 Please join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning. And now let's get musically present by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn, which you'll find inside your order of service. Welcome to another Sunday here at First Unitarian Society. It happens to be Super Bowl Sunday, or as some Packer fans might call it, Passover. But here we are at First Unitarian Society where independent thinkers gather in a safe, nurturing, and football-free zone 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, good-looking member of this congregation, and I'd like to extend a happy hello to those of you watching or listening at home. And a warm welcome to any guests, visitors, or newcomers. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I think you'll find that it's a special place indeed, and we're glad you're here. Speaking of being here, being present with each other, this would be a great time to silence those pesky electronic devices that you just will not need at all for the next hour. So thank you for taking care of that. And speaking of need, if you're accompanied today by a youngster and you think that you need a more private space from which to enjoy the service, because you might get a little fidgety and that might embarrass your youngster, we have a child haven at the back corner of the auditorium and some comfortable seating right outside the doorway in the commons. And now the moment you've all been waiting for, the names of our volunteers. These are people who are volunteering their help this morning so that our service can run smoothly. And someday, if you're really lucky, and if you sign up to volunteer for a weekend service, you'll hear your name announced from this microphone just like you're about to hear these names. Thank you to Mark Schultz for operating the sound system. Thank you to Anne Smiley for being our lay minister. Thanks to Joan Heitman for greeting us this morning with her smiling face. Thank you to our ushers, Melinda Carr, Vivian Littlefield, Gal Bliss and Doug Hill. A special thank you to Gene Hills for hosting the hospitality and coffee after the service. And a special thank you, and if you see them up and about in the round in the future, thank Bob and Nancy Dot for donating today's flowers in honor of their, wait for it, wait for it, their 65th wedding anniversary. So if you see it, I don't believe they're here this morning. Maybe you're watching at home, Bob and Nancy Dot, but congratulations on your 65th anniversary. Thank you for sharing your joy by donating today's flowers. Just a couple announcements before we get on with the service today. First of all, if you have never heard Reverend Everett Mitchell talk about racial justice and the criminal justice system, you're in for a treat because Tuesday evening right here, he is going to be conducting a meeting, a session on that, and we get to hear quite a bit of insight regarding the issue of racial justice or racial injustice here in Dane County again Tuesday evening. And lastly, the cabaret calendar countdown continues 75 days from now, Friday, April 22nd. Right here, this place will be transformed into one huge party, including a musical extravaganza, auction, a gourmet feast, and an opportunity to raise money for that organization we love so well known as First Unitarian Society. So how many days until April 22nd? 75. 75, very good. You're paying attention already and the service has not even commenced. So that's a good sign. And it's a good service, by the way. I heard it at 9 o'clock, so please lean forward or sit back to enjoy the service. I know it will touch your heart, stir your spirit, and trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here. Good morning. One of the members of the FUS Open Poetry Group, and we're very pleased to have been, our members being invited to write the opening words for the three services this weekend. The opening words that I'm going to read, I wrote a couple days ago and they're entitled, it's a poem entitled, Choose Your Own Star. Choose your own star, whoever you are, a goal with a purpose to be of real service, brought in its scope to offer new hope. From a place you can be with your vision to see, achievements to strive for, with reasons to be more, a chance to advance past mere happenstance, to do something good, your path understood, whatever it be, to the highest degree, not a small trifle, but worthy, insightful, to follow your star and be who you are. And now we'll have the lighting on the chalice. If you'll stand and read the words in your program. As we kindle this flame, may it spark in each of us connection and commitment to this living tradition and to each other. And now if you'll turn to your neighbor and exchange friendly greetings. I want to take Jeff who didn't introduce himself, that was Jeff Glover and that was an original piece. Today's service is comprised completely of the words of members of this community. And I want to welcome any children who might want to come forward because we have a story today that was written by our very own Roz Woodward. How cool is that? So come on up here. Hi everybody. This girl is going to a play after this. I think it's already been a good day. All right. So these words were written by Roz Woodward and these pictures were drawn by her too. So pay special attention because I think it's really cool that people right here in this congregation are sharing their words and art with us. There was once a king of a very big kingdom and one night he awoke with a large headache. He tossed and turned so much that he woke up the queen. What is it my dear? The king said people are pounding on the palace doors. They don't want to help pay for all of the good things I'm trying to give them like roads and bridges and clean water. And that's the only way that I can pay for