 Let's join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning. And now it's time 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 here at First Unitarian Society, where independent and romantic thinkers gather in a safe, nurturing, loving 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 and very lovable member of this congregation. And in honor of the day and the spirit of the day, I've worn my Valentine's Day sweater. Where's everybody else's? A few over here in the chorus. That's good. They got the memo. I'd like to extend a special welcome to any guests, visitors, or newcomers. This is your first time at First Unitarian Society. I think you'll find that it's a special place. And speaking of newcomers and guests, we are pleased to have a guest speaker this morning, and you'll learn more about her in a few moments. This would be a great time to silence all those pesky electronic devices that you will not need during the service. So please take a moment to do that. And this goes for those of you watching or listening at home, because we can hear your ringtones. And if you are accompanied this morning by a youngster, and you think that young person might be concerned about you getting fidgety during the service, we offer some spaces for you, some alternatives. One is our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium, and we also offer some comfortable seating right outside the doorway in the commons. As is the case every weekend, our service is brought to us by a wonderful team of volunteers, and you deserve to hear their names, and their names deserve to be announced to you. And just think, if you become part of this volunteer team, you might be able to hear your name melodiously announced from this microphone. I'm talking about Mark Schultz on the sound system. Thank you, Mark. Thanks to Ann Smiley for being our lay minister. Thanks to Patty Witte for greeting everybody upstairs as we arrived this morning. Thanks to Doug Hill, Karen Rose Gredler, and Ross Woodward for serving as ushers today. Thanks to Allison Brooks and Gene Hills, who are in the kitchen getting hospitality ready for a little later on. Speaking of a little later on, just a couple announcements about upcoming events before we begin the service today. One that caught my eye, and it probably caught the eye of some of you, is that on Monday, February 29th, so a couple of weeks from today, you have a chance to hear more about this special place, especially our landmark building across the parking lot, when the friends of the meeting house will host a session called Frank Lloyd Wright and the Unitarian Meeting House, A History. Again, Monday evening, February 29th, a great way to leverage leap year, February 29th. And speaking of leveraging future events, last week I told you it was 75 days until Cabaret, so how many days now? 68, good, good. That was a good guess. It was somebody who might have been here for the first service. Friday night, April 22nd, this entire place will be transformed into a wonderful fundraiser, silent and live auction, gourmet food, gourmet music, if there is such a thing, that awaits us, a nice musical extravaganza, and an opportunity to raise money for the organization we love so well, First Unitarian Society. That concludes the announcement, so please lean forward or sit back to enjoy today's service. I was here for the 9 o'clock, and I can guarantee you that today's service will touch your heart, stir your spirit, and trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here to share Valentine's Day with your friends at FUS. And your aching hearts, your scars too numb to feel. Your questions and complaints are all welcome here. Rest awhile. Let the warmth of this community surround you, hold you, heal you. When you feel a bit stronger, just a bit, notice those who need you too. They are here, they are everywhere. Weep with them, smile with them, work with them, laugh along the way. Pass the cup, drink the holy fire, take it with you into the world. We are saved and we save each other again and again and yet again. And if you will rise now in body or spirit to join together in the words of affirmation, print it in your order of service as we light our chalice. Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth, you owe me. Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole world. And before we join together in song, if you could take a moment to turn and greet your neighbor. Message this morning, it is my privilege to introduce the Reverend Karen Quinlan, who is our guest this morning. Karen is not only my dear friend, but she is also the minister for the James Reebe UU congregation on Madison's East Side. Karen comes to our ministry out of a background in ecology and understands the interconnected web of all existence as both a physical and a theological reality. Karen lives near Ulbrick Park with her partner Paul, their daughter Catherine, and their dog Boone, and is my extreme pleasure to have her with us this morning. Karen's message is interactive, you get to take part. So if you would like to do that, please come on up and join her on the carpet. Who's going to come join me? Good morning. Hello. You can sit on there. Good morning. That's okay. Good morning and welcome everyone. Did anyone do anything special for Valentine's Day yet? Yes. Yes? Yes? Yeah? Me too. Awesome. So I have a story for you today about an old woman and her family. So this old woman, she lived on this beautiful farm out in the country. And from her