 Please join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning. Now let's 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. We return to another Sunday here at First Unitarian Society where independent thinkers gather in a safe, nurturing environment to explore issues of social, spiritual, and ethical significance as we try to make a difference in this world. I'm Steve Goldberg, a proud, delicately balanced member of this congregation, and I'd like to extend a special welcome first to people in the balcony. We've reopened the balcony, so welcome to our bleacher creatures, and a special welcome and greeting this morning to any guests, visitors, or newcomers. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I know you'll find that it's a special place and we invite you to join us for our fellowship hour after the service. This would be a great time to silence all those pesky electronic devices that we just will not need during the service. And while you're taking care of that task, I'll remind you that if you're accompanied this morning by a youngster and you think that young person would rather experience the service from a more private space, we offer a couple options for you. One is our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium, and we also have some comfortable seating right outside the doorway in the commons from which you and your young companion can see and hear the service. One reason that we are able to see and hear the service today is we have a great group of volunteers who are bringing us the service. And they include Anne Smiley as our lay minister, Anne is doing double duty because she's taking care of the greenery that you see up here on the stage, making sure it's vibrant and well-watered, and water is our theme today. So thank you, Anne. Thank you to Jeanine Nussbaum for greeting us upstairs this morning as we arrived. Special thank you to Karen Hill, Doug Hill, and Tom Dommage serving as our ushers today. Thank you to Helen Dyer and Jean Hills for hosting the hospitality and coffee after today's service. And speaking of volunteers, if you're interested in learning more about how you could volunteer for support of the weekend service and get a chance to hear your name announced articulately and eloquently from this microphone, we're offering a special orientation session after the October 2nd Sunday service, 9 o'clock or 11 o'clock. Take your pick if you'd like to learn more about volunteering to support the worship service. A couple of announcements for you before we get on with our service today. The Wisconsin Faith Voices for Justice is pleased to announce a moral day of action at the state capital tomorrow, Monday, at noon. The event will be staged initially at the Gracie Piscable Church on the square at 11 o'clock to get ready for the 12 o'clock. The Madison Unitarian Universalists will join other faith labor and civil rights groups to challenge our elected officials and candidates for political office on a whole host of vital issues facing our country, such as democracy and voting rights, poverty and economic justice, workers' rights, education, health care, environmental justice, immigrants' rights, criminal justice, LGBTQ rights, and many more. Everybody's welcome to attend and participate. Again, that's tomorrow noon, Monday, on the Capitol Square. Our ministerial intern, Eric Severson, whom you will hear later in the service, will be leading worship for the first time next weekend. And in conjunction with that event and to show Eric how much we appreciate his ministerial internship, we will hold a welcoming reception for him after each service. Everybody's invited. Bring your best smile to that reception. One more announcement. We are going to be offering an opportunity for you to talk with each other and with Michael after today's service regarding the topic of today's service. It's an intriguing, engaging topic, and if you'd like to participate in a 15 or 20 minute dialogue with Michael and others after the service, just meet over here in the choir area after the service is over and you'll have a chance to participate in that dialogue. Speaking of dialogue, Kelly would like to offer a special message today regarding the religious education program. Kelly? You may have noticed by looking around the room that our children's religious education program begins today. It is wonderful to see all of these faces back with us again. We have around 400 kids enrolled in the program and there are more that join us every year throughout the year. So we would like to make sure that we've got room for all of those little ones who want to be with us. We are currently in need of some teachers at this time. We need one in our fourth and fifth grade class and one for our sixth, seventh grade class. So if this is something that you would be interested in doing, teaching in one of these classes is an excellent way to get to know other people here at FUS. It's also a chance to spend some time with our pretty remarkable kids and it's a lot of fun. Our teaching teams are made up of four people so that you are on for two weeks and then you have two weeks off. So if you could help us fill any of those gaps, you can see Leslie Ross. She is in the religious education section of the commons, which is down that end right past the bookstore and you can talk with her after the service and we thank you for considering it. Thank you Kelly and thank you to all of our religious education volunteers. We appreciate what you're doing for our kids and