 I don't know. So, uh, I think I would just, uh, if I had to strongly, uh, I would just, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you get what you want. How've you been? I'm fine. I don't work. I just just, I don't know, but we sort of got this from那個 so it's... via a connect. I don't know. I'm not sure what they're doing. They just made a connection. No, no, no, I'm just saying, like, in terms of close relationships, like, we're just talking about relationships. And, uh, and I was, before, before we had this, uh, no, just, and Johnny and I were going to get along with him. I was a terrorist. He'd see, you know, stuff like this. He'd see, you know, what he was doing. He'd see, you know, what he was doing. He'd see, you know, what he was doing. He'd see, you know, what he was doing. And then, right, he came on everything. He just took it to the center. This morning everybody, you know, everything, saw, it's wonderful, that you all came and what you were doing. You're always walking into that, but at any time, it's hard to feel like you're here, like, in 20 to 30. That's not so hard. No, thank you. No, no, wasn't that good, so funny. Oh, it's always been like this. Every conversation we have before we get into it, I just don't believe it. Um, I'm just finding a relationship with this thing. Yeah, no. You know. Yeah? She's not going to play the ball. Thank you very much. Please join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning. A chance to get musically present with each other by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn which you'll find inside your order of service. I do come here this Sunday morning, good morning, and welcome to another wonderful Sunday here at First Unitarian Society where independent thinkers gather in a safe, nurturing environment to explore issues of social, spiritual, and ethical significance as we try to make a difference in this world. I'm Steve Goldberg, a proud, lovable member of this congregation, and I'd like to extend a special warm welcome to any guests, visitors, and newcomers. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I think you'll find that this is a special place. And if you'd like to learn more about our special buildings, we'll be conducting a guided tour after today's service. Just gather over here by the windows after the service and we'll take good care of you. And in the spirit of taking good care of each other, please silence those pesky electronic devices that you just will not need for the next hour. Thank you very much for doing that. And if you're accompanied today by a youngster, and you think that youngster would rather experience the service from a more private space, we have a couple options for you including our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium, and some seating right outside the doorway in the commons from which you and your young companion can see and hear the service. And one of the reasons we can see and hear the service is that it's brought to us today by a great team of volunteers who get to hear their names announced right now. I'm talking about Pete Daly, thanks Pete for handling the sound system. Tom Boykoff, who is serving as our lay minister today. Our greeters upstairs who welcomed you with a smiling face. Those faces belong to Patty Whitty and Anne Smiley. Our ushers handling this unruly crowd. We have Ken Gage, Marty Hollis, Brian Chanis, and Gail Henslin as our ushers. The all important hospitality and coffee are hosted by Nancy Kossoff. Make sure you thank her. And the flowers today were donated by the Friends of the Meeting House. And some of you know this, but not everybody knows that the Friends of the Meeting House is a group of volunteers from the FUS congregation who raise money and provide support for the repair and restoration of our national landmark Frank Lloyd Wright design building right across the parking lot from this building. They felt it was fitting to donate flowers today to focus on and commemorate Frank Lloyd Wright's love of the simplicity and the bounty of nature. Our tour guide after the service is John Powell. Speaking of what to do after the service, make sure you leave your hymnal at your seat for the 11 o'clock folks, that would be great. And just a couple announcements before we get on with the service. Remember that after the 12 o'clock, sorry the 11 o'clock service later today in this room will be our parish meeting where you get a chance to hear reports on the search for our new music director, the search for our interim minister, and a whole bunch of other important parish items and topics after the 11 o'clock service. On Friday, October 13, it's Friday the 13th, but don't let that bother you, the 13th of October, FUS will be hosting an event called Write the Roof. It's a Write the Roof Gala to raise money for the roof repair and restoration of the landmark auditorium. And that includes a wonderful fundraiser celebrating Frank Lloyd Wright's 150th birthday. We need a couple things from