 Good morning, please join me for a few moments of centering silence is number 15 come to 1st Unitarian Society of Madison This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual Ethical and social issues and 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 I'm Maureen friend and on behalf of the congregation. I'd 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 New comers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service to visit the library Which is directly across from the center doors of this auditorium Bring your drinks bring your questions Members of our staff and lay ministry will be available to welcome you You may also look for persons holding teal coffee mugs These are a few as members knowledgeable about our faith community who would love to visit with you Experience guides are generally available to give a building tour after each service So if you would like to learn more about the sustainably designed addition to our national Landmark meeting house, please meet near the large glass windows at the back of this auditorium immediately after the service We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service But if a child needs to talk move around or if you need to talk or move around The child haven or the commons are good places to retire The service can still be seen and heard from these areas and speaking of noise. It's a good time to turn off your cell phones I'm supposed to let you know it's 40 days to cabaret 40 days to cabaret So now I need to I'd like to acknowledge people who helped with the service to make it run smoothly Mark Schultz is our sound operator today and smiley is our lay minister The greeters are Pam Winnie March Schweitzer and your ushers are Katie Belfos Ron Cook Douglas Hill Jeannie Hills made the coffee for us today and Plowers and plants were taken care of by John and Nancy Webster But take a look to look take a look at the announcements in the red floors in your order of service to describe upcoming events at the society and To provide more information about today's activities again welcome We hope that today's service will stimulate your mind touch your heart and stir your spirit Into this house of worship come in and find peace and unrest inspiration and aspiration acceptance and challenge Come in and find light for your darkness a friend's touch for your loneliness and Music to stir your soul come in and let your heart sing for all the blessings that are yours this fine Fair morning Invite you to rise and body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice Please join me in reading the words that are printed in your program We come to this time and this place to rediscover the gift of free religious community to renew our faith in the holiness Goodness and beauty of life to reaffirm the way of the open mind and the responsible heart To rekindle the flame of memory and replant the seeds of hope To reclaim the vision of an earth more fair with all her people won and in the spirit of that oneness Please turn to your neighbor exchange with them a warm and friendly greeting. Please be seated and so on this seasonably cool spring morning With the robins parading on the thawing turf and the crocus just beginning to poke its head above the ground On this fine morning We pause to acknowledge the presence among us of two young souls who entered our world not that long ago at this time of seasonal transition we join Henry and Maya's parents in welcoming them into our lives and into this our spiritual home and we offer these Families our friendship and our support in the challenges and the opportunities that lie ahead We trust that the commitment to and love for each other is strong in these two families And it is our sincere hope that these youngsters will be blessed with secure homes Dependable caregivers that they may enjoy the freedom to develop their own personality and to shape their own unique destinies Our tradition Unitarian Universalism holds that every person came into this world fresh Unsullied possessing inherent worth and dignity And so this morning we would acknowledge that Maya and Henry are bonafide human beings with their own special gifts with needs And feelings that matter just as much as any of ours Although they have yet to fully unfold Henry and Maya are already vital active Participants in their family's home life full partners in the work and play of living true heirs to all of our dreams and values Now dedication does not make these children full-fledged members of the first Unitarian society Because that is a decision they each must make for themselves when they attain the age of reason But this ritual does affirm their place in our hearts and affords them the special kind of emotional security and Spiritual opportunity that a faith community such as ours can provide And so we are glad that moved by a sense of the blessings of parenthood and trust in this community Daniel Amanda Lachelle and Richard have chosen to express their values and their progressive faith through this celebration And yet ultimately it is all of us friends Relatives teachers not just parents who are responsible for the teaching and the nurture of these children By presenting them to you today their parents acknowledge that Henry and Maya are more than private treasures They are fragile young souls in whom we all have a stake and for whom we all wish the best On this day of great promise. We not only dedicate these lovely and gifted youngsters But we we dedicate ourselves to them and to their interests and to their future