you will appreciate today's service. I know that for a fact because I heard the nine o'clock and I invite you now to sit back or lean forward and enjoy today's service. I'm sure it will touch your heart, stir your spirits and trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here. We delight once again to occupy a room together, not to sit separately bounded by our skins. Rather we join today as raindrops join with rivulets, rivulets join with streams, streams with rivers, rivers with lakes and seas. For we too are not bounded by our skins, our love, our perception and our influence. All of these go far beyond us and yet they are as much a part of us as our integral selves. This place, this morning, then, is where we share and unify these influences. Here, what was uniqueness becomes variety, influence becomes confluence and individuals are forged into community. I invite you to rise in body and spirit for the lighting of our chalice. And as Steve kindles the flame of our faith, please join me in reading the words of affirmation printed in your program. Water flows from high in the mountains, water runs deep in the earth. Miraculously, water comes to us and sustains all life. And on this glorious September morning, please turn to your neighbor, exchange with them a warm and friendly greeting. Please be seated. We think of today as the beginning of an official new church year, it being the first day that our children are back for CRE classes and many of us have returned after the summer hiatus. It is also a time when we celebrate traditional in-gathering service, our water communion, which in past years we've actually celebrated at the end of August rather than the beginning of September. So it will be a little bit different for those of you who may have participated in the past from what it is today. But if you have brought some water with you today after many promptings over the summer, you will be asked to bring it forward momentarily. And if you have not done so for whatever reason, we still invite you to participate in our communion by taking a small portion of our mingled water with you at the end of your service for purposes that Eric will describe later on. And so I'm going to be asking you to bring forward your water in five different stages. First I will call for water from the west that you've brought from west of the state of Wisconsin and then from south of the border and then from the east and then from the north of our home state. And then finally I will be asking for waters that have been brought from a location within or the waters that actually border the state of Wisconsin, waters from the center as it were. And as you come forward please place your water in one or the other of the two containers on my left or my right. And so now I would begin by asking those who have brought water from the west to come forward. Water from the south, waters from the east, water from the north, water from the center. And finally this container holds water from last year's water communion and likely water from all water communions past, bringing us into relationship with congregations and communities of the past and providing us with a sense of solidarity with those who have come before us. And then finally an empty container devoid of water reminding us of all of those who lack access to safe and affordable water. As we celebrate our water communion here in Water Rich Wisconsin we know that rationing is required in much of the southwest and in Southern California. In 2010 the United Nations General Assembly declared that drinking water and sanitation are essential to the realization of all other human rights. And so today we stand in solidarity with those for whom that right has been denied. And so we bring our waters today. Waters that have touched the west, the north, the south, the east, the center. Waters which have come from the sky and water that has come from the earth. We bring water that belonged to lakes and streams and reservoirs of fresh water that have quenched our thirst. We bring water that is part of the great oceans and the seas that circulate the glow teaming with life, the source of all life. We bring water to this place of meeting and of sharing. In this container there is new water, water that forms in the atmosphere every day and there's also old water from deep below the earth, water that was deposited by rain 10 million years ago. This is the stream of life from which all life emerges. All people are connected by this stream for it runs through our veins and courses through the stems and the leaves of myriad plants. And so today this is the symbol for us and the reality of the oneness that unites humankind with all of life. May our separate waters join into one sacred stream as we add our lives into the stream of those vital souls who live out love, work for justice, and hunger for peace. And now I would invite you to rise in body or in spirit as we sing together hymn number 1007 and as we do so our children may depart for their church school classes. Severson I am your 2016-2017 ministerial intern. I was married in the landmark 28 years ago in just a couple of weeks and it is a pleasure to be back. Let me share with you insights from Canadian geneticist David Suzuki. Basically each of us is a blob of water with enough macromolecular thickening to give us some stiffness and to keep us from dribbling away. Every day about 3% of the water in our bodies is replenished with new molecules. The water molecules that perfuse every part of our bodies