you to make this a successful gala. We could use sponsorship, corporate and otherwise, as well as items for the live auction. Contact Molly Kelly on the staff if you'd like to learn more or like to offer some help for that. The last announcement, but to Dan Broner the most important announcement is that all of the music that is going to be performed by the Mosaic chamber players is by Ludwig von Beethoven. We're going to hear from those chamber players in just a moment. Before we do, I ask you to sit back or lean forward to enjoy today's service. I know it will touch your heart. Stir your spirit and trigger one or two new thoughts, plus the music is going to be really, really good. We're glad you're here. Continue service with a piece of seasonal poetry from Mary Oliver. On roadsides, in fall fields, in rumpy bunches, saffron and orange and pale gold. In little towers, soft as mash, sneeze bringers and seed bearers, full of bees and yellow beads and perfect flowerlets and orange butterflies. I don't suppose much notice comes of it except for honey and how it heartens the heart with its blank blades. I don't suppose anything loves it except perhaps the rocky voids filled by its dumb dazzle. And for myself, I was just passing by when the wind flared and the blossoms rustled and the glittering pandemonium leaned on me. I was just minding my own business when I found myself on their straw hillsides, citron and butter-colored, and I was happy. Why not? Are not the difficult labors of our lives full of dark hours? And what has consciousness come to anyhow so far that is better than these light-filled bodies? All day on their airy backbones they toss in the wind. They bend as though it was natural and godly to bend, and they rise in stiff sweetness in the pure peace of giving one's gold away. I invite you to rise in body and spirit for the lighting of our chalice. And as Steve kindles the flame, please join me in reading the words printed in today's program. We like this chalice to affirm that new light is ever waiting to break through to enlighten our ways. That new truth is ever waiting to break through to illumine our minds. That new love is ever waiting to break through to warm our hearts. May we be open to this light and to the rich possibilities that it offers us. And now I offer you the rich possibility to turn to your neighbor and exchange with them a warm and friendly greeting. Please be seated, and now I would like to invite the children to come forward for the message for all ages. I think we're going to need a bigger carpet. Good morning. How are you? So the story I have to share with you today, and the pictures are going to be up on the big screen in back of me, is entitled, Tiger, Tiger, Is It True? Anybody know that story? It's a pretty interesting story. Okay, well it's pretty interesting. So one morning, Tiger, Tiger got out of his bed on the wrong side. Drat, he said, it's going to be one of those days. And he was absolutely right. At breakfast, he heard his parents arguing again. They paid no attention to him. It was like he wasn't even there. I might as well be a ghost, he said. At school, Tiger, Tiger was picked last at the games. Anybody ever get picked last at the game? I did when I was a kid. And that hurt his feelings. It felt awful to be picked last. And after school, his best friend decided to play with Zebra. Tiger, Tiger felt rotten as rotten as can be. Everything was terrible. Nobody cares. Nobody likes me, he thought. And he felt these angry tears welling up in his eyes. But then suddenly there was this ripple in the water. What was that? It was turtle. What's up, turtle asked? Nothing, said Tiger, Tiger. Well, if nothing can make you cry, tell me more about this nothing. It must be very powerful, said turtle. Well, it's just that nobody cares, Tiger, Tiger sobbed. Nobody likes me, nobody cares if I'm around or not and life is just so unfair, said turtle. You say that nobody cares for you? Nobody likes you? Can that really be true? Are you sure? Yes, said Tiger, Tiger. My parents, they don't even know I'm around. Nobody likes me at school and now my best friend is playing with Zebra. That does sound pretty bad, turtle said. But can you be absolutely sure? Can you know for certain that there's nobody in the whole wide world that cares about you, nobody, anywhere that likes you? Tiger, Tiger thought about that for a moment and realized he could not be absolutely sure. No, I can't, really, he said. So it's not true that nobody likes you and nobody cares about you, asked turtle. But how do you feel, turtle said, when you believe that thought in your head, that thought that nobody cares about you and nobody likes you? I feel bad, said Tiger, Tiger. I feel rotten. It makes me feel really sad. Well, that must be terrible, said turtle. Isn't it amazing what a little thought can do to you? Now, how would it feel if you were not thinking that thought? Who would you be if you never thought that thought again? Tiger, Tiger's eyes brightened