room, she could look out the window and when it wasn't snowing, she could see beautiful fields of grain that they were growing on their farm. And she could see the barns that the animals lived in. She could see the orchards where they were growing their fruit. She could see the forests out beyond the fields. The farm was really special to this old woman. And it was special because it had been in her family for many, many generations. So it had been her mothers and her grandmothers and her great-grandmothers. She had been grown up there. She grew up there. She raised her own family there with lots of children. And now she was old and she was near the end of her life and she was tired. And she was happy that she had this beautiful farm but she was also sad because she could hear in her house and on her farm, she could hear her children arguing with each other. And she was very happy of all the time. Do you have siblings? Do any of you have siblings? Do you argue ever? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. And so this happened all the time except this woman's children, they were grown-ups and they were arguing all the time. See every one of them, they had something they were really good at on the farm. One of them was really good at carpentry, at building things. And one was really good at working with all the animals. And one was really good at farming. And one was really good at cooking and preserving all the food that they grew. The problem was that each of them thought that their job was the most important. And they kept telling all the rest of their siblings that my job is the most important and they would argue about it and they'd hold grudges against each other. And they were jealous when each other got attention or did a good job. So the old woman, she tried to talk to her children about this and she tried time and time again and nothing really seemed to work. And so she was afraid that they wouldn't be able to keep the family farm in the family after she died. So she was sad about that. And then one day she had an idea. Kelly is handing you some sticks and this has to do with her idea. She asked all of her children to go out into the woods past the fields and past the orchards and to bring back for her two sticks apiece. And so each of them had these two sticks. They went out and they got two sticks and they came back. And then she said, all right, children, now what I'd like you to do is take one stick and put it down. Just put it down on the floor in front of you. And then take the other stick and take it in both your hands and see if you can break it. Can you all break your sticks? Not evenly. Yeah? They don't have to be even. Yeah? Yeah. Most of us are doing this, right? See how easy that is? And then she said, pick up your other stick and give it to me. So everybody give me the sticks that you haven't broken. What do you think she did with them? You know, that's right. You've heard the story. And so, yes, she did. She took the sticks and she bundled them all up together and she handed them back to her children and she said, can you break them like this? Who's strong? A lot of us are strong. Yeah. So let's pass those around to the strong people and see if we can break that bundle of sticks. You could break them apart one by one. That's true. Yeah. Can we let somebody else try? And so while you're trying, I'm going to tell you what happened, which you might be able to guess. None of her children were able to break the sticks when they were all tied together, just like you. The old woman's got to them. You, you and you and you and you and you, all of you, my children, are like this bundle of sticks. The hard things in life, if you are just one stick by yourself, the hard things in life will hurt you when things are hard. But if you can all stick together, if you can learn to appreciate each other's gifts and you can learn to work together and stick together, then nothing in this life can hurt you too badly. You will not get broken, just like this bundle of sticks. And so what do you think the children did? They did, because you've heard this story. That's exactly what happened. They said, you know what? You're right. What a wise mother you are. We are just like these sticks and we are going to learn to stick together and work together, and we will make sure that this farm stays in our family. And so the old woman, the old woman, when she did die, it was peaceful and she was happy because she knew her farm would stay in the family. That's all I got. Tell you what, you make up the rest of the story and tell your friends about it, okay? Thank you so much for sitting with me and joining me in my story. I invite you to head to Ari and I invite all of the rest of us to rise in body or spirit and join in singing him number 18. I'll take it. Truman was born in 1958 and she was raised in Massachusetts. And in this poem, which I've adapted slightly, she refers to the Shema, which is the central prayer in the Jewish prayer book, which many Jews say at least twice every day. I don't tell anyone, but I love Jesus. I love his big, dark Jewish eyes, so full of suffering and soul like an unemployed poet's and his thick, sensuous Jewish lips and his kinky, curly hair just like mine uncontrollable despite conditioners. And the way he always argues with everyone and will go to hell for love. He's just like that Buddhist god, Avalokiteshwara, the Buddhist Satva of Compassion, except his name is easier to pronounce. When you're in trouble, it's