have come from all the oceans of the world evaporated from prairie grasslands and the canopies of all the world's great rainforests. Like air, water physically links us to earth and to all other forms of life. Our bodies are perpetually on water alert because our daily intake must be exquisitely matched to our daily output. When you start to become dehydrated the concentration of salts in the body fluids begins to rise. A small change is enough to induce the posterior lobe of the pituitary gland to release the hormone ADH which acts directly on the kidneys inducing them to decrease the secretion of water. Other biological alarms are set off when dehydration reduces the volume of blood. Stretch receptors monitor blood volume inside the heart and send signals to the thirst center of the hypothalamus in the brain to inhibit this production of saliva. Dryness in the mouth registers in our consciousness as thirst, stimulating us to drink. If you drink too much water these alarm systems work in reverse. When the concentration of salts in the body fluids becomes diluted the production of ADH is inhibited, stimulating the kidneys to excrete more water. Moreover, one property of water, its high absorption of heat to change from a liquid to a gaseous state, plays a critical role in regulating body temperature. Water within the body reaches the surface of the skin by diffusion or sweat glands that are activated by the autonomic nervous system which functions without our awareness. After it reaches the surface of the skin as sweat the water evaporates. Evaporation requires energy and sweat, drying sweat uses heat from the body as energy, thereby cooling the skin. There is a remarkable equilibrium between your body and its surroundings. The inside and outside of your body combine to manage the ebb and flow of water within and around you. Ambient humidity and air temperature, together with the level of physical activity, determine how much water moves through your skin into the surrounding air. In the same way external and internal conditions regulate the water you imbibe and the water you eliminate. The same is true for all other creatures. This lifelong balance is part of the global circus. This lifelong balance, a performance, stage managed by the planet and its inhabitants together. Thus you might see the whole enterprise of life as just a vehicle for the transformation of water. If a hen is the egg's way of being born, then human beings are the way water molecules get to talk to one another. Many thanks for those delicate harmonies, my friends, and for the wonderful reminder of that gracious river, the Shenandoah. For many ancient cultures balance was a highly regarded and sought after condition. The fifth century BC Greek physician Hippocrates, drawing on even older Egyptian and Mesopotamian sources, described optimal health as a function of keeping the body's humors in the right proportions. Unpleasant moods, adverse behaviors, physical maladies, Hippocrates insisted, all of these owed their origin to either an excess or a deficit of one or more of the four basic bodily fluids, blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. And the practice of medicine in those days had largely to do with restoring the physiological balance of these four fluids. Now in later centuries the humors began to be associated with certain personality traits. Individuals were categorized according to the element that they most clearly and consistently exhibited. And thus some people were observed to be sanguine, others choleric, still others melancholic, and others phlegmatic. But again the status to be achieved was balance, a temperamental balance. And indeed our English word temperament derives from the Latin word temporare, a verb which means to mix together. Healthy and high functioning human beings are able to maintain an optimal mixture, a balance of these various humors. Now medicine and psychology abandoned this theory centuries ago, but in some respects the principle of balance is still relevant. As David Suzuki observed in the reading that Eric shared a bit earlier, with respect to water our physical bodies are finally tuned to maintain this delicate balance. And in addition emotional balance is a quality that many of us hope to acquire, that ability to stay centered during confrontations, to keep our anxiety in check during stressful situations. Balanced people we say have the ability to exhibit anger and composure appropriately, to be both serious and playful by turns. But there are cultures that even today place a much greater premium on balance than our own does. So in China for instance, practitioners of traditional medicine are trained to work with these two energetic principles known as Yin and Yang. And creating a good and harmonious and balanced relationship between these two is the key to optimal health. And balance also informs the work of Chinese cooks and artists and landscapers and many others. And this is largely due to the philosophical influence in China of that school known as Taoism. And Taoism describes the world in terms of polarities. Yin and Yang, light and dark, black and white, masculine and feminine, hot and cold, rising and falling, high and low, firm and yielding. Now as Westerners we might look at those pairs of opposites and presume that they're always kind of bumping into each other, that they are in conflict, clashing forces each seeking to overthrow and dominate the other. But Taoists are of a whole different opinion and they understand polarity