and grew wide. I'd be a happy Tiger, Tiger, you said. I'd feel great. I could think anything and do anything and nothing would bother me at all. Tiger, Tiger paused for a minute. That's pretty amazing, he thought. So it's not my parents, it is not my friends who bug me. It's just my thinking about them that makes me mad and sad and that's really cool. You got it, said turtle. It's your thinking, your thinking. Now, let's try something different. Nobody likes you, nobody cares about you. Can you turn that thought around? I mean, can you find the opposite of that thought? Tiger, Tiger thought for a minute and he said like, maybe somebody likes me, somebody cares about me? Yes, said turtle, that could be true. Can you think of three examples of how your parents have shown that they like you? Tiger, Tiger didn't have to think about that for very long. Well, he said they never forget my birthday and they take me on great vacations and they give the best hugs in the world. You know, they don't just care about me, my parents really love me. How about your best friend, said turtle? Can you find three examples about him? Well, said Tiger, Tiger, he always saves the seat for me on the bus and we are great buddies when we play games and he says he really likes making music with me. And then at school, asked turtle, is there anybody at school that likes you and that cares about you? Well, I think my teacher likes me, she loves my drawings and Rhino, he always wants to sit next to me at lunch and elephants, she's always telling me secrets, you know, I kind of think elephant likes me. Now, find another turnaround for that thought that nobody likes me and nobody cares about me, said turtle. Well, like I care and that I like everybody? Well, that wouldn't be a bad idea, turtle said. Yeah, yeah, said Tiger, Tiger and I can think of yet another turnaround. You can't, asked turtle. Yes, how about I care about and I like myself? Yeah, that's the best of all, turtle said. Now, how would you do that? Well, said Tiger, Tiger, I would always try to find out if my bad thoughts, when they occur to me, if they're really true or not. But I already know that they probably never are. Amazing how clever these little tigers are these days, said turtle. So what does turtle do over and over again to get Tiger, Tiger out of this bad mood of his where he's feeling sorry for himself? He's talking to him, but is he giving him answers or is he asking him questions? So the Tiger, Tiger can come up with the answers himself. So the secret to making this person feel better was to ask them good questions, to get them turned around. And that's something we should always remember when we're talking to someone who's sad too, is to ask them questions so that they can answer them for themselves. Thank you all for listening to our story. We're going to invite you to go to your classes now as we sing you out with hymn number 295. Please be seated. We continue our theme of the morning with a selection from Spencer Burke's book, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity. Burke is a former evangelical Christian minister who once served one of the nation's largest mega churches. The institutional church has come to be known over the years for its obsession with boundaries. It seems to spend so much of its time monitoring what other people are doing and what they are not doing. It creates formulas to determine who's in and who's out, who's lost and who's saved. And on occasions when these formulas don't seem to work out, the church often tries to strong arm the situation and explain them away with phrases like, you just have lack of faith or you've been blinded by the devil. The Christianity that most of us are familiar with is built on answers. I was raised on Jesus is the answer form of that faith, which implied that Christianity is the definitive answer to every single one of life's problems, even those that the Bible does not address specifically. Imagine my surprise then to hear Alan Jones of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco say one Sunday that the task of the Christian minister is to guard the great questions. Indeed, that's the very thing that institutional churches today generally don't do. They don't ask questions, they present answers. Answers to questions that people in our culture may not even be asking. Institutional faith is struggling today because it is so formulaic, knowledge-based in a world that's becoming ever more fluid and flexible and open to new ways of learning and interacting. Robert Bella, the well-known sociologist of religion at UC Berkeley, has said, he has said that in the future, individuals are going to have to work out their own solutions to questions about the sacred and the most that the church can do, he says, is to provide that person with a favorable environment for doing so, without imposing a prefabricated set of answers. Sounds pretty good to me. The second reading is from Harvey Cox's book, The Future of Faith, I quoted from