it. And now the whole kingdom is fighting over it. I don't know what to do. My head is splitting in two. The queen jumped off the bed. The king's head is splitting in two. She cried, call for a doctor. Maid woke the doctor who came in to look at the king. He felt his pulse and listened to his heart. And he said, I see no evidence that the king's head is actually splitting in two. But the chambermaid had already heard what she had heard. So she ran to the kitchen and alerted the cook who told the shoe cleaning boy who related to the stable boy who told the horse the king's head is splitting in two because the whole kingdom is fighting. Now perched in the rafter of that stable was a little screech owl that was woken up by all this racket. She overheard the stable boy shook herself awake and very upset. She took off immediately even though it was the middle of the day and she was kind of a night owl. This seemed to be important. The king's head was splitting in two. She flew towards the peaceful mountains of the east and on the way she told every bird she met the king's head is splitting in two because the whole kingdom is fighting. Pretty soon the entire bird kingdom was chattering and screeching all about the king's headache. It was such a ruckus birds were flapping around everywhere and everyone throughout the entire kingdom became upset. Folks even stopped fighting with each other to figure out what was going on. Meanwhile, the little owl had flown east. She landed at a little shack in a small village in a valley in the peaceful mountains and there was an old woman tending her garden there. She eked out a poor existence by helping neighbors in whatever way she could. The owl screeched out a message about the king's headache. Oh dear, this is very serious she muttered. I must make my way to the palace right away. She packed a little bag and started on the long journey to the castle. And as she walked she saw and heard all the birds screeching the same message the king's head is splitting in two. In a sense she told them it's all the worries and cares in his head if all your kingdom was fighting you would have a headache too. Pretty soon she arrived at the edge of the fighting kingdom. People had now stopped fighting with each other but now they were fighting with all the birds and everyone was trying to tell each other about the king's headache all at once. Now one of the old woman's gifts was that she knew how to talk to birds and animals. So she sat in the middle of the first town square that she came to and she called all the sparrows and pigeons and starlings and anyone else that would listen. And the townspeople they stopped fighting and yelling in amazement. The old woman explained the problem and a town meeting was called to figure out how to stop all of the fighting. It took a lot of work because they were so used to yelling at one another and now they had to learn to do something else. Particularly they had to learn to listen to each other and find a way to be helpful instead of hurtful and it is not easy to learn new habits. Everywhere she went the old woman taught the towns and the villages about the king's headache and by the time she reached the palace many months later the birds were carrying messages of peace from the east. The king was still tossing and turning and the doctors were still unable to treat the headache. The queen was still worried and the message had not yet reached the palace that the people had stopped fighting. So one morning the old woman knocked on the door of the stable and she told the stable boy who told the shoe cleaning boy who told the cook who told the chamber maid who related to the doctor who told the queen and she said to the king, my dear, your kingdom is no longer fighting. Let's go out and see this marvelous thing. So the king stopped tossing and turning and went outside to breathe the fresh air of his new peaceful kingdom. He saw people smiling and helping and playing with one another and his headache evaporated like dew in the sunshine. The next day he issued a proclamation to ask for help to build roads and bridges and houses and schools and all the other things that are needed for a peaceful kingdom. And the people instead of fighting pooled their resources and talents and pretty soon all the things that the king had worried about were taking care of. Few people ever knew the secret about the magical old lady of the east who could talk to birds and understood things about headaches. But now you know that secret and now you can help too. And I hope that you do. And one of the ways that the children help in this congregation is they give us lovely music. It says we're going to sing a hymn in our order of service, but I think we should listen to the kids sing another song. What do you guys think? Yeah? All right, let's do that. Maybe you give them a round of applause. Everyone here gets bonus points for coming to church on Super Bowl Sunday. I've been kind of risky last week and I asked you all to send me your visions of what a world would look like. That was the kind of world that you wanted to live in. I asked you to do a writing exercise to write out these visions and write yourself apart in it. And it was kind of risky because I thought maybe people wouldn't respond. And then I remembered who I was dealing with. You guys did. You sent me amazing visions. Enough that every single word in this service from the opening words to the benediction is your voice and your words. Words from this community. And I wanted to share a couple of the visions of the future that were pretty specific and well thought out. These are not my words. They are things that people have sent to me about how they want to see the world in the future. Some of them get into specifics of financials and politics. FUS is not endorsing any of these plans, but