hard to remember to yell for Avalokiteshwara. But oh, Jesus arises naturally. Every time a crazy driver, hot dogs, passed me on the freeway. I know I should say the Shema when I'm about to die. But will I be able to remember Hebrew at a time like that? I don't want to die saying, oh, damn it. I'd like to leave my body consciously like a Tibetan lama sitting in full lotus with my head turned toward where I'll reincarnate next. But let's be realistic. I probably couldn't meditate enough to become enlightened in the however many years I have left. Jesus seems easier. All you have to do is love everyone. Well, seems is the key word here. Sometimes the more you try to love people, the more you hate them. Maybe it would be better to try not to love people and then watch the love force its way out of you like grass through cement. Anything is better than organized religion. I don't like singing in churches all those hymns in major keys. I don't think religion should be so triumphant. It should be humble and aware of the basic incurable pathos of the human condition and in a minor key and sung in mysterious ancient language like Sanskrit or Hebrew. Is it okay for me to love Jesus and not be a Christian? I could try to open my heart and give away all my possessions. It's not that different from being Buddhist after all, except for a history of witch burnings, the Inquisition, the subjugation, rape and pillage of indigenous peoples all over the world, not to mention 20 centuries of vicious anti-Semitism. That's a lot to overlook to get back to a baby born among animals to a Jewish mother, Miriam. And what about that other Mary, the sexy one? Jesus, I don't believe you died a virgin. I think you needed to taste everything human to inhabit the whole mass. Blood, poop, flies, regret, envy, why me? I owe you and all the other bodhisattvas and sages and newborn babies a debt of thanks for agreeing to come back and marry yourselves to our painful predicament again and again. And I do thank you, bowing to the infinite directions. Like Ms. Luterman, I am not a Christian, but I do have to admit that I love Jesus. His story is a pretty wondrous one. I don't mean the miracles and the coming back to life stuff. I mean the stories, the awareness raising, the intentionality, the love. I especially love his ideas about compassion and justice and hope. Take the sermon on the Mount, for example, the meek will inherit the earth, the merciful will receive mercy, the peacemakers will be called the children of God, and the golden rule also articulated during this sermon everything due to others as you would have them do to you. And he helped people think of doing good works in a new way that it came from inside them, telling them you are the light of the world, let it shine, let it shine before others. Jesus hung out with sinners, with lepers and prostitutes, people who weren't just ignored by society but purposefully marginalized by the religious leaders of the day. He ate with them and he listened to their stories. And he told story after story to try to teach people how to be in right relationship with each other and he showed them by his own example. And he challenged them, he challenged them to learn how to be their best selves. Like in the story about a rich man who came to him asking what he had to do to be saved. Jesus reminded him of the commandments to which the man replied, Teacher, I have kept all of these since my youth. Jesus has written to have said after looking at him and loving him, You lack one thing, go, sell what you own and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me. His challenge to us to learn how to be our best selves is grounded in a message of radical love and hospitality. The book of Matthew tells us that Jesus, when asked by the Pharisees which commandment was the greatest replied, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment and a second, a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And then as Luke tells it when pressed to define neighbor, Jesus affirmed the unity of humanity with the parable of the good Samaritan who cares for an injured Jew and finds him shelter after finding him on the road after being beaten. The defining characteristic to this story is the deep hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans and the over rising of course of that hatred. We are to love God and everyone with our whole being. And as far as we can tell from what has been written about his life, this is exactly what he did. Love his friends and his enemies, helping them be their best selves and forgiving them when they inevitably were not. The gospel stories clearly show that the disciples were often greedy and obtuse and self focused. And what Jesus did is tell them over and over and show them over and over what was really important in life, which is love. And so like many early anti-Trinitarian heretics who expanded the definition of Christianity, it is the example of Jesus that I love. Like Faustus Sinus, a 16th century member of the Polish Reformed Church, I believe that Jesus was fully human, no more and no less divine than you or I. And I believe that it is his humanity that makes his example accessible to us. If Jesus was divine or even somewhere between divine and human as some early theologians reasoned, how realistic could be for us to think we might emulate him. But if he was human, then it becomes possible. We see throughout the gospel stories of his life how he centered himself in his God and how he was able to move