welfare And now I would invite our two families to come forward And if you will please look to your program for the congregational pledge of dedication make sure that you are looking at the 11 a.m. Version And just a slight Correction that doesn't have anything to do with the pronunciation, but little Maya's name actually only has one a in it My a Please join me in reading the pledge of dedication For the gift of childhood whose innocence laughter and curiosity Curiosity bring hope joy and new understanding into our lives. We lift thankful hearts We welcome Henry and Maya into the spiritual community and extend to their parents our love and support in the joys and challenges of caregiving as These children grow we will share with them our insights our values and our dreams that they may enjoy the rich benefits of our religious heritage Now there are a few of our young people in the congregation this morning So if you would please stand if you're a part of our church school program or if you're even if you're young and you're just visiting All of our young people There you go So Maya and Henry are very young now But in the future They may become a part of your lives and maybe a part of our church school and then you will have a chance to get to Know them better. So now we ask will you befriend these children and do what you can to help them to feel comfortable and welcomed Here at First Unitarian Society and if so, would you please say we will? Thank you so much. Please be seated and there are also among us today a number of people who bear a special close Relationship already to these children. And so will you please stand as I call your name? Accompanying Henry are his godparents Christine Clara Han and Michael Clara Han His third godparent Marissa Baranowsky. She is with us in spirit couldn't be here today We also welcome Henry's grandparents Sue and Randy Clara Han and Jen and Lynn Baranowsky and Accompanying Maya are her godparents Becky Fisher Scott Hippos Josh Tiedemann Also grandparents Kathy and Bill Fisher Antonetta Franco Jean Herzog and Dan that have eat is Bruce Greenley another grandparent could not be with us today. We also welcome great-grandfather Tom Hurl Anti-Megan or Megan Uncle Joey and cousins Ethan Addie and Clay So all of you who are standing Do you take upon yourselves the privilege and the responsibility to nurture? Defend and support the freedom and growing spirit of the child to whom you are related Will you recognize that child's worth as a person and encourage him or her to speak truthfully and from the heart? Will you share with them the best that is in you the insights the values and dreams that have given your lives meaning and Finally will you help this this individual to understand not only his or her own rights But also the rights of others and if so will you please say we will Thank you, please be seated and now to the parents who have brought their children before us Daniel and Amanda Richard and Lachelle It is your privilege and obligation to provide an environment both of security and of challenge for your child to grow up in and So do you commit yourselves to promote your child's physical emotional and spiritual well-being? Will you respect as well as protect that child and bestow your love as a free and Unmerited gift and do you also reaffirmed this morning your commitment to each other to support each other as partners in life and in parenting? And if so, please say we will in the act of dedication. We use the symbolism of water as a sign of our common heritage There is no suggestion in our religious tradition of the washing away of inherited sin We believe that these children came into the world with all the limitations that are natural to the human species But we also believe that they arrived here innocent So water here stands for vitality. It is the elixir of life. It is the foundation of all being and for purposes of our dedication Ceremonies a portion of this water has been saved from our annual water communion services that are held in late August To which our members bring water from their travels across the continent and throughout the world And so it's used here today reminds us of our common bond with all embracing ever-sustaining nature Name this child Henry Baranowsky Clanahan Clara hand We dedicate you in the name of love the promise of truth and the fellowship of this community name this child Maya Catherine Greenley we dedicate you in the name of truth the promise of love and the fellowship of this community May each of you be granted clarity of thought integrity of speech and above all compassionate lives And as a token of their dedication We give to each of our families a rosebud Fragrant symbol of beauty promise and love the roses we bestow upon our children in these ceremonies these roses have no thorns which Is something that we want to do too and obviously in keeping with their innocence and their youth We don't want them to injure themselves But we know that the world is not altogether as lovely as these roses But we do hope that Maya and Henry will learn to recognize the beauty and goodness that does exist and that they will grow in Wisdom and beauty and add their own loveliness to the world as this rose unfolds in natural beauty Henry so may your life unfold Maya as your life unfolds in natural beauty So may you unfold And so we conclude our celebration of dedication with these words from a former minister of First Unitarian Society Kenneth Patton The child has come forth from the great womb of the earth The child has