these are dreams that you all had. By 2025 or sooner, I want to live in a country where everyone is guaranteed a minimum income. My role in working towards this world is as a founding member of the Minimum Income Co-op, started by the First Unitarian Society in Madison, Wisconsin in 2015. In 2015, FUS invites everyone in the community to make two pledges. The first was to the FUS annual campaign. The annual campaign because of this was a huge success. And the total pledges for the 2015-2016 fiscal year increased 15% from the previous year. Because of the increase in budget, FUS was able to offer more programming, raise the salaries of current staff members, add additional staff. These additional funds helped FUS to be a force for good in Madison and Dane County. But what really got everyone's attention was the request for an additional pledge. This additional pledge pooled money from FUS congregants and was distributed directly to a family in Madison with no strings attached. The idea came from the long-running family-to-family Christmas program, where hundreds of FUS congregants donated their time and treasure to provide holiday gifts to struggling families in the Madison area. Using a similar strategy, the congregation agreed to support a family throughout the year to help them meet their basic needs rather than just a one-time gift around the holidays. Like family-to-family, the recipients of the support were selected by a social worker. At first, FUS could offer support to only one family, but as word got out, more people pledged to the co-op, and FUS was able to add an additional family to the co-op each year. This program not only helped the recipient families, it also demonstrated how families who had economic security could thrive. In fact, many of the early families that benefited from the program were able to increase their earned income enough that they withdrew as recipients of the co-op and instead became modest contributors. This model also caught on to other faith communities in Madison, and soon dozens of congregations were pledging to support area families as well. Currently, here in 2025, the Dane County Board is discussing a proposal to raise taxes to fund a similar program to bring more families up to a minimum level of income. Once famous for high incarceration rates of people of color, Dane County is now leading the country in innovative programs to decrease economic equality. And another person writes, We were in 2025 and now it is the year 2067. You all are very specific about your timelines. Climate change has brought a great deal of change to the planet. Thankfully, the rapid proliferation of renewable energy resources, mostly owned by community cooperatives and city governments, has allowed humanity to keep climate change to less than four degrees Fahrenheit. Also very specific about your climate change. The developing countries in 2000, and developing countries as in quotes, of the 2000s, including the continent of Africa now have large middle classes in democratic systems of government. Remarkably, they have avoided the worst polluting forms of industrial development, and in many cases they have pioneered new inexpensive energy technologies rather than face exploitation by multinational corporations, which have slowly atrophied as a result. China is now the world's most populous democracy, following a peaceful transition of power from the Communist Party. On this new, more balanced world stage, the United Nations has finally come into its own in enforcing human rights and environmental protections around the globe. In the United States, the long conservative drift that began in the 1970s was finally broken by a coalition of new movements, including Black Lives Matter, the environmental movement, and a newly invigorated labor movement that blossomed in the late 20s with mass demonstrations across the country. Beginning with the 2016 election of a great candidate, the federal government launched massive public works programs that employ millions of people, retrofitting cities with green technologies, and dramatically increasing investment in education while cutting back military spending. The two-party system finally splintered, allowing people a political choice closer to their own view. The old Republican Party is now comprised of the Evangelical Party, the Libertarian Party, and Business First, with an exclamation mark. To the left exists the Progressive Party, the Green Party, and the Old Democratic Party. The work of repairing the world is by no means complete. There is far more to be done, but as those who have brought about this change tell each other as they sit on shaded porches, the children who have grown up in this world need their own work and have their own dreams. Would you rise and join me in another hymn? We're going to sing about building a new way. Reverend Dr. Susan Ritchie is the secretary of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the head of our denomination. She has been a minister at a church in Ohio for nearly 20 years, and she teaches history, polity, and Unitarian Universalist identity to many people in our UU Seminary Identity Schools. And she claims to still have trouble with her elevator speech. When people ask her what Unitarian Universalism actually is, she sometimes still struggles. And one time she was at a conference, an interfaith conference with other scholars and colleagues. And she was trying to tell a woman who was not UU what Unitarian Universalism was, and she was describing it and kind of waffling a little bit. And the woman looked at her and she said, oh, you're post-Christian Protestants. And I was like, yeah, yeah, that is what we are. Because really we started with the Protestant Reformation, the seed for our denomination started with the Protestant Reformation, and then continued reforming