through his life from there in love. If he could love his enemies, forgive them when they nailed him to a cross and executed him out of their own fear, then oh my God, what does that say about the love that we are capable of? And what kind of amazing things might we do with that love? This understanding of life-affirming love is one of the things I take from our Christian heritage. Love that can change hearts and minds and the world. As shown to us through the lived faith of a man who walked the earth 2,000 years ago. So what would it mean for us to love God with our whole hearts and souls and minds and love our neighbors as ourselves? I certainly can't speak for all of us, especially about the first great commandment given the wide diversity of God concepts held by people in our faith tradition. Probably in this room. From humanistic to atheistic beliefs that don't include any God at all to redefined ideas of a God to more traditional concepts of a personal God. But for me, I use God language to describe that which arises between us or between ourselves and our surroundings when we're intentionally in harmony or appreciating each other. And so for me, loving God with my whole heart and soul and mind is descriptive of opening myself to that which is around me. Of being receptive and aware and grateful for knowing that I'm connected to all things and all beings on many levels. When I'm in this state of appreciation, I'm more able to start thinking about how to love my neighbor as myself. This is how I'm able to work into my potential for following the example of Jesus' love and I'm best able to start doing this in a safe and intentional community. This is one of the core pieces of Unitarian Universalist practice. Our seven principles are grounded in this notion of wondrous radical love and serve to guide us as we learn how to live out the ideal of loving our neighbors as ourselves. It's what at our best is freely given when we work together toward the best in our potential when we practice being our best selves in community and when we learn to take that out and make positive change in the wider world. We show love for our neighbors when we share our stories and hold them together within our church communities. You show love for your neighbors when you share your plate offering. When you volunteer at the Salvation Army shelters. When you prepare and serve meals at the Portrait Men's Shelter. When you donate to the Eviction Prevention Fund. And when you show up. When you show up for the Pride Parade and for Moses events and for YGB events and when you work with your own equity team. These are ways in which we make the Kingdom of Heaven exist in the here and now. Which is what Jesus said should be our goal. Hosea Baloo, a 19th century universalist preacher, called this our salvation. He wrote that being made in God's image meant that there was no such thing as eternal damnation that as a good and perfect being God could not have made us as anything less than good. And that as his children God loved us so much that he couldn't possibly bear to send us to the tortures of hell. Baloo called this universal salvation. We are all saved simply by virtue of being loved by God. And over the course of his ministry this belief evolved into a deeper understanding of love for him. One that led to his conclusion that the Kingdom of God was indeed here on earth and that living a life of love resulted in such happiness that salvation was achieved. Salvation, the Kingdom of God is what happens when we allow love to be our guiding force. There's a story told about Baloo from his days of being an itinerant preacher. One afternoon he was riding the circuit with a Baptist preacher for company and they were arguing over theology. The Baptist said to him, Brother Baloo, if I were universalist and feared not the fires of hell, I could hit you over the head, steal your horse and saddle and ride away and I would still go to heaven. Baloo looked over at him and said, Brother, if you were universalist the idea would never occur to you. God's great commandments tell us that we are to love him and each other and these commandments are universally binding and constitute universal salvation. Loving God and each other with our hearts and all our minds and all our souls are universal salvation and this salvation is a life of bliss. And so if we believe this doing wrong to our neighbor it just isn't part of our vocabulary. I love this idea. It grounds me and it gives me hope for the possibility of finding or making real beloved community. It helps me think about my own actions, helps me want to try to start from a place of good as opposed to facing consequences when I choose poorly. And I understand the reality of our world. Universal salvation only works if everyone buys into it. If doing wrong to our neighbor isn't part of our vocabulary. I know that half the time I am not in that place of appreciation and openness that I described earlier and I can observe that neither are a lot of my neighbors. And so I wonder whether Hosea's Baloo's beautiful idea isn't more of an ideal an optimistic but maybe unrealistic ideal. The Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing who was a contemporary of Baloo's had a slightly different take on our goodness writing in 1828 that quote the great work of religion is to conform ourselves to God or to unfold the divine likeness within us. What I hear in that is that Channing thought we were made to learn to be good that we had to work at it. He