come forth to stand with stardust in his hair with the rush of planets in his blood With shining in his eyes like sunlight with hands to help shape the world about him When one baby is born It's a symbol of all birth and life and therefore all must rejoice and smile and all must lose their hearts to the child And now we are going to bestow on each one of our children a comfort item a Blanket that has been lovingly crafted by members of our shawl ministry May it keep you warm on the coldest nights in the deepest of winter And now as our families return to their seats, I invite you to join together in singing our next hymn I seek the spirit of a child Please be seated so we continue our service this morning With a personal observation by a man named Mark Jordan the kidney donor Lay half naked on the bed covered to his waist by a thin white sheet He opened his eyes and smiled groggily at me That's a pleasant surprise. I said hardly anyone smiles after they've come out of surgery All around us nurses and surgical assistants counted needles and gleaming silver scalpels And the surgeons monitored vital signs through glasses fitted with shining lights and magnifying lenses. I Applied pads to the portable EKG preparing the patient for transport to recovery He continued smiling It could have been the ketamine or the propofol in his system, but there seemed to be something genuinely tranquil about this man's expression Aren't we the happy one? I said of course I am he responded. I'm not sick That's true. I said The man was a firefighter. He had the slim athletic build of a man in his prime The anesthesiologist gave me a you're just a nursing assistant do your job look But I couldn't help continuing. I just had to ask Why'd you do it? Some of the surgeons frowned in disapproval, but I was only saying what I knew was on everybody's mind Even the nurses stopped sorting instruments to listen to the response The patients grin widened Why'd I do it? Faith he said In God No In people faith in people all people Before I could ask him to elaborate the surgeons gave clearance for him to be wheeled into recovery And in the hallway outside the operating room I took off my mask and threw it in the trash still thinking about that man's reply and I asked myself I Walked down crowded city streets every day blind to everything except my destination would I would I be able to give the same answer? When I hold up in my studio apartment each night eating ice cream and watching the news Do I have a similar connection to humanity any connection at all? This man had seen The sick girl on the news asking for life begging for life and he'd responded by Offering his kidney He didn't even know her The exchange defied the basic laws of self-preservation I Walked down the hall and looked through the window of the operating room next door on the table The young girl was being prepped for surgery orange swabs of sterile betadine dripping down her skin Breathing tubes projecting from her sleeping face a Nurse walked carefully by me carrying a small container Inside was the girl's salvation Careful to have the festival choir Visiting us and sharing their talent for beauty with us students of European history Pretty much agree that during the period stretching from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment The age of faith was gradually eclipsed by the age of facts As part of that process Ptolemaic astronomy a system that had reigned unchallenged for a thousand years Collapsed under the weight of the solid evidence supplied by Galileo's telescope The result was what Thomas Kuhn famously called a paradigm shift in our understanding of the universe and of our place in it A similar transformation was taking place in the field of jurisprudence How do we know whether a person is innocent or guilty? now for centuries the strategy employed by the authorities was Trial by ordeal in effect the individual accused of heresy or of a crime Was put to the test they were placed in conditions that would cause them to drown or to be seriously burned Why'd they do that because it was believed that God would intervene in the process and preserve the innocent If the person suffered grievous harm or they died Well, it was because God had vouchsafed their guilt let God decide was the principle by which justice was served but in time this trial by ordeal fell out of favor and a new methodology was adopted for Determining guilt or innocence first in England then on the continent hard evidence The testimony of credible witnesses for instance that took the place of divine intervention And so trial by jury put God on the sidelines and placed judgment in the hands of men Joe LePore says that this was definitely improvement, but at the time it made a lot of people rather nervous Even in the ancient world, however, there were those like the philosopher Lucretius who advocated a Rational fact-based approach to understanding. He says we must recognize and reject all the lies Proferred by priests and the dispensers of fables. We need to see the world as it really is Lucretius insisted that only by liberating ourselves from the harmful illusions that are foisted upon us Can we begin to lead truly happy lives because knowing the way things really are Awakens in us this sense of wonder These days, however a surprising number of people in our society Seem to be factually challenged Either unable or unwilling to come to terms with what the evidence clearly suggests No Undocumented immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than legal citizens