to the Protestant Reformation's logical conclusion. I talked a little bit about this in October. With the Protestant Reformation, we questioned the hierarchy of the church. With the transcendentalist movement, we then questioned the idea that the Bible was fact and the Word of God, and also the need for Jesus in our salvation stories. And then we had a humanist movement that actually questioned the need for an anthropomorphic God at all. So in less than 500 years, we went from Catholicism to humanism. That sounds like reformation to me. And I would tell people this story in part of my elevator speech to say how we formed and who we are until I read the book Saving Paradise by Rebecca Parker and Rita Nakashima Brock. No relation. These women described the shift in Christianity from a time in the early church, the early church before Christianity was sort of co-opted by empire in those 300 years or so between Jesus and Constantine. They talked about a church that was based on Jesus' vision of paradise here on earth. The salvific event, the saving event of the early church, was not that Jesus was crucified. It was that he lived and taught his lessons of abundance and love and care for one another. The idea of the crucifixion being the salvific event of faith, that came much later with the Roman Empire that had its economic system based on slavery and its gladiatorial events, and they needed people to identify less with this lovely life in a garden and more with a suffering God. So they made that cultural shift. But this book describes a church in the early beginning formation that was just so cool and relevant and beautiful. I finally understood why Christianity has been so meaningful and so prolific, and it made me want to take on that mantle myself even though I don't believe in substitutionary atonement. I don't believe that Jesus died for our sins so we get to go to heaven. But this book made me realize that I could take on this idea of Christianity because the church in the early world was a bunch of people coming together to create beloved community. It was people that had different ideas about Jesus and different theologies. They read from different scripts. There was no canonized Bible and told different stories. But over and over again they talked about Jesus' message of feeding and healing the people. Jesus said, take care of one another, love one another, feed and heal each other. And that is my church. There's not much about dying on a cross in there. So I started reading these rituals in the early church that were not only beautiful, they were useful. Communion, communion in the early church was an agape feast. Not only did people bring bread and wine, but they brought grains and produce. Those who had more brought more. Those who had less brought less, and they would literally feed one another. And anointment in the early church was also useful and beautiful. Rather than it being some sort of special gift from God or a washing away of sins, people actually ground up healing herbs in oil and then they laid hands on each other and healed their physical and spiritual wounds. And even communion, or I'm sorry, even confession, which we think of as something that's a little shaming and we don't do it here in this church. Even confession was kind of a beautiful act in the early church because people didn't say, I was bad, I need forgiveness. People said, I don't like the way that I acted and there's something going on and I need the help of my community. It was a way to ask for help and be there for one another. Guys, I'm struggling with alcohol and I'm messing up. Can you help me? Guys, I'm feeling a particular greed come on me and I'm messing up. Can you help me? I think that that is kind of actually a cool way to go about admitting what's going on with us. And when I think about the church in that setting with people of all different theologies coming together to read from lots of different sources of scripture, not one dogmatic book, a place that was non-hierarchical, a place that took inspiration from Jesus and wanted to use the principles of his teaching to help one another and to make the world a better place, that doesn't sound super unfamiliar to me actually. And I wonder if instead of being post-post-post-reformationists, maybe we're just super traditional. And I think about the church in that context, all of the gospels, all of the gospels that were eventually canonized, Mark, Paul, Luke, John, they were in that church. They were not in the post-Constantine colonialized church. They were in that gathered community when they were writing. One of the biggest charges of the evangelical faith comes from one of the writings of Luke. It says, go forth and spread the gospel. And I think about that in Luke's time and I wonder what that meant because there wasn't a canonized gospel at that time. Luke meant, and then he goes on to say, go forth and spread the gospel to the poor and the oppressed and let the people in prison go. And if the gospel was about Jesus dying on the cross for our salvation, why would we just want to spread that to the poor? It didn't make sense to me. Apparently I'm not the only person it didn't make sense to and lots of people have gone back and revisited this verse. They went back to the original Greek and they translated it more closely and what the gospel actually says is, go forth and spread the good news. Go forth and spread the good news to the poor, to those imprisoned, to those oppressed. And I think about Luke in this church where the concentration was on how we can feed and heal and help one another and that makes a whole lot more sense. Go forth and tell the poor and the imprisoned and the hurting that this is a place where you can come and be taken care of. Go forth and spread the good news. And funny enough, the Unitarian Universalist