very differently from us. Polarities are a part of a seamless whole. And the key to understanding the relationship between Yin and Yang, Alan Watts writes, the key to that is called in Chinese, Xiangshang, inseparability, mutual arising. And he goes on to say that they are thus like the different but inseparable sides of a coin or like the poles of a magnet. There is never the ultimate possibility that either one of them will win over the other. And so they are more like lovers wrestling than enemies fighting. And so the art of life is not seen as holding on to Yin and banishing Yang, but in keeping these two in balance because there simply cannot be one without the other. Now at a practical level, this quest for energetic balance dictates many Chinese dietary customs where foods are classified as either hot or cool depending on their energetic makeup or chi. And so eating foods in the proper proportions is thought to be crucial to maintaining or restoring good health and particular maladies. These are addressed by treating and regulating the elements of one's diet, whether a little more cool or a little more hot. The word for physician in Chinese, Alan Menya writes, is Yi Xiang, healer of life. And so the traditional healer strives to treat not just individual symptoms but the whole person utilizing various foods and naturally sourced medicines to correct perceived imbalances and ideally to promote good health. Formal Chinese artists adopt a similar approach. Whether in a garden or in a painting, the emphasis is routinely placed on balance. And so you have a mountain or you have a temple and it will be juxtaposed with a low place like a pond or a rice paddy. And some of the same principles have been incorporated into Feng Shui, whose practitioners seek to orient buildings and the contents of those buildings so that Yin and Yang are brought into proper alignment. But for those of us who are steeped in Western values and in the hard sciences, these quasi-metaphysical propositions may strike us as mere superstition, holdovers from a more credulous age that have long since been discredited. But while this may indeed be true for some of the particulars, these teachings did point to a greater overarching truth that we in the West would be wise to acknowledge because the fact is we really have not come to grips with balance and with its necessary role in the scheme of things. And one can easily point to numerous examples of human choices that have disrupted nature's balance, creating serious problems not only for us as human beings, but for sentient beings of all descriptions. So take water. Water. Like our own bodies, Earth's land masses are only able to maintain their magnificent dynamic biodiversity when an exquisite balance between withdrawal and replenishment of its freshwater supply is maintained. But as the human population has burgeoned, as we all know, wetlands across the globe have been drained, lakes have been emptied, watersheds contaminated, aquifers depleted. And this is a reality that we have long ignored and that future generations are going to be left to cope with. And as competition for this rapidly dwindling resource heats up, water wars, say the experts, say the folks in the Pentagon, water wars will be increasingly likely. And so if we're going to navigate this problem, at least some of our indulgences that we have grown used to are going to have to be forsaken. For example, turf grass lawns. Lawns, Carolyn Corman informs us, lawns are the single largest irrigated crop in America. If measurements taken by NASA satellites are to be believed. So why? Why do homeowners insist on growing grass that they seldom set foot on except to mow? Well, apparently this approach to landscaping was introduced to the United States in the middle 1800s when an American horticulturalist by the name of Andrew Jackson Downing wrote a glowing tribute to the lawns and the gardens of guess who? The English aristocracy. If a man surrounds his home with a soft refined lawn, Downing enthused, it not only contributes to the happiness of his own family, it improves the taste and adds liveliness to the country at large. It took a while for this to catch on. But after World War II, Downing's ideal gained widespread acceptance and wetlands and coastal chaparral and forests were cleared after World War II as these huge housing tracks filled with quarter acre lots, each of them featuring a quarter acre of turf grass dominated the landscape. And of course those turf grass lawns, particularly in arid areas, had to be kept emerald green all year long, even in California, which today is in the midst of a hydrologic crisis. Now, lawns may not strike us in our neck of the woods as being that big a deal. Hey, we've got plenty of water, right? Well, not so much. Maintaining an adequate supply of clean, pure water is an issue for us. My wife and I a few weeks ago were driving north on Wisconsin Highway 13, and we noticed that there were numerous signs posted along the roadway protesting the sighting of large kayfos, confined animal feeding operations. The concern with these kayfos, apart from the smell, was water, both the drawing down and the contamination of critical local supplies by these kayfos. But this problem that citizens of the central counties in Wisconsin are now facing, the problem at root is not with the kayfos, it's with our own personal choices, isn't it? Most notably with the wholesale consumption of dairy and meat products. According to John Robbins, fully half of the fresh water consumed in the U.S., half is directly or indirectly related to the raising of livestock, with animal waste runoff from large industrial operations like these degrading even more of our water. Personal choice. So let's talk a little more about choices. The health of our planet aside, to what degree and how consistently do any of us recognize the importance of balance in our own lives? Because whatever the limitations of those ancient teachings about the humors, wasn't it prudent for them to promote a balanced lifestyle? There was a survey commissioned by Men's Health, the magazine Men's Health, about 20 years ago. And 65% of respondents to that survey indicated that they felt admiration for individuals who had managed to strike a balance between work and leisure. 