 Please join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning. And now we get to be musically present with each other by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn, which you'll find inside your order of service. Welcome to this precious day 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 and as we deal with our turkey hangovers. I'm Steve Goldberg, a shy but proud member of this congregation, and it's a special pleasure to extend a warm welcome to any guests, visitors, and newcomers. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I think you'll find that this is indeed a special place, and if you're interested in our special buildings, after most services we offer a guided tour. So if you're interested, gather over by the windows after the service, and we will take care of you. Speaking of taking care of each other, this would be a perfect time to silence those pesky electronic devices which I guarantee you will not be needed for the next hour or so. So please take a moment to handle that task. And if you're accompanied today by a youngster, and you think that youngster might prefer to experience the service from a more private space, we offer a couple options. One is our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium, and then some comfortable authentic Frank Lloyd Wright benches just outside the doorway in the commons. As is the case every weekend, our services are brought to us by a dedicated team of volunteers whose names you are going to hear very clearly right now. These people deserve our thanks and appreciation, so give them a high five, a hug or a handshake. Better yet, offer them your Thanksgiving leftovers. Mark Schultz is handling the sound system so you can hear things clearly today. Elizabeth Barrett was the smiling face that greeted us upstairs as we arrived, and speaking of smiley faces, and smiley is our lay minister. Ron Cook, Vivian Littlefield, Helen Dyer and Dorrit Bergen are providing the ushering today, and the coffee and hospitality are hosted by Gene Hills and Chip Cuade. No announcements other than to say I still don't know how many days until the next cabaret, but I'll be sure to let you know as soon as I find out. Meanwhile, please lean forward or sit back to enjoy today's service. I know it will touch your heart, stir your spirit, and trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here. This of daily human upkeep is what connects to each other, to our bodies. We're intended to live it of the room to wait, agonizingly, for the presence of God or something like it. Those who receive the grace of daily obligation know that the sublime is transactional. You must live this life to love it. Let the scholars observe the living. There is a prophetic knowledge available only to the miners, the farmers, and, dare I say it, the carpenters. God speaks most dramatically from the mountain or after the flood, but God speaks most usefully and most often during the ordinary, routine, mundane, unspectacular work of being faithful to love. And being faithful to love and tradition, I invite you all to rise in body and or spirit as we light this morning's chalice. The words are available in your order of service, so if you'll join me. The chalice is the fullness of life's experiences. As we light the chalice flame, let us explore the empire of the senses. Let us live into the work of the world. Let us be awed by the power of just our own hands. Let us celebrate experience and experiments. And if you want to experiment with getting to know new people, I encourage you to exchange friendly greetings this morning. Yes, stake, yes. We've got some other people joining. We have to be a child to come up for the story of all ages. Today we are going to read a story called The Table Where Rich People Sit. Sweetie, do you want to sit on the carpet so that you can see the pictures up there? If you could see us sitting here at our old scratched up homemade kitchen table, you would know that we are not rich. But my father keeps trying to tell me that we are. Doesn't he notice my worn out shoes or that my little brother has patches on the pants he wears to first grade? And what does he think that old rattle truck is doing parked by our door? He can't fool me, I say. We're poor. Would rich people sit at a table like this? My mother sort of packs the table and she says, we're rich and we sit here. Sometimes I think I'm the only one in my whole family who is sensible. Maybe I should mention that my family made this table out of lumber that someone else threw away. They even had a celebration when they finished it. Understand, I like this table just fine. All I'm saying is you can tell it didn't come from a furniture store. It just doesn't look like a table where rich people would sit. I tell my parents they should both get better jobs so we can buy a lot of nice new things. I tell them I look worse than anyone in school. I hate to bring this up, I say. But it would help if you both had just a little bit more ambition and tell they never think about all of the things that we need. Right here I might as well admit that my parents have some really strange ideas about working. They think the only jobs worth having are jobs where you can be outdoors. They want cliffs or canyons or deserts or mountains all around them wherever they work. They insist on having a good view of the sky. As far as I can see, it's