Anthropogenic climate change is not a Chinese hoax The geological and biological evidence does not support the creation account as it's found in Genesis Donald Trump did not win the popular vote nor was student was Sweden attacked by ISIS inspired terrorists on February the 18th So are we witnessing the end of the reign of fact Now of course there are reasons why some people simply cannot accept the way things really are as Lucretius put it It may be because certain facts have the power to undermine a dearly held belief system if reading the rocks Contradicts Genesis then biblical literalists want nothing to do with earth science and the body of knowledge that it provides For fundamentalists divinely revealed scripture will always provide us with a truer picture of reality than anything that science can possibly put on the table Indeed if the rocks contradict the biblical account Well, then Wiley Satan must have been messing with the rocks For those whose confidence rests solely on the edifice of the Bible even the slightest Inconsistency is impermissible because where there is one inconsistency there may be others and pretty soon the whole edifice begins to totter Tensions of this sort Clashes between faith-based and fact-based systems of knowing these are nothing new been around for a long time The 17th century Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza cast his lot with the latter with fact centered systems That caused him to be viewed not as the empiricist that he really was but as an atheist But Spinoza said philosophy has no end in view except to seek the truth Faith on the other hand looks for nothing but obedience and piety Now the foregoing does not adequately describe what is going on today outside of the sphere of religion proper Truthiness that's the term that Stephen Colbert coined to describe this phenomenon Later it was updated by Kelly Ann Conway when she referred to certain alternative facts that she had at her disposal The Lord's Infallible word is not what is at stake here defending the gospel against the challenges of skeptics and disbelievers. No But the polarization that we're seeing is kind of similar and once again the pursuit of truth seems to have become in our Society something of a zero-sum game. You're either right or you're wrong But the contest now oftentimes is over the facts themselves Which are true which are false who are the truth tellers who are the bald-faced liars What accounts for this state of affairs in this age of science and reason? Well, there are a couple of pieces to the puzzle that I could share with you First there is simply data Lots and lots of data The place once held by facts Joe LePore writes is being taken over by data and it's available to us 24-7 on the internet. So if we have a bone to pick if we have a pet idea we want to defend Reinforce our position on the internet. It's just a couple of clicks away Now a good bit of what we come up with may be inaccurate It may be incomplete some of it will be false some will be malicious information planted by Russian hackers So you got to be careful when we Google know something LePore says we no longer take responsibility for the validity of our own beliefs And we lack the capacity to see how those bits of data fit into a larger context Essentially when we rely on Google knowing we forfeit our reason But if the problem begins with data It doesn't end there for we all are subject to certain mental habits That color our perception of that data of the facts According to Ohio State University's Gleb Tepersky There are two psychological processes in particular that compromise our ability accurately to assess evidence And the first of those propensities he calls anchoring throwing down an anchor by which we develop a belief that is based on our First impressions our our initial contact with a particular idea and once that belief that we've been exposed to is anchored It's very difficult to dislodge it again That first exposure he writes Conditions all the content that we receive moving forward even disconfirming evidence Anchoring and then he refers to something called the halo effect which causes us to Idealize certain individuals and to discount any information that might take them down a peg or two Negative facts about such a person are treated as lies or slanders hatched by jealous or vindictive enemies so for those who believe in the president and Who are convinced that he shares their interests? Literally, nothing will cause them to waver not a history of sexual exploitation Not a series of business bankruptcies not a string of broken promises come what may Donald Trump will remain the white knight in shining armor with the halo firmly in place over his head That is the halo effect Now some of us sitting in this room may say I'm pretty immune to that. I tend not to idealize people But we are probably all guilty to one extent or another of anchoring Because when we choose one source of information over another Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity Nation magazine or the weekly standard it does affect our beliefs because having been exposed to a particular point of view a particular Orientation we are quite likely to adopt it as our own and maintain it even when the evidence may point in another direction So for instance a trivial example We have been told Years ago that consuming fatty foods was bad for us But fairly recently nutritional science has concluded that some fatty foods actually have really profound nutritional value Yet many people continue to eschew