65%. That's pretty good. But admiration is one thing. Application is something else again. Numerous studies do confirm that workers in the United States spend more hours per week and more weeks per year on the job than their counterparts in just about any other country you would care to name. And if you add to that big block of time the additional hours that the average American spends shopping in the marketplace, which is four times that of the average European, then there isn't a whole lot of time left for rest and real leisure. As the Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock once observed, Americans are queer people. They don't know how to rest. Now to be sure, economic necessity sometimes will dictate a long work week. But for many, there is also this underlying assumption, sometimes conscious, usually unconscious, that professional advancement, professional achievement and a healthy balance of life on and off the job, they're incommensurate. They don't go together. That prioritizing one's spouse and children, that having important outside interests is an impediment, rightfully or wrongly, to career advancement. But then even if we wanted to pursue a more balanced lifestyle, the culture at large seems to have made its attainment difficult for a number of reasons. A failure to guarantee a living wage, which forces many single parents to hold multiple jobs, nor are paid sick days, paid parental leave, paid vacations, benefits that all workers can count on. And then there are those technological advances that have made possible a 24-hour workday and constant connectivity. And all of this moves us farther and farther off the mark. As Wayne Mueller observes in his book entitled Sabbath, yes, we are a strong and capable people. Yes, we can work without stopping faster and faster, but remember no living thing lives this way. There are greater rhythms that govern how life grows, circadian rhythms, seasons and hormonal cycles, sunsets and moonrises, the great movements of the seas and the stars. And we are all part of that, part of that creation story, still subject to its laws and its rhythms. And so, yes, he says, we do work too much and for the wrong rewards. And so we need to seek a more fertile, healing balance of payments. And what might that healthier balance of payments look like? Well, obviously there is no one size fits all answer to that question. One stage in life, one's chosen career path, one's family circumstances, societal commitments, avocational interests. All of these will help determine one's daily schedule and the equation is likely to shift during our life path. But to find a healthier balance, we can at least begin every one of us by consulting with that which is closest to us, our own physical bodies. Dr. Robert Elliott was chief of cardiology at the University of Nebraska's medical school. He was a man who had gained a nationally recognized reputation in his chosen field, cardiology. And yet he was felled by a heart attack at the age of 44. He had functioned on overdrive as a practitioner, a teacher, a sought after lecturer, a promoter of his university's cardiac department, and he took very little time, if any, for rest and relaxation. His wife had bought him an exercise bike for Christmas, thinking that that would give him the incentive to do something else. Not so much. He was saddled with these high standards, these lofty professional goals. He said, I felt like I had to run faster and faster just to stay on track. But then later on, after that heart attack, a chasen Dr. Elliott wrote a book entitled, Is It Worth Dying For? And in it, he described his former life not as a happy one, not as a meaningful one, but as a joyless treadmill. Now, if we attend more closely to what our bodies and our emotional state are telling us, they do provide us with meaningful feedback, but then that's not enough, because having received that feedback, we need to ask ourselves the question that Gail Strauby does. Now, where is my compassion leading me at this moment in time, inward or outward, toward greater self-care or toward more service to the outside world? There was a Japanese farmer monk by the name of Takashi, and he gave very similar advice to a woman named Gretel Ehrlich. Gretel Ehrlich is a California rancher and a screenwriter, actually, and she was just out walking on her ranch near Santa Barbara, California, and out of the blue, hit by lightning. The shock was so severe, didn't kill her, but recovery took several years, and the high-achieving Ehrlich often felt during this time impatient, frustrated with her incapacity to go back to her old routines. Takashi visited her at her home, and after some conversation, he said to her, you know, you are really, really out of balance. You