just an excuse to go camping somewhere beautiful and wild. But they say they don't mind planting in the fields. They like planting corn and alfalfa. They like to pick chilies and squash and tomatoes. They'll put up strong fences or train young horses. But they say they can't stand being cooped up indoors. So now of course my dad is asking how many people are as lucky as we are. But I have called this meeting and I say I bet you could make more money working at one of those buildings downtown. Remember our number one rule my dad says, we have to see the sky. You could look at it through a window. I say but they won't even think about it. Do you see what I mean about me being the only sensible one in my family? And finally my mother says all right mountain girl, we're going to explain how we figure our money. You be the bookkeeper tonight. And by the way, my name's not really mountain girl. They call me that because I was born in a cabin on the side of the mountain. They say it's the most magical place, the most beautiful mountain that they ever climbed. And maybe it is but you know how those two exaggerate. Anyway, they wanted my first sight to be the mountain side. So they held me up outdoors at sunrise when I was just eight minutes old. The truth is I still really do like the sunrise. That's really young, isn't it? But can you believe that my father is sitting here looking me straight in the eye and saying but mountain girl I thought you knew how rich we were and I say look we're not going to get very far in this discussion if you can't even admit that we're poor. I'll prove it to you right now. He says let's make a list of all of the money that we earn in a year. All right I say how much is it? I will write it down but he says not so fast. We have a lot of things to think about before we add them up. What kind of things I say? My mother says we don't just take our pay in cash, you know, we have a special plan where we get paid in sunsets too. And in having time to hike around the canyons and look for eagle's nests but I say can't you give me one single number that I can write down on this paper? So we start with $30,000. That's how much my father says it's worth to him to work outdoors where he can see the sky all day. He says it's worth that much to be where if he feels like singing he can just sing out loud and no one will mind. My father thinks of something else then. He says when the cactus is bloom, oh you should be there when the cactus is bloom because it might be a color that you won't ever see again any other day of your life. How much would you say it's worth to see that color? 50 cents my brother says. But they decide on another $10,000. So now I write down $40,000. But I've forgotten how much my father really likes bird sounds. He can copy any bird but he's best at white winged doves. So of course he has to add another $10,000 for there being both daybirds and nightbirds all around us. So I cross out what I had written and I write $50,000. Now my mother says let's see what our mountain girl is worth to us. I'm beginning to catch on to their thinking so I suggest $10,000 even though my little brother doesn't agree. Don't underestimate yourself my father says. Here are all those good lists you make for us. And he's right I do. I made a list of the best books each one of us has read and a list of all the ones we want to read again and I also made a list of all of the animals each of us has seen and the ones that we still most want to see outside and not in a zoo. So they end up deciding that I'm worth about a million dollars. I don't think that I am but I write it down anyway. In fact it turns out that every one of us is worth a million dollars. I say well we have $4,050,000 then I realize that I want to add $5,000 for myself for the pleasure I have in wandering in the open country alone. And they say that that's certainly worth $5,000 so that makes it $4,055,000. And finally my brother says that he wants seven more dollars for all the nights we get to be under the stars. And we all say that $7 doesn't sound like enough so we talk him into making it $5,000. And now my paper says $4,060,000 and we haven't even started counting cash but to tell the truth the cash part doesn't seem to sort of matter anymore and I suggest it shouldn't even be on our list of riches, not our kind of riches. So the meeting is over. The rest of them go outside to see the new sliver of moon but I'm still sitting here at our nice homemade kitchen table and I'm writing this book about us. I kind of pat the table. I'm really glad that it's ours. In fact I think I will title my book The Table Where Rich People Sit. And this is normally the time when we tell you that you can go out to your classes but we don't have classes today and we're going to keep you here with us and one of the reasons is that our next hymn is actually going to be a raffy song and you guys probably know it way better than the adults do. So why don't you go back to your parents and you can help us sing this song and for those of you who aren't as familiar with raffy the lyrics are in your order of service. I bend to shake loose a piece of laundry, I smell the grass and I smell the sun and above all this is something concrete that I have accomplished. A rarity in my brainy life of largely abstract accomplishments. Most of the laundry belongs to my husband Ed who can go through more clothes