Cox last week and if you were here, you will remember that he has long been a professor of religious studies at Harvard Divinity School. Einstein was right that the mystery of the universe begins with the feeling of awe. But it hits home when I realized that I am an inextricable part of this whole big picture and then I begin to ask what, if anything, that might mean. And musings like that begin in childhood but they provide us with our first introduction to that unavoidable mystery of the universe and our human place in it. And struggling with these questions, that has generated the greatest art in music and poetry and literature from the Paleolithic era right up to Mozart's Requiem. To repress such thoughts, such questions would not be to grow into adulthood but to regress to a pre-Homonoid state. We would wilt like snuffed out candles. Despite the efforts of well-intentioned people who shrugged them off as meaningless, we do go about wondering, asking questions even though we do recognize that there will never be answers to these questions as there are answers, although always provisional to scientific questions. And that is why mystery and not problem is the appropriate designation. And if in some distant future, people stop asking these kind of questions, they will begin to look more like humanoid robots out of science fiction novels. Because we are human not just because we sense that we are a part, albeit a minuscule one, of this great space-time continuum. But we are also human because we have this predilection to ask, what does it all mean? Because we puzzle about why we cannot stop asking. Human beings might be defined in the Latin as homo quarens, the stubborn creatures who cannot stop asking why, and then asking themselves why they ask why. Good morning. This year, we have been celebrating the 150th birthday of Frank Lloyd Wright, the renowned architect of our landmark meeting house. It is in this celebratory spirit that I draw your attention to a tangible symbol here in our atrium auditorium of the impact Frank Lloyd Wright has had on our society, our fine Mesa and Hamlin grand piano. We believe based on photographic and anecdotal evidence that this very piano is the instrument that Frank Lloyd Wright chose for our society to purchase back in 1951. It graced our landmark auditorium for many of the early years. It was eventually replaced by a larger Yamaha grand in the 1970s at which time this Mason and Hamlin piano was moved to what was then known as the West living room, now the Gabler living room. Over the years, it fell into disrepair, but in 2008, this vintage 1922 piano was expertly restored for use in what was then a brand new atrium auditorium. Frank Lloyd Wright came from a musical family. His father, William, was a preacher and a composer who opened his own conservatory on Pinkney Street here in Madison. So it is no surprise that Frank Lloyd Wright recognized a kinship between music and his chosen path of architecture. He told his apprentices, in architecture, you are more disciplined by the nature of your calling, by the nature of your efforts than any of the other arts, unless it is music. The composer in music is disciplined as severely as the architect. Frank Lloyd Wright describes the similarity of vision demanded by both architects and composers of music. Quote, it seems to me that music is a kind of sublimated mathematics. So is architecture a kind of sublimated mathematics? And in the same sense, there lies the great relationship and warm kinship between music and architecture. They require very much the same mind. And to Mr. Wright, the composer that best exemplified this correlation was none other than Ludwig von Beethoven. In comparing the thought process of the architect with that of the composer, Mr. Wright said that both proceeded to form generals to particulars along a specific theme with a particular idea and then building, building, building, a great edifice. And that is why I like Beethoven so much because I could see Beethoven build. If you take Beethoven's sonatas, that was when he was at his highest. When he was designing a sonata, they were manifestly things for the mind as well as for our feelings. And in all those sonatas, you will find him building, designing, constructing with marvelous finesse and with marvelous structural ability. That is also an architect's work. What better way to appreciate Mr. Wright's thoughts than to listen to another sample from Beethoven's sonatas? As most of you undoubtedly know by now, here at First Unitarian Society, we have a roof problem. For decades now, we have experienced leakage in the landmark meeting house, an unsurprising development given that Frank Lloyd Wright was notorious for designing buildings with semi-porous roofs. His indulgent clients tried their best to cope with this liability. When the Tulsa, Oklahoma house that he designed for his cousin, Richard Lloyd-Jones, began leaking badly, the family had to scatter innumerable tubs and canning jars throughout