fatty foods because what they originally were told about them that is anchoring And then there's something else there is the act of lying itself playing false with the facts Writing recently in the Scientific American Jeremy Adams Smith acquaints us with three species of lies And he identifies the first one is black lies black lies are entirely selfish Self-centered and thus they tend to alienate others White lies they are generally altruistic and we tell a white lie in order to spare another person pain discomfort embarrassment We've all heard about black lies and white lies, but then he says there is a third species of lie It's the blue lie and blue lies are a hybrid variety that are both altruistic and selfish at the same time so When someone utters a falsehood to further the interests of a group to which they belong They are telling a blue lot So if you belong to a sports team that cheats and you lie about that cheating Hey, it's unethical, right, but it does help your side to win Blue lies are altruistic in that they create stronger bonds of social solidarity But only among those who belong to a particular group Blue lies pull some people together and they drive other people further apart Smith writes and thus they can become potent weapons in intergroup conflict and Blue lies have become a common place in contemporary political culture where they are better known as alternative facts So these are some of the social and psychological forces that do help to explain the current decline in the currency of fact But the problem is actually deeper and more complex than this because ironically When there ceases to be widespread Consensus over what constitutes a fact Then the result is that people begin to lose faith their faith begins to slip and It can be very challenging to live in an increasingly faithless world So to understand what I'm talking about here I need to back up a bit and speak to the nature of faith and how it really differs from convictions or beliefs When Henry David Thoreau derided it writing that there is no creed so false, but faith can make it true Then he was giving voice to a rather common misconception Thoreau like many of us equated faith with Is excessive credulity with an intellectual stance that usually cannot stand up under scrutiny Now the biblical scholar Gunther Borkham points out that this is not the way that faith was understood by St. Paul in his epistles or by members of the early Christian community The term that they used in the Greek was pistols, which literally means trustworthy Something that can be relied upon It has Borkham says nothing to do with opinions or convictions Truly understood Faith is an inner attitude a disposition of the soul not of the mind The progressive minded Roman Catholic theologian Hans Kuhn said that faith is not an irrational blind daring leap It is a trust that is responsible to the eyes of reason and that is grounded in the reality itself Faith has more to do with trust than with belief per se And this is why today we are suffering from a crisis of faith as well as a crisis of fact What are opinion polls telling us about our faith in America's vital institutions? well an almost every level we find extraordinary distrust and Mistrust and cynicism Toward government toward religious organizations toward corporations toward the major media toward schools and teachers and even toward the scientific community and just about the only entities On polls that actually receive high approval ratings our first responders and the military Owing to the overwhelmingly positive publicity that these organizations and individuals receive Now understandably there are valid reasons for the collapse of faith in our vital institutions Where government is concerned? Think Vietnam Think Watergate think the invasions of Afghanistan in Iraq think congressional gridlock The nation's major banks well they engineered the subprime mortgage meltdown child sexual abuse has sullied the reputation of faith communities But also there has been this steady drumbeat of negative reporting and commentary about these institutions That has also caused Americans to conclude that many of them are simply irredeemable And such a belief becomes anchored in people's minds and once it's done so it's very very hard to root it out Now this loss of faith in institutions then creates a more generalized Negativity in the public mind we lose faith in each other We lose the faith that that young kidney donor still had hung on to we don't trust that despite our differences that we're all in this together And so today we find this mutual disdain between America's urban and rural residents And it reflects that disdain reflects the erosion of faith between and among our citizenry Faith is as I mentioned a moment ago. It's an inner attitude It's a way of being in the world and with each fresh disappointment with each new injury It's strength wanes and the scope of our faithlessness expands We all know that we are in the throes of a serious opioid Epidemic right now and that many more Americans have come to rely on anti depressions and on sedatives just to get through the day and Such developments reveal to my mind a very basic insecurity about life itself And about the human prospect moving forward Michael Ignatieff writing recently in the New York review said that we are currently living through an extraordinarily if largely imperceptible destruction of faith in the future The list of what needs to be done. He says here and now The list of what needs to be done to make modernity