilfred's rules all of wilfred's rules whenever it suited him and one more post script the last page of the book shows a priest seeing the moose coming toward him and saying dominant you're back and you brought me an apple isn't that a good story i love that yeah so now while you folks go off to summer fun we're going to sing you out with him number 77 have a good morning oh you bye bye a speech by canadian author margaret atwood at the national book critics award ceremony margaret atwood is perhaps best known for her novel the handmaid's tale which was recently serialized on hbo i am very happy to be here because they let me across the border artists are always being lectured on their moral duty a fate other professionals dentists for example generally avoid writers because of the isolation inherent in their craft are psychologically vulnerable the pen is mightier than the sword but only in retrospect at the time of combat those with the swords generally win why do i do such a painful task for the same reason that i give blood we must all do our part because if nobody contributes to this worthy enterprise then there won't be any just when it's needed now is one of those times never has american democracy felt so challenged there are still places on this planet where to be caught reading you or even me would incur a severe penalty i hope there will soon be fewer such places i am not holding my breath i will cherish this lifetime achievement award from you though like all blessings it is a mixed one why do i only get one lifetime and where did this lifetime go and this is from winter hours by mary oliver what i mean by spirituality is not theology but attitude such interest nourishes me beyond the finest compendium of facts in my mind now in any comparison of demonstrated truths and unproven but vivid intuitions the truths lose i would therefore write a kind of elemental poetry that doesn't just avoid indoors but doesn't even see the doors that lead inward to laboratories to textbooks to knowledge i would not talk about the wind and the oak tree and the leaf on the oak tree but on their behalf i would talk about the owl and the thunder worm and the daffodil and the red spotted newt as a company of spirits as well as bodies i would say that the fox stepping out over the snow has nerves as fine as mine and a better courage i would write praise poems that might serve as comforts reminders or even cautions if needed to wayward minds and unawakened hearts i would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else and that our dignity and our chances are one the farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing or a few things and then closing the list the pine tree the leopard the plate river and ourselves we are at risk together or we are on our way to a sustainable world together we are each other's destiny he went the other way range of opinions are possible the humanitarian universalist congregation anyway my nature is skeptic i've long had my suspicions about that sale as a young priest members of the parish unfamiliar to my eye would tell me apologetically well father i don't get to mass much but i worship god out in nature i suspect they were talking about golf now i have spent many hours playing at a game which from a distance kind of resembles golf but i don't remember many moments which i have described as worshipful so when somebody says i'm not religious but i'm a spiritual i have to ask myself what does that mean i don't believe in a supreme being i don't belong to a religious congregation i don't think of myself as a fill in the blank i'm not sure what is the positive content of that statement as jim jaker recently pointed out surveys show a marked decline in religious affiliation over the past 30 years this is a big shift americans have always ranked very high among nations in self-reported religious faith but this decline in both church membership and self-reported faith began to show up in the 70s particularly in the traditional churches both catholic and protestant there appears to be a marked political dimension to the shift of affiliation during recent political primaries head crews led Donald trump by 15 percentage points among faithful church attendees trump led the crews by 27 percentage points among those who were not regular attendees it may be the passionate affiliation of alt-right and tea party members fulfills many of the functions of church membership in addition according to two research white republicans who seldom or never attend religious services are 19 percentage points less likely to agree that the american dream still holds true to me this reads like a profound loss of hope does this give a non doctrinal denomination like unitarian universalism some kind of edge i'm not sure what the polls show on that one but i'd like to look for some non-churched examples of hope filled people are reading from margaret hatwood's speech candid brave and ironic like her writings suggest that the balance feels a strong moral imperative to write what she writes because it's doing her part just like giving blood and good writing is like giving blood her religious background none that i can find she's a member of the american humanist association and describes her religious point of view as secular humanist as for mary oliver her vivid words needed no further elaboration but i excuse me particularly like you to meet alexander von humboldt born in about 1769 a passionate naturalist whose work influenced scientists across disciplines and across the world i stumbled across andrew wolf's recent book the invention