the house to catch the steady drips from above. Mrs. Lloyd-Jones was philosophic about the situation. This is what happens, she told a house guest when you leave a work of art out in the rain. The situation here at FUS was similar. When I arrived here in 1988, particularly in the back portion of the auditorium across the way that's known as the hearth room, with any heavy rain or melting snow out came the pails and the garbage cans. And toward the end of the decade, significant leaks were also developing in the loja offices, requiring staff to cover their desks with plastic sheeting when rain threatened. In 1994, the roof over the auditorium was replaced and around five years ago, the loja area was supplied with an impermeable rubber membrane as a temporary fix. Alas, for several years now, water again has been percolating through the landmark auditorium roof. And while the loja remains dry, that rubber membrane, if you look at it, is rather unsightly and it does have a limited lifespan. The time has arrived, I'm afraid, for a permanent solution. So for a number of months now, the roofing issue has been the source of considerable debate, which is a little bit surprising. This congregation is, after all, the custodian of a national landmark, one of Mr. Wright's most notable and widely imitated designs. Thousands of people from all over the planet flock here each year to see and to admire our meeting house. If the roof needs replacement, would we not, without question, try to duplicate the original, both in terms of material and design? Well, maybe. While earlier conversations about the roof were pretty straightforward, this time around, a number of questions have been raised and subsequently debated, and these questions include, copper is expensive, is there not a cheaper alternative? If Wright's Bermuda design, with those horizontal seams, if that invites leaking, why would we replicate it? If, as a congregation, we embrace and we try to apply sustainable values, can't we explore more environmentally sound approaches to the replacement of that roof? For instance, would it be possible to put solar panels on the loja roof? If we change the roof's appearance and we lose our national landmark status, what difference would that make? Why keep throwing money at a problem that doesn't seem to want to go away? Is the preservation of a work of art really central to our mission as a Unitarian Universalist congregation? And, if the building is so noteworthy, can't some of the cost of repair be borne by others in the larger community? These are all legitimate questions and they should not be and they have not been ignored. First Unitarian Society does have limited resources, problems with the roof have persisted. We do have alternatives. And personally, I have found this whole process of addressing such questions to be frustrating at times, but hopefully in the end, I believe it will lend greater clarity to who we are and where our responsibility lies. Now, as Unitarian Universalists, we have long upheld the right of individuals to raise questions, to express their doubts about religious propositions, about moral imperatives. So why would we want to make an exception with respect to the roof? When Harvey Cox observed that members of our species, our human species, are naturally inquisitive, we recognize ourselves as you use in that characterization. Our own faith is then much more hospitable toward and supportive of this fundamental human attribute than our more conservative and doctrinal counterparts. To us, it seems rather foolish for any religion to try to quell this predilection that has proven so strong and so enduring. So accordingly, Robert Bell has suggested that today, churches should try to provide a favorable environment for people to work out their own solutions to questions of the sacred without imposing a prefabricated set of answers. And that is just what we, as you use, are about. And so if in your own questioning and your own discernment process, you decide that Jesus is the answer, we will support that discovery. But that is a far cry from issuing a community declaration that Jesus is the only or the exclusive answer to all of life's most vital existential questions. That we will not do. Now, I sometimes get the feeling that non-believers, atheists, agnostics, and others who have rebelled against the immutable truths proclaimed by institutional religion, that such people are more disturbed by the church's habits of repression than by any of the truth claims that they make themselves. And so in his book, Breaking the Spell, The Cognitive Scientist and Philosopher Daniel Dennett complains that people of all persuasions have been taught that asking questions about such matters as God somehow is demeaning to their faith. He goes on to say, if I were designing a phony religion, I surely would include a version of this gem, but I'd have to say it with a straight face. If anybody ever raises questions or objections about our religion that you cannot