have always been such a strong person. Now is the time for you to learn how to be weak. This is what is necessary for you. In some respects, achieving a healthy personal balance is getting harder in our culture rather than easier. Much has been written in recent years about all of those portable electronic devices and how they compromise our ability to relate to each other and to the natural environment surrounding us, cell phones, tablets, laptops. They allow us instant access to so many people, so many places at the drop of a hat, but only access to them at the most superficial level. And so, as a result, the sociologist James McWilliams recently wrote, as a result, heavy users of this technology are a wreck. They are among the most anxious adults in human history, twitching for little more than the chance to indulge in the next new thing. So for McWilliams, a balanced life and a more firmly anchored identity are only made possible when we make a concerted effort to routinely disconnect from the digital world and then substitute the following four practices. First, spend at least some part of your day alone because being alone, even though it's very uncomfortable for Americans, allows us to reflect more deeply on what we love and what we fear. Second, engage in more meaningful conversations because that process will help us to discover what we have been hiding from ourselves. Third, forge mutually supportive relationships to provide at least some opportunity for reciprocal self-disclosure. And fourth, seek and find outlets for communal activity because this is where we learn not only to teach but to be taught, not only to lead but to be led. And here we can be exposed to the deeper wisdom of tradition and outside expertise. So where is compassion leading you at this point in your life? Inward or outward? And what is it that you need to achieve a healthier balance if that's what you need? What options might be available for you to get there? Because we always have options if we are open and receptive enough to look for them. And that, of course, is one of the reasons that an institution like this one, First Unitarian Society, actually exists, to provide the encouragement and the good company that you will need to discover those options. And then, the necessary courage to pursue them. Blessed be and amen. It is our custom at Water Communion to share our offering with an organization or a project that helps to preserve or to restore our clean water resources. You can read more about it in your program and there's a display outside that we invite you to visit following the postlude. To this time and place we bring our whole and at times our broken cells. We carry with us the joys and sorrows of the past week and seek a place where they might be received, celebrated and shared. This week, James Morgan reminds us to send peace to Lisa West and her family on the passing of their mother, Dorothy, whose smile shall forever be with us. We're reminded that today is the 15th anniversary of 9-11 and we remember all those whose lives were affected. Gail Bliss brings the concern related to that that this weekend Muslims celebrate I'd the end of Ramadan and the worry that fearful Westerners may see celebrations as related to 9-11 instead of Abraham's willingness to submit to God's will and sacrifice Isaac and God's last minute reprieve. We want to remember Hannah Pinkerton and send her healing thoughts for a broken wrist and Eleanor would like us to know that she is six years old. In addition to those mentioned we also acknowledge all those unarticulated joys and sorrows that remain among us and that as a community we hold with equal concern in our hearts. Let us now sit silently together for a few moments in the spirit of empathy and hope. By virtue of our time together may our burdens be lightened and our joys expanded. Following the postlude you are invited to come forward to retrieve a portion of the waters we've gathered together today. We've provided a number of empty containers for those who didn't have water to contribute but if you choose you can still share in this communion. Due to the many sources from which this water has come some probably less than pure we recommend that you boil it before using it to nourish a favorite house plant a tree or garden patch. Perform this ritual mindfully remembering the symbolism and significance of this simple yet invaluable life-sustaining substance and with that we'll share the words of Langston Hughes. I've known rivers. I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut on the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised pyramids above it. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I invite you to stand in body or in spirit to join in our closing hymn number 1064 Blue Boat Home. Let's find a way today that can take us to tomorrow. Follow the way. A way like flowing water. Let's leave behind the things that do not matter and turn our lives to a more important chapter. Let's take the time try to find what real life has to offer and maybe then we'll find again what we had long forgotten. Like a friend true to the end. It will help us onward. The sun is high. The road is wide and it starts where we are standing. No one knows how far it goes for the road is never ending. It goes away beyond what we have thought of. It flows away. Away like flowing water. I'd like to share in further conversation about today's topic. We'll join in the choir if you would prefer to take some water with you. Please come forward.