recognized that as perfect as imperfect humans, as imperfect humans we did sin and like most Christians he believed that our salvation lay in the redemption offered by Jesus's death. This is called atonement theology, the idea that the sacrifice of one special person can redeem the sins of all people and it's the basis of the traditional Christian idea of salvation. Adam and Eve in listening to the serpent and eating from the tree of knowledge disobeyed the rules that God had established and therefore tainted all humankind with original sin. This set us up to need to be saved and this is what Jesus's death was supposed to accomplish. His sacrifice was supposed to atone for our sin. I reject this idea because it's based on what I see as a theological contradiction. Even if I could get my head around the idea that one person's sacrifice could make up for the sins of all, I cannot see as valid the idea that salvation could come out of the violent beating and death of a man who was feared by the establishment for his radical ideas of how we humans should act toward one another. I've heard women in a domestic violence shelter talk about confiding in their priests and their pastors only to be told that their faith requires them to submit to the will of their husband and that if submission means they are beaten they should suffer this fate willingly and silently as Jesus suffered his. Their reward will come later they say as an afterlife of heavenly bliss they call this salvation and they base it upon the death of their savior. I call it violence begetting violence. And beyond this I reject the concept of original sin from which we're supposed to have needed salvation in the first place. I think that Eve did a brave and amazing thing in choosing to obey, to disobey the divine to human kind our freedom to explore the world and how we might be in it. It wasn't a fall it was an awakening and so we have nothing to be saved from. Or do we? One of the consequences of our ability to freely explore the world and how we might be in it is that we have choices and we are just as free to choose paths of fear or anger or hatred as we are to choose paths of openness and balance and love. So what do we do in the face of airplanes being flown into buildings in the name of fundamentalist righteousness? What do we do in the face of the violent taking of life in places that are supposed to be safe in movie theaters and churches and schools and on our streets? What do we do in the face of institutional systems that still, despite the hard work and the awakening of so many people still serve to treat people of color and people of little means inequitably? I have come to think of salvation as the thing that helps us deal with the darkness in our lives. That Baptist minister arguing with Hosea Baloo had a real point, as did Reverend Channing. I think they had thought about the darkness in us. Our lives and our choices are multifaceted and difficult and it is not always easy to be guided by love. There is pain and suffering and there is fear. Some of it blameless and some of it intentional. We humans are complicated in our understandings of right relationship and many of us, maybe even all of us at times, are less concerned about the impact of our actions on others than on ourselves. And yet as people of faith we aspire to more. We aspire to let love be our guiding force and sometimes we even manage to do this and this is salvation. When thought of this way salvation is a process. It's a process with several components. I draw here from the work of Dr. Monica Coleman, a womanist process theologian, who defines salvation as that which makes us whole. It is concrete and it is part of this life. It is survival and justice and quality of life. It is what she calls making a way out of no way. In which God offers us the resources to make change but it's up to us to take advantage of them. The no way part of this doesn't mean that a path to salvation just appears out of nowhere but out of places not seen before in the past. So making a way out of no way has four parts. There are unforeseen possibilities. There is human agency. There is the goal of justice and there is the challenge to the existing order. As an example, Dr. Coleman writes about the difficult example about a child who's been abused by her mother. Who was abused in turn by her mother. That child she writes has the freedom to understand and to decide how to treat her own daughter in her turn and that choice doesn't have to be based only on her family history. It's possible she writes for the child to find the love and support she needs to choose to end that pattern. Difficult and there's an assumption of resources there but possible. Dr. Coleman says that salvation occurs when people work for the transformation of the world by imitating Christ. Salvation isn't always liberation and freedom from all pain and suffering but the survival and the quality of life and it requires the cooperation of the world in which we live. A couple of years ago I went on a service learning trip to Haiti and I saw a great example of this process of salvation. While preparing for my trip, I learned about the Makouts, the violent enforcers of the bloody regimes of Haiti's not very distant past. One of their practices was what was called the necklacing of resistors in which they placed tires, car tires, over their necks, filled them with gasoline and lit them. While working with the people of the peasant movement of Papai which is a grassroots change