Association has the same advice. There's a woman named Tandy Rogers and for many years Tandy has been studying what makes congregations grow. There are all kinds of congregations that are growing right now at rapid speeds and they seemingly don't have much in common. Some of them are on the East Coast, some of them are on the West Coast or in the South, some of them started from a small amount, some of them started already large. They have all kinds of different theological backgrounds and different kinds of ministers and some don't have ministers at all. And the one thing that Tandy found that all of these congregations had in common was that they had a saving message that they had decided on and lived out in the world and that their ministers had taken this message into their own theology and talked about it with the congregation. I heard this in a workshop at GA and I thought, what the heck does it mean to have a saving message in Unitarian Universalism? Because we're talking about salvation and atonement and we don't really talk about those things anymore. And so I started thinking about it in terms of good news, in terms of a hopeful message, in terms of Luke and in terms of other faiths, because actually even though good news and salvation are very Christian terms, every faith has some sort of hopeful message, right? The Buddhists say, yeah, they're suffering, but good news, if you understand that it is temporary and you can detach from it, you can achieve this enlightened state. The Muslims say, if you worship Allah and do his works on this planet, most of which, by the way, are about taking care of each other, you will be rewarded. The Jewish folks, some of the more orthodox traditional Jewish folks might say, good news, we are part of God's chosen people and there's a Messiah coming. And the more reformed and humanist Jewish folks might say, we are part of a wisdom tradition that gives us all of the community and love that we need on this planet. Good news. Even the Wiccan folks say, we are part of a universal flow of all things, and the good news is, we have our own magical agency to direct part of that flow. Thinking about it in terms of all of these faiths and thinking about it in terms of what Luke said, there seems to be an underlying common thread. We are each individual, important beings that are connected to something larger than ourselves. And to me, that sounds like our first and seventh principles. Every person has inherent worth and dignity, and we are part of an interdependent web. Your voice matters. Every soul matters, and we are all connected. You are an exorably part of something larger than yourself. Or maybe to put it simply, your voice matters, and you're welcome here. Your voice matters, and you are welcome here. Growing up as a Unitarian Universalist, that message has saved me many times, and in many ways. But then that also begs the question, saved me from what? Because, again, we're not really down with the eternal punishment thing, right? So, our reformation that moved away from words of salvation and atonement, that was really our Unitarian side. Our Universalist side never really got rid of that language because you can't have a religion based on universal salvation without the salvation part. It's true. So, what the Universalists did is they kind of thought about salvation in new terms. And in 1915, a man named Clarence Skinner was dubbed the prophet of a new universalism for one of my favorite essays ever written. It was called the Social Implications of Universalism. And it's a longerish essay in which he spends the first third of it getting really amped up about how wrong we have gotten this whole salvation thing. That salvation is not about the afterlife, that our actions have implications here on this earth, and that because we are so intrinsically connected, we can see, we can see the results of our actions in the faces of our fellow human beings. If we don't treat each other well, there will be human degradation in the form of poverty and depression. He goes into pretty direct detail about all of the things that he sees in the world and how they are direct results of the way that we treat one another. And he said, we need to go forth with visions of understanding, visions of the world that understand our inherent connection. He kind of wanted you to preach Luke's message. And so I asked you last week, I asked all of you to send me visions of what you thought the future could look like. I talked about Octavia Butler and how inspiring she had been for me personally, and I talked about how she wrote herself a world that she wanted to live in and wrote herself apart, and I asked you to talk to me about what the world would look like if it were the kind of place you really wanted to live in. And I learned two things, two themes. I learned a lot of things. I learned two major themes, and I have one wondering. The first major theme that I learned is that I really did not need to preach this message today. You guys get it. You guys totally get the individual worth and connection thing. You're there. I heard so many stories about making sure every voice was heard, whether it be through the democratic process or through non-hierarchical systems. I thought it was really interesting that more than one of you mentioned systems that were non-hierarchical because Octavia Butler actually talks about how the inherent flaw in humanity is hierarchy, and I didn't talk about that last week, so whether you made the connection or whether the spirit did, I thought that was pretty cool. And the other thing that I learned, oh, well, and you got this idea of universal connection too. You talked about the need to go out beyond our own spheres of comfort to make connections with people that you wouldn't normally see on Sunday morning or in your neighborhood