in a week than most toddlers. Hanging his laundry on the line becomes a labor of love. I hang each t-shirt like a prayer flag, shaking it first to get the wrinkles out then pinning it to the line with two wooden clothespins. Even the clothespins give me pleasure. I add a prayer for the trees from which the clothespins came along with a prayer for the Penley Corporation of West Paris, Maine which is still willing to make them from wood instead of colored plastic. And since I am a compulsive person, I go to some trouble to impose order on the lines of laundry, handkerchiefs first, then jockey shorts, then t-shirts, then jeans. If I sang these clothes, the musical notes they made would lead me in a staccato downward scale. The socks go all in a row and end like exclamation points all day long. I watch the breeze toss these clothes in the wind and I imagine my prayers being spun away over the tops of trees. This is good work, this prayer. This is good prayer, this work. So I was digging in the garden, cleaning the chicken pens, watching the potatoes, doing the dishes. I know there are people who would give anything to do these things. People whose bodies have become too numb or too busy or too old or too painful for them. These are the practices that sustain life. Not only my life and the lives intertwined with mine but the lives of all living beings. When I haul water, I am in an instant communion with all the other haulers of water around the world. We may have little else in common but we all know the deep pleasure of being water haulers. To deliver water for drinking, for cooking, for washing, for bathing. This is what muscles are for. To watch a thirsty creature dip its head in the bucket and drink. I am happy to sweat for this. A long time ago, when I was a young man, I had a teacher, a piano teacher by the name of Flavio Varani. Flavio Varani came from Brazil, the largest country in South America. And when he was a young man, he went to France and studied with a man, a writer of music, a composer named Francis Poulenc. And Francis Poulenc taught him some pieces, one set of which is called Sweet Française. And Flavio would play this music for me and my fellow students. And we really enjoyed hearing him play this music. So now it's fun for me, now that I'm older, to play this music myself. And the first two pieces are called bronzels. The first was a bronzel. This next one I'm going to play is another bronzel. And what a bronzel is, is the oldest dance that we've ever heard of. We know about this dance from old paintings. And we look at the paintings, they show people holding hands and every once in a while twirling around in a circle. They were circle dances. This next bronzel I'm going to play is not quite so fast as the first bronzel. So if you'd like to get up and dance around in a circle, please be my guest. If you'd rather stay in your chairs and dance, that's fine too. But in addition to getting bonus points for dancing, you all get super extra bonus points for coming to church on a holiday weekend. True, the holidays are a really full time. The holidays can be bright and joyful, filled with bells and lights and snow and family and food and shopping, and the holidays can also be really stressful, filled with bells and lights and snow and family and food and shopping. And for some of us, for some of us, the holidays are a really sorrowful time because so much silence reminds us of the lack of bells and lights and snow and family and food and shopping. And yet you have come to devote an hour of your day to sitting here and being in this room. And maybe that means that you know a secret. Maybe that means that you know in times when we can experience joy and stress and sometimes sadness all at once, that's the time when you really need to come to church. That's the time when you really need the things that feed your soul. When I was younger, I tried to cheat. I tried to do something every day that would feed my soul on a regular basis so that I wouldn't have to go to church so much on the weekends. And so I got a job at a non-profit that's mission I really believed in. But I got a job as a development person, so I spent most of my days working with money and spreadsheets and donors and not really programs and people, so it didn't end up feeding my soul in the way that I wanted. So I made a promise to myself that I would go to church every week. I was going to go to church every single week. And I did for a while, and it did feed my soul, and I was really, really grateful. So I thought I would give back to the church. So I joined the board of trustees and the worship committee and the membership committee. And then when the new minister was coming, I joined the search team, and pretty soon, church felt like work. I got that hour on Sunday morning where my soul was fed, and almost instantly I was dragged into a meeting without so much as getting a cup of coffee and saying hello to my community. So I said, all right, but I really like doing these things, so I'm going to find something else that's going to feed my soul. So I found this after-school program. I lived in a pretty impoverished city, and I found an after-school program where you could teach theater and music to kids that went to schools that couldn't afford to have theater and music programs. And I made this happen by getting up super early in the morning so that I could