of nature biography of humboldt learned a lot of amazing stuff humboldt began his career before scientists became rigorously confined to their own disciplines at the time naturalists interested in botany were committed to classification naming uh listing locating them in a hierarchy of botanical classes i found that really really dull in my school days humboldt did this stuff through fairly well collecting measuring naming but he always knew there was something more the relation between plants and different plants and climates and soils and altitudes dare i say it the interconnected web of all nature unfamiliar our seventh principle right and humboldt said at first about 200 years ago before darwin before mendel before anybody as far as i can tell and for humboldt it was far more than a dry scientific hypothesis it was a passionately held conviction which drove him in his early 30s to spend much of his newly acquired inheritance on an expedition to ecuador to climb mount chimaborazo an inactive volcano then thought to be the highest mountain in the world abandoned by porters at the snowline carrying dozens of heavy measuring instruments but no oxygen humboldt and his three companions stopped frequently to gulp for air take scientific measurements and make botanic observations at 19 000 feet no birds no plant life they moved slowly through the fog which surrounded the top of the mountain and stopped at the edge of a crevasse which ended their climb at 19 413 feet yes he carried an altimeter suddenly the clouds lifted and standing close to what he took to be the top of the world humboldt began to see the whole earth as one great living organism with which in which everything was connected he conceived a bold new vision of nature that still influences the way we understand the natural world and it came to believe that great part of a response to the natural world should be based on the senses and emotions humboldt wrote that nature must be experienced poetically through feelings did you get that sense in your biology classes if you did lucky you how influential was humboldt well he numbered among his admirers Thomas Jefferson Charles Darwin William Wordsworth Samuel Coleridge borough emerson and racial Carson and particularly James Lovelock who formulated the Gaia theory of earth as a self-renewing ecosystem a 19th century historian called him the second most famous man in Europe after Napoleon so was humboldt a card-carrying unitarian well no he was not a card-carrying anything as far as I can tell all nature was his church if you will and he didn't play golf speaking of sports let's look at a rather different view of spirituality from an unlikely source Phil Jackson NBA all-star player coach of the Chicago Bulls to three consecutive NBA championships whose notion of coaching was imparting the practice of mindfulness selflessness and compassion we're talking about professional basketball here here in his book sacred hoops Jackson writes in basketball as in life true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment not just when things are going your way of course it's no accident that things are more likely to go your way when you stop worrying about whether you're going to win or lose and focus your full attention on what's happening right now as Jackson puts it the day I took over the bulls I vowed to create an environment based on the principles of selflessness and compassion that I've learned first as a Christian in my parents home then sitting on a cushion practicing zen and finally studying the teachings of the Lakota soup more than anything I wanted to build a team that would blend individual talent with the heightened group consciousness to the mystification of his players during time outs after listening to their complaints he would just look at them saying by implication you know what we need sometimes it worked after the bulls won two back-to-back championships Jackson was forced to defend the awkward term three Pete and make good on it in the following season he and visualized the game in the spiritual terms of mindfulness and flow openness to an engagement with the possibilities of the moment in his book the joy of sports Michael Novak a neocon Catholic lay theologian try to put that list into a some kind of context anyway Novak maintains that sports is somehow a religion like religion sports are built on cult and ceremony on a notion of fate sports embody the almost nameless dreads which religion makes explicit a few years ago the NFL in all its power tried to replace the game-ending term sudden death with the more cheerful formula sudden victory they failed utterly the fans preferred the drama for Novak the symbols and our kind of sports are themselves understandable in religious terminology and religious imagery sacred space liam opium sacred time the play clock the two-minute warning the bond of brothers agon or inspired struggle competing self-discovery Novak believes that sports is not the highest form of religion and Jews Christians and others will want to put sports in second place but quote when human beings actually accomplish victory in sports it is for me as if the intentions of the creator were suddenly limped before our eyes as though the end of the fiery heart of the creator we had momentary insight Novak's words not mine I don't write like that we didn't put it quite that way at my alma mater Notre Dame back in the 50s but the link between faith and football was palpable we knew that convents of nuns across the nation prayed for Notre Dame on football Saturdays particularly when we played southern