fulfilled It's a emancipatory promise that list is long and Accomplishing any of it depends on faith in the capacity of men and women to work together to secure their common objectives So what's the answer here? What might we do to start restoring people's faith in each other in the American prospect? I Think we can begin with trying to become more aware of our biases And the mechanisms that our minds use to create and to maintain those biases This might allow us to become a bit more humble about our convictions and to adopt what the 20th century philosopher Carol Popper called an attitude of reasonableness I May be wrong Popper wrote you may be right and by an effort we both may get nearer to the truth attitude of reasonableness Easier said than done, of course But as more of us try to model this open-mindedness Then others just might begin to emulate it An attitude of reasonableness There's another type of openness that we can also begin to practice one that the 20th century Jewish theologian Martin Boober recommends and he recommends this particular Procedure in the name of faith and the quotation is on the front of your program today. He says real faith Real faith means holding ourselves open to the unconditional mystery That we encounter in every sphere of our life and that cannot be compressed into any formula The operative word here is mystery Every human being is something of a mystery and to have faith in another human being according to Boober Means to adopt a receptive attitude toward that mystery because if we presume to know everything There is to know about another person or a group of people Then we have stripped them of their mystery and we have called into question their inherent worth and dignity We can say I know who you are. I know what you are. So why should I listen to your story? Why should I entertain any of your ideas? You're an open book in Honoring another's mystery we open ourselves to new possibilities and even to new life Which in Boober's opinion is a profound act of faith? finally We must never succumb to what the late Forrester Church called the sin of sophisticated resignation as astute well-informed people Who quite often are pretty appalled with the state of the world? We may at times be tempted to simply throw up our hands and say ain't it awful? World's going to hell in a handbasket And yes, there is a lot that is going wrong in our world But dwelling on that fact only contributes to a further loss of our collective faith So we have to try to lift up more often the positive Contributions of the institutions that we depend upon the schools the businesses the public servants the faith communities Without which our lives would be so much poorer their gifts are not that hard to find if we take the time to look for them So let me conclude With a few words apropos from the esteemed African-American minister teacher and mentor to Martin Luther King Howard Thurman Thurman wrote During these turbulent times We must remind ourselves that life goes on This we are apt to forget The mass attack of disillusionment and despair Distilled out of the collapse of hope may leave us with a sense of utility But this my friends is a great deception There is no need for us to fear evil There is every need for us to understand it what it does how it operates in the world what it draws upon to sustain itself But the evil of the world must not be allowed to move from without to within So to drink in the beauty that is within reach to clothe one's life with simple deeds of kindness This is always the ultimate answer to the great deception Blessed be and amen As you can see from the insert in today's program our offering will be Given in its entirety to the Unitary Universal Service Committee for the good work that it does Broad and here in the United States itself. Please be generous We gather each week as a community of memory and of hope to this time and place We bring our whole and at other times are broken cells We carry with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past Seeking here a place where they might be received and shared and celebrated There were two entries in our cares of the congregation book this morning Marty Hollis asked for thoughts and prayers on the 12th anniversary of her own mother's death and Then another unnamed person indicated that they would appreciate thoughts and prayers for the family of their Aunt Mary Paul Who passed away on March 27th after a six-year battle with cancer In addition to those two just mentioned we acknowledge any Unarticulated joys or sorrows that remain among us and that as a community we hold with equal concern in our hearts But I sit silently for just a moment or two in the spirit of empathy and hope By virtue of our brief time together this morning may our burdens be lightened and our joys expanded Our closing hymn is number 341 I invite you to rise once more in body and spirit as we lift our voices in song Please be seated for the benediction and the postlude Sophia Lyon Foss was a notable religious educator in our tradition during the 20th century. These are her words The religious way is the deep way the way of the growing perspective and the expanding view The religious way sees what physical eyes alone sometimes fail to see the intangibles at the heart of every phenomenon The religious way touches universal relationships, and it goes high and wide and deep It expands the feelings of kinship with all that is We have gathered today as a company committed to this particular way to the religious way Blessed be and amen