leave work by mid to late afternoon so I could go to this after-school program where there was theater and music and kids, all things that feed my soul. But when I got there, I realized that these kids, they were brilliant and they were beautiful, but a lot of them had pretty tragic stories, and it took a lot out of me to go every day. It took a lot out of me, and it fed my soul, but it didn't fill me up quite in the same way. So there I was. I was spending all of my mornings and afternoons with work and volunteering at this after-school program, and then my evenings and weekends were mostly taken up by church, but then I had Sunday night. I had Sunday night to myself, and I said, okay, all right, I am going to find something to do where I can be absolutely useless. I am going to be the epitome of non-functioning on Sunday nights. No laundry, no socialization, nothing. So I rode my bike from church every Sunday night after the meetings were over to the Detroit Zen Center. I got there, and there were these wooden pegs, and I would take off my winter coat and all of my anxiety and just hang it on a peg outside of this room, this room that was laden with cushions, and then someone wearing impossibly comfortable-looking clothing would ring a chime, and all I would have to do was sit there for 45 glorious minutes. It was my job to do nothing but sit in this place, and all I could hear was the trickling water at the bottom of a Buddha statue, and Buddha would sit there with me, looking all serene and jolly. It was a 45 minutes that fed my soul. I needed it. So every week I would do it. It became part of my practice. I would run in that place, a whirlwind of anxiety and all of the problems of the world and the things I had been doing that week, but I would stop and be ready to sit. And one day, one of the monks, Myeongju, she was whatever level of monk you attain when you've got so much inner peace, it's literally seeping out of your skin. She comes up to me and she says, Julie, in the world's most soothing voice, Julie, I wonder about your practice when you're not here. And I said, you have to practice sitting and being quiet. And she said, you have to practice sitting while you're not sitting. Here's the thing that I skipped over about these Sunday afternoons before the person in the impossibly comfortable-looking clothing would ring this chime. They would talk about Buddhist teachings for about 15 minutes, generally the teachings of mindfulness and detachment. And probably the reason that I skipped it is I have to confess I'm a really terrible Buddhist. The idea of mindfulness is that we take in where we are now. We are present with ourselves and what is happening. We can look at the beautiful window and see the sun streaming in and notice that we are in a room full of beautiful community. And detachment is the idea that we don't get too wrapped up in all of that, that we can be in the midst of beautiful community. And that whatever is going on with that community can be going on and we are not going to interact too much with how those experiences and emotions affect us. And see, that's where you lose me. Myung-joo thought that I should interact with every room, that I should notice every room, like I noticed the room that we sat in at the Detroit Center. And some rooms would be serene and jolly, and some rooms would be fraught and stark, but it doesn't matter because you don't have to interact with it. You don't have to let it affect you. But the thing is, I'm a person who can experience joy and stress and sometimes sadness all at the same time. And I want to be attached. I want to really believe in the mission of the nonprofit that I work for. And I want to really care about the outcome of the story of those kids. And I want to be overwrought with how much I love my church. And I want to be attached to those 45 minutes where I get to sit and decompress from caring so much all of the time. Being able to experience joy and stress and sometimes sadness, that's deeply part of being human. It's part of the covenant that we have with existence in order to be alive. Myung-ju taught me that it almost seemed like she was trying to teach me that I should avoid the experience of being human. The thing is, I have a whole bunch of beliefs, but the only thing I know for sure, the only thing I know for sure philosophically or theologically is that I'm here now and I get this life on this earth, in this body, and I want all of it. I want to experience every experience fully, no matter how bitter or sweet or combination of that. I want every single human connection, no matter how broken or wholesome or however long it lasts, and I want every chore and task because the grace of daily obligation reminds me how to be in the world. I want to fill up my days so that when my bones get old and tired, they feel like they've earned it. And I wonder if we can do a little bit of an experiment right now, especially if there are any kids in the room. I want to hear from you. I'd like you folks to raise your hand if you enjoy raking leaves. Does anyone enjoy raking leaves? You enjoy raking leaves. Would you mind telling us why you enjoy raking leaves? Do you want to use a microphone or are you just shy? Why do you like raking leaves? I like to rake leaves because I get to jump in them, the pile of ashes. Yeah, yeah. So okay, not everybody raised their hand for raking leaves, but