or at your bridge club or whatever else you do to challenge yourself culturally and socially to really see a wide breadth of the possibilities of humanity. The other learning I had was that you all understand courage in a really intricate and amazing way. I've been preaching about the courage of Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman. I've been preaching about the courage of people who speak truth to power and live forth with these righteous bold actions. And you all reminded me of another really, really important part of courage, and that is vulnerability. The courage to look at your own predisposed notions of the world and question whether those are the only ones. You talked about your relationships, your relationships that you had with people that were in marginalized groups. Some of you even said, you were brave enough to say, this person talks about the oppression that they have experienced. I don't see it, but I know that I need to trust their story. Some of you talked about how you were uncomfortable with some of the ways that the world were and some of the actions that were being taken now. Some of you specifically talked about how you were uncomfortable with direct action and specifically uncomfortable with the Black Lives Matter movement blaming police officers for things. And you also said, you said, and maybe, maybe I'm uncomfortable because these systems privilege me and I don't want to deal with that. I don't want to feel all of the stuff that comes along with having to notice that I am in a privileged system and it doesn't help some people and it helps other people and that's tough stuff to deal with, so I'm going to have to sit with that. It was incredible vulnerability on your part because I think that we all get that message inherently, right? Any of us that have lived in a female body know that the most feminist, well-meaning man, doesn't know what it's like to walk through the world as a woman. Any of us who have ever been oppressed by income inequality know that even the people that are out there marching in the streets for fight for 15, if they're well off, they don't know that gripping fear in the pit of your stomach when you don't know how you're going to pay rent at the end of the month. And me, I don't understand what it's like to not be able to move freely up here, to have the freedom to just stand up whenever I want and go grab a book off a bookshelf or run to catch a door that's closing because my body is temporarily able and the wondering that I have after hearing these learnings and these beautiful visions is are you talking to each other about these visions? Erin Winkler is a professor at the U of M Ann Arbor and she came to talk to us about talking to our kids about race and she said, we can't talk to our kids about race until we are practiced in the conversations ourselves until we've tried out on people who do not experience the oppression of race, how to best word these things so we don't put it on them when we start to talk about it and we need to be practiced in talking to our kids. And I wonder if we're doing that because you folks have brilliant, beautiful, amazing messages. You were all fantastic ministers to me this week and I really appreciated it. I hope that you do. I hope that you use this community as a place like the confessions of the early world, like the good news of Luke. I hope that you use this as a place to talk to one another and share your dreams because you are so powerful collectively. Thank you. Thank you so much honestly for sharing with me this week. I hope that our collective vision of the world comes to fruition. It would be kind of a fantastic place to live. One of the visions I have of the world is that women will be able to access reproductive health care easily so our collection today is going to be shared with Planned Parenthood. Most weeks we have a book outside of the atrium that allows us to put the cares of our congregation in them and I would like to read a couple that we have today. Please hold C.C. Bouldyard and Susan Miller in your hearts and the death of Susan's niece and C.C.'s sister-in-law. Caroline Nosol, 24, was shot and killed last Tuesday in Cottage Grove. There is a GoFundMe page for expenses for her account. She was a friend of many members here. On Friday, Lisa West's father, Jim Vogelsberger, died from Alzheimer's disease. For the past eight years, he has been a model of living with acceptance while loving the good things in life that were still available to him. And to end on a positive note, congratulations to our own Steve Goldberg. Not only is he an attractive and active member of FUS, he is an attractive and active member in the entire community and he has been honored as one of Madison's agents for change by the best of Madison 2016. Give him a high five next time you see him. Will you all rise in body and or spirit to join me one more time in song number 1028, The Fire of Commitment? Please be seated from this congregation. It would be great if we made a concerted effort to read and learn about post-construction, the periods of old and now new Jim Crow in America, the Great Migration, et cetera. There are lots of good books available, but we can't stop there. We need to push ourselves to be uncomfortable, to be courageous, to reach out and find new ways to connect, attend offerings of the FUS equity team and Moses, visit Reverend Evan Mitchell's church for his invitation over a year ago, read Umoja or H-U-E-S publications, get involved at a new local chapter of the NAACP, help out with the UW Odyssey project, volunteer to work the Juneteenth celebration, volunteer at Madison Elementary Schools. Oh, there are so many possibilities. Looking out at all of you right now, I'd have to say I concur. Go in peace, return in love. Please remain seated for the postlude.