answer, that person is almost certainly Satan. In fact, the more reasonable that person is, the more eager they are to engage you in an open-minded congenial conversation, the more sure you can be that you are talking to Satan in disguise. Turn away. Do not listen because it's all a trap. Now, there are, of course, those hardcore unbelievers who can be just as dogmatic in their pronouncements as any religious fundamentalist. They're so eager to point out the patent absurdities and the incorrigibility of all religion that further questioning about any merits they might have is quite beside the point. Daniel Dennett, to his credit, does not fit that description. Whether one is conventionally religious or has moved out of the religious orbit entirely, holding on to our convictions firmly but lightly, retaining a sense of curiosity, this is what will allow us to continue our own spiritual growth and also to engage in meaningful conversations across our differences. The questions that gave rise to the world's great religions, those are perennial questions. Definitive answers to them have always remained elusive and the proper response to them is not arrogance, it's humility. Recently, I ran across an interview with Jack Miles. Jack Miles is the author of many notable books, including God, A Biography, and Christ, A Crisis in the Life of God. He is winner of the Pulitzer Prize, as well as MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships. And he recently retired from his faculty position at UC Irvine. He's a birthright Roman Catholic and he actually spent 10 years as a Jesuit seminarian before embarking on his secular career. And at age 75, Miles has now returned to his religious roots and renewed his relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. But he brings to his recent involvement a new set of eyes, a different perspective. He appreciates the rituals of the church, which he likens to play. He says, I can attend a religious service in which people are burning incense, ringing bells and marching in these funny looking costumes and I can think to myself, this is ridiculous. But then I remember all play is ridiculous. After 40 plus years of posing serious questions about religion, his own religion and others, Miles is not about to retreat from that vital practice. His commitment to evidentiary truth remains solid and he has no interest in defending doctrines that require a suspension of disbelief. Miles accepts that the church has no final answers to his deepest questions, but it offers other compensations. Not belief, but religious practice is what turns him on. It gives me, he says, a type of closure. Not by answering my questions, but by enriching a life in which some questions shall remain unanswered. And if I die feeling that I have come to the end of some kind of game, I will not feel cheated, but rather confirmed, maybe. Now perhaps this isn't the most comfortable way to live in a state of suspense about imponderables, imponderables such as why am I alive at all? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Why must so much of the world live in a state of misery and violence? How should I conduct my life in a world that is so rapidly confusing and changing? But while it may not be the easiest way to live with those unresolved questions, and a great many people are not up to that challenge, it is the most honest way to live. And that honesty, that willingness to address such questions and acknowledge our own limited understanding, that is what we need to have if we are going to have meaningful conversations with people of other religious persuasions. The King's College philosopher William Irwin suggests that there really aren't any barriers to religious dialogue as long as the parties engage each other with curiosity. In fact, he says, the open-minded search for truth that can unite believers and non-believers because we do generally respect those who approach the questions honestly and with an open mind. And for Irwin, this doesn't mean being so radically open, so empty of conviction that our brains fall out, an accusation sometimes leveled at Unitarian Universalists, by the way. In fact, it is not arrogant or presumptuous to hold on to a conviction and to try to convince others of its worthiness as long as we are willing to open ourselves to the ideas preferred by others. We all exist along a continuum of doubt, Irwin suggests. And what is important is the common ground of the question. Now, as we approach the high holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, it's important to note that while dogmatic fates have frequently frowned on those impertinent folks who ask probing difficult questions, this has seldom been true of Judaism. Indeed, Rabbi Hillel, the celebrated first century BCE wisdom teacher, he was an avid questioner. He required all of his students to ponder three very basic questions for themselves. You probably are familiar with them. If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when? If