who likes jumping in leaves or at least watching other people jump in leaves? Raise your hand. Yeah? And does anybody here like doing homework, adult or kid? Does anybody like doing homework? Raise your hand. Yeah? Is anybody... He likes doing homework. Do you want to tell us why? No? Okay, what about you Nancy? Do you want to tell us why you like doing homework? Because I learn things. Because you learn things. And I love learning. You love learning. Okay, well not everybody likes doing homework, but do people like learning things? Who likes learning things? Raise your hand. A whole lot more people. And is there anyone here that likes taking care of babies, either their little brothers or sisters or their grandchildren or their children? Does anybody want to talk about it? I have to. Alright, March. Why? Yeah, why do you enjoy taking care of kids? Because the baby turns into this young lady sitting next to me. Oh, that's amazing. Maybe not everybody likes taking care of babies, but who likes watching people grow up and find their fulfillment in the world? Who likes that? Poets and philosophers have talked about this thing called the grace of daily obligation. They talk about how it's a grace to be in the world and to use our hands and to be fully human. It's a grace to do the laundry and have to clean things because it reminds us who we are. I don't think the gods have laundry hampers. There's a gratitude practice a lot of people use at this time of year. Have you seen those lists? I'm grateful for raking the leaves because it means I have a house. I'm grateful for doing my homework because it means I have education. I'm grateful for taking care of kids because it means I have a family. And I've been seeing those lists and I was playing with this idea of the grace of daily obligation and something didn't feel quite right about those lists to me. I was talking about it with Michael and Kelly in our minister's meeting and Kelly said, yeah, my dad used to say that stuff. It was really annoying. And I thought it is. It is really annoying to tell people that they have to interact with the world in a way that only centers on gratitude and doesn't take in these other fully human things of chores being chores. They're not only mindful, beautiful things, but I wonder, I wonder what would happen if we all thought about a practice of mindful attachment? I wonder what would happen if we did fully notice that we were human and in the world and all of the things that go with that. Can it be possible that while we're raking the leaves, we notice that our back hurts and that it is cold outside and that we are not currently watching the latest thing released on Netflix and also that we are outside and the leaves smell wonderful and we do have a yard to rake and that's pretty cool too. Does one negate the other? The thing I can't get down with about detachment is I don't know how to be detached from something I'm also deeply grateful for. I will leave you with the words of my favorite childhood philosopher. Piglet went over to Winnie the Pooh's house and said, Pooh, what is the first thing you think about when you get up in the morning? And Pooh said, breakfast. And Piglet said, oh, but Pooh, don't you think about all of the things that could happen to you that day, all of the things that you might do and experience? And Pooh said, oh yes, it's the same thing. And to that I say amen. Part of being in a body means that we need fuel to feed it and some of us are lucky enough to have that fuel and some of us are not. For those who are not, we are collecting today for the St. Vincent food pantry. Please give generously as you are able. Once said that music must either sing or dance. The first two pieces I played danced. These next two sing. The first one, Sicilian, is named after the island of Sicily. The Italian island of Sicily and the rhythms that come from Sicily named Sicilian by the French. And it's kind of a sad song. The last piece I'll be playing really sings out is called Carillon. Carillon is the world's biggest instrument. It lives in a big tower. We have one here in Madison. And the tower is filled with bells, big bells, medium sized bells and little bells. And these bells are run by clappers that are attached to wires that come down in the top of the tower and are attached to something that looks kind of like an organ, short little wooden keys and pedals. And they're played by a person with their fists and their feet, a marvelous instrument. And near the end of this song, Poulenc makes what I think are bell sounds on the piano. Let's see if you hear them. Patience, who strain in the mud and muck to move things forward, who do what has to be done time and time again. I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who are not parlor generals and field deserters, but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire needs to be put out. The work of this world is as common as mud, botched. It smears the hands and crumbles to dust, but a thing worth doing done well has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident. Hope evases that held corner put in museums, but you know they were made to be used. The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real. Go forth today with blessings and love. Be in your bodies. Do real work. Notice everything and take in it all. Be grateful to be alive. Go in peace. Return in love.