Methodist and sometimes we wondered how they divided up when Notre Dame played the Jesuits Boston College the institution where Doug Floody through the famous Hail Mary pass mean I say more recently a state journal reporter interviewed a freshman woman at the UW and asked her what experience had made her feel most connected to the university without hesitation she replied the jump around that was it as a long-time college teacher I cringed a bit at that answer but I think I might have to reconsider the jump around like the wave oops requires the intense involvement of the whole body together with hundreds of others expressing their unity and like-mindedness maybe the intellectual concept is a bit superficial but the experience isn't it's sacramental I use the word technically so where does that leave us is it possible to be spiritual passionately committed to a cause to the point of self-sacrifice to have a world-encompassing vision and to act in support of that vision without the need of a church membership obviously but it can also be argued that Hatwood and Humboldt had communities spiritual communities which supported them Hatwood with her readers Humboldt with the scientific colleagues and admirers across the world and the three-peach Humboldt's had a passionate if somewhat mystified fan base most of us don't have that kind of community but we do have this community let me digress for a personal story when I discovered in the midst of a Catholic retreat which I was conducting and much to my surprise that I was no longer a believer I realized that my Catholic priestly ministry was not very much to the point I divested myself of my investments literally and my ministry and I acquired employment credentials a wife and ultimately a longtime teaching post at ironically a catholic women's college in new york I worshiped if that is the word in the pages of the new york times I developed a kind of liturgy organizing that vast sunday document sorting out the selection of the sections that I didn't want to read then getting to work front page sports section because it would be out of date by noon entertainment it was my job opinions because I had so many of my own so after years of this my wife and I were persuaded to check out the community unitarian trades in white plains new york with considerable reluctance I agree of why I already knew the unitarians didn't believe in anything we scuttled into a back queue trying to look as inconspicuous as possible I stared at the unfamiliar hymns but my wife plucked out a folder which listed 50 propositions to be submitted for consideration at ga whatever that was with surprise she turned to me and whispered we agree with all of these there were more twists and turns of course but we had found a spiritual home spent the summer and spring and summer of 1988 on sabbatical in the Madison area well here we are and given these anxious times when once again we are trying to figure out collectively what this nation is about in Lincoln's words testing whether this nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure and when in the face of overt violent racist demonstrations we hear the ambivalent responses of many of our leaders and when we learn of and watch the repeated incidents of international terrorism wearing in a way of wearing the way in our sense of shock and horror we need support for our spirits I'm glad to be here I need to be here to experience connection around the things that we believe what we do here is a simple concrete liturgy of spiritual practice not alone but together there's a principle in theology likes agendi likes credendi I had to work in little that meaning if you want to understand a person's belief systems don't ask for creedal statements ask what they do in their religious practice or because of their beliefs it's more authentic than the statements what we do is what we believe here we bring the gong then we get present with the congregation in centering silence sometimes you really get into that silence and then the service continues it's a twinge of disappointment you're getting in touch with the realm of the spirit there you could try this at home but you can't borrow the gong sometimes when the last musical selection is played or sung and it's perfect and you don't want to break into that moment of odd silence that is the realm of the spirit and we are healed and lifted and rallied by these moments they don't happen routinely but what we do here can feed the spirit can give us hope can give us a sense of purpose and focus for what we do out there that's spiritual enough for me and now with our offering we begin the transition from in here to out there in hope our collection today is dedicated to the support of our congregation's activities and presence in the community help us all deliver each week community community of memory to this time and place we bring our whole and sometimes our broken selves we carry with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past seek a place where they can be received celebrated and shared take a moment now to share those joys and those concerns that are living within our congregation there are no entries in the book today oh we can take a moment to turn our attention inward to those we carry with us hey these moments enlarge the reach of our compassion to embrace all those with us here all those beyond these walls all who share with us this miracle of planet earth and if you will rise our closing hand is number 347 gather the spirit let us take what we view so blessed and we have the courage to reach out in kindness and attention