organization in Haiti I learned about and got to try with them one of their practices of making a way out of no way. They transformed old tires into container gardens two of which could grow enough vegetables for a family. Those tires held unforeseen possibility and there was human agency in the deliberate use of an old symbol of terror to make a practical and symbolic use of hope and the goal of justice and the challenge to the existing order by this activist organization in which all of these events happened all in one act of cutting tires and flipping them inside out. Survival and justice and quality of life all become possible in this single action done in community. And so as I think about whether salvation can have any meaning in my own theology or in Unitarian Universalism I find myself convinced that it has to be based on the living exemplar that was Jesus rather than on the single event of his death. His ministry offers us tools with which to move into salvation teaching, healing, praying, welcoming, suffering with. These are all things done in community and so for me salvation happens in community in our understanding that we're all connected in my understanding of a God that is interwoven in our relationships with each other and all that is around us. Salvation is in our ability to care for each other in the face of hate and evil and fear. Salvation is in our ability to try to protect our vulnerable. Salvation is in our ability to continue to try to make change in the world and to try to live into our own ideals from our centering in wondrous love. It is in our ability to face those fears when we are supporting each other in that love. We can ground in the idea that everything we do is based on what happened in the past the possibilities for the future and how we combine those things. May it be so and may we make it so. And I now invite you into the giving and receiving of today's offering. You will see that it is an outreach offering shared with the Lucier Community Education Center. You can read more about their good work in your order of service and we thank you for your generosity. I'm Sandy Eskridge and for the next few weeks as we do every year we'll talk a bit about our annual campaign and the commitment that we all make to financially support our organization. I can tell you that I've been a member here for 23 years ever since I've been in Wisconsin. I benefited tremendously from that, from my membership. And I've had three kids go through religious education, go through our children's choirs, our teens' choirs. They have and I have found a spiritual home here and they have, I believe, sort of lifelong mentors many of the adults in this organization that they have come to know and learned from. For myself, I've done several things. I've taught religious education. I've served on the board of trustees. Next weekend I'll be skiing with the trees for tomorrow people. And last Tuesday night I sat in the landmark meeting house and listened to Everett Mitchell talk to us about justice in Dane County. And every Sunday or Saturday I sit here and I listen and I get a little bit recharged to do the things that I do for the rest of the week. And it's important to do that. I feel like I walk away from here with an orientation that allows me to make better choices, to be a better person, and to do good in the world to the degree that I can. I spend my other six, five days of the week as a middle school principal and an opportunity to apply the principles of our organization in my life every minute of every day. And you all do too. So if it were only for that reason, the benefit that I've received from this organization, I would make a significant pledge and contribution to our organization to keep it going. But that's, to some degree, in my view a consumer mentality. In other words, the value of this organization to me and my family. And that's a perfectly valid place to be. But over the years, I've realized that there is a way bigger use of this organization. And that is to leverage the good that each of us do individually. And as Karen told her story to the kids this morning, you know, we bundle all our little sticks into a big bundle of sticks. And this organization is way stronger and way more powerful if we are together, as we say, a force for good, a transformative effect for good in our community and in the world. And so I'd like you to consider that. As you consider what your annual pledge to our organization might be, make a distinction in your mind between the consumer mentality or what is the value to me, but also maybe what is the potential transformative effect that if I join in this organization in a meaningful way and raise that $1.2 million that you'll see explained in the booklet out here in the Commons, our generous congregation will raise $1.2 million and we will do good things in the community. And I believe we'll do that because we know that there's a bigger effect than any of us can have as individuals. So please keep that in mind. And please join in the closing hymn, number 118, the Sillilite of Mine. And now as we leave this place, this place that we make sacred with our presence and our intention and we move into the wider world, may we remember that we take with us the power to make that world sacred. May we hold the love, the courage and the strength that we learn and practice here and do everything we can to move them out into the world, knowing that we have enough and that we are enough. Go in peace. Blessed be. Amen.