Jews and Unitarian Universalists have enjoyed cordial relationships over the centuries, it is not solely because of our common objection to the doctrine of the Trinity. It's also because of the emphasis that we both place on asking the important questions. This is true of other disciplines, of course, science and journalism. And one might say that the art of asking timely and precise questions, that is central to the journalistic enterprise. And for this reason, I find it rather worrisome that in the past year or so, those who are charged with this crucial task have been increasingly declared by our administration to be enemies of the state. Increasingly, the news media are being told that only questions acceptable to those in power are legitimate, and certainly no question that would cause discomfort or embarrassment to the current regime. Fake news, that's the term now being used to describe answers to questions that raise the administration's hackles. And that allows such questions and such answers to be dismissed out of hand. Oh, they're just fake. The intent here, it seems, is to discredit the free press entirely, claiming that only news that's reported through official channels is trustworthy. And what we're moving toward, as I see it, is the American equivalent of Russia's pravda. And regrettably, a third of Americans agree that the news media has no right to question the current administration's agenda or its performance. Writing recently in The Atlantic, Kurt Anderson reflects on this development, saying, Donald Trump's genius was to exploit the skeptical disillusionment with politics, too much equivocating, democracy's a charade, but also to pander to Americans' magical thinking about national greatness. Extreme credulity is the fraternal twin of extreme skepticism, he says. I will give you everything. Trump actually promised that during the campaign, and it has all worked out for him because so many Americans are eager to believe almost any claim, no matter how implausible, as long as it jibes with their own personal opinions and fantasies. When honest inquiry is declared by a religion to be sinful, it often leads to persecution, as it did with Galileo Galilei in Renaissance Italy, and as it did with the Puritan dissenter, Anne Hutchinson, here in the colonies. When a government, not a religion, but a government is able to determine what sort of questions are permissible, it is edging toward authoritarianism. The celebrated journalist and social critic, Walter Lippmann, warned of this possibility a hundred years ago, saying that our liberty as a people is contingent upon the measures we take to protect and to increase the veracity of the information upon which we need to act. The measures we take to protect and increase the veracity of the information upon which we act, that is what our liberty depends upon. Those measures begin with the capacity and the courage to ask the hard questions. So back to where we began this discussion, with the roof. I've listened to all the questions that have been raised. And I've asked a few questions myself, and I am satisfied that they have been addressed openly and honestly, if not completely. I also know that whatever the congregation decides about this roof later today at our parish meeting, 10 months from now, it will not be my problem. But for today, for today I would have you know that I believe in fostering a just and loving community. And I believe that with respect to the environmental, the mounting environmental problems that we face, I wanna be part of the solution and not part of the problem. But I also believe in beauty, both cultivating it and preserving it. Despite his many shortcomings, Frank Lloyd Wright did have an eye for beauty. And he understood how an appreciation for it can enhance our lives immeasurably. On the rear balcony of the landmark auditorium, facing the prow, this ancient epigram is spelled out in gold leaf at Mr. Wright's direction. It says, do you have a loaf of bread? Break the loaf in two and give half for some flowers of the narcissist. For thy bread feeds the body indeed, but the flowers feed the soul. What to do about the roof? Many questions later, I think you have my answer. Blessed be Adam. I do hope to see some of you at our parish meeting beginning at 1230. Please join us for lunch, which precedes that important event. Our offering today for the second week will be shared with G-safe and there's information about their great work out in the comments. Please be generous. Boys are sorrows recorded in our cares of the congregation book that lives just outside the center doors. And so we will proceed at this point to our closing hymn. We are only going to sing verses one and four. All of our questing and questioning, we do receive fragments of holiness, glimpses of eternity, brief moments of insight. Let us gather them up for the precious gift that they are and renewed by their grace, move with a sureer step into the unknown. Please be seated for the post move.