 Please join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning And now for that moment you've all been waiting for a moment of musical togetherness Please turn to the words for our opening hymn or in gathering hymn Which you'll find inside your order of service welcome 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 charming member of this congregation And it is a special pleasure to extend a happy hello to any guests Visitors and newcomers, and I know we have a few today because we are welcoming some new members If this is your first time visiting First Unitarian Society You're in for a real treat and if you're interested in learning more about our special buildings We offer guided tours after every service just gather over here by the windows after the service, and we will take care of you Speaking of taking care of each other This is the perfect time to silence those pesky electronic devices that might intrude upon your enjoyment of the service So please take a moment to do that now and that goes for those of you watching at home as well And if you're accompanied today By a youngster, and you think that youngster might prefer to enjoy the service from a more private space We offer a couple alternatives for you including our child Haven in the back corner of the auditorium and some comfortable authentic Frank Lloyd Wright benches just outside the doorway in the commons And I'm sure you know that our service is brought to us By a dedicated group of people whom we call volunteers get you get to hear their names in a moment Please thank them Shake their hand give them a hug offer to share your umbrella today Our sound system is operated by Peter Daley our lay minister is Tom Boykoff Janine Nussbaum is the one who greeted you as you walked in the doorway today and Ostrom Nancy Daley and Michael Lossi are the ushers John twos is handling the foliage up here today making sure it's colorful and vibrant and the flowers behind me were donated by Co and Paul Williams and Richard and Sally builder John Powell will be our tour guide after the service Just a couple announcements before the service begins We've got some Generous programs here at First Unitarian Society during the holiday season so that people who Might otherwise not be able to enjoy the holidays are able to do so as a result of our support and our involvement with them However for our family holiday gift-giving program We've ended up with 10 extra families and we need your help to make sure that our elves can take care of their shopping And they're wrapping in time for the social worker pickup of these gifts on Tuesday And if we have any money left over from the program, it'll go to our eviction prevention fund Helping the holiday get a little brighter for even more people who need help We're grateful for anything you can do there will be an elf in the commons after the service I don't know how you'll recognize the elf, but I imagine the elf will look different from the rest of us But you can make your donation for the holiday gift-giving program also Remember to drop off your raps Labeled gifts for the family-to-family program today before noon volunteers will be ready to help you unload at the Landmark entrance and thanks for helping us give a brighter holiday to other people The only other announcement is we still don't quite know how many days until cabaret, but it's in the spring We'll get more information to you later Meanwhile, please sit back or lean forward to enjoy this morning service. I know that you'll find it will stir your heart Stir your spirit and touch your heart and make stir your might touch your spirit, too But I know it'll also trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here. We continue with the words of the English Romantic poet John Keats a thing of beauty is a joy forever Its loveliness increases it will never pass into nothingness But we'll keep a bower quiet for us and a sleep full of sweet dreams and health and quiet breathing Therefore on every morrow we are reading a flowery band to bind us to the earth in spite of despondence of the inhuman dearth of noble natures of the gloomy days of all the unhealthy and or darkened ways made for our searching Yes, in spite of it all some shape of beauty moves away the pawl from our dark spirits Invite you to rise in body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice And if you will join me in reading the words of affirmation printed in this morning's program Each morning we hold out our chalice of being to be filled with the graces of life Which abound air to breathe food to eat companions to love beauty to behold art to cherish Causes to serve they come in ritual procession these gifts of life Whether we deserve them we cannot know or say they are poured out And ours is the task of holding steady the chalice of being and now on this fine balmy December morning, please turn and exchange a warm greeting with your neighbor a little bit later this afternoon Some of us will definitely be walking in the rain And if the children would like to come forward for the message for all ages, I think you must be hoping it starts to snow pretty soon We'll dress the part anyway not much snow yet There's always the next year right Okay, so this is this is a story that comes from the country of China and China was ruled years ago by an Emperor Okay, and so the Emperor of China a long long time ago lived in a magnificent Palace the most beautiful palace in the whole world and the gardens that surrounded his palace were famous for all their many flowers and walkways But then beyond the garden there was this thick forest which stretched all the way to the ocean and in that forest There lived a bird that was called a nightingale and the song of the nightingale was declared by anyone who Have ever heard it to be the most beautiful song ever sung and books were written and read worldwide about the Emperor and his palace and The books would always mention this nightingale who lived in the forest But the Emperor had never gone into that forest himself and he'd never read any of these books So he didn't know anything about the nightingale But then one day the Emperor received a gift from another Emperor the Emperor of Japan It was a book and the book described in glowing terms The gardens and the Emperor's palace and the Emperor read the book nodding. He said yes That's all very very true. This is exactly what my palace and my gardens are like but then at the end of the book it said but the most Beautiful and lovely treasure in all of China is the nightingale And the Emperor was puzzled he hadn't heard of the nightingale And so he called his servant to him and said why have I never heard about this famous bird? The nightingale must come to my palace this very evening and sing for me And so the servant ran all over the palace asking about the bird But nobody in the palace had ever heard of the nightingale And finally the servant went into the kitchen and there was a poor young girl They are scrubbing all the pots and pans and he asked her and she said yes I know about the nightingale. I hear him every evening when I'm walking through the woods back to my own house Come with me. I'll show you where he lives And so the servant in half of the Emperor's court noisily followed the kitchen girl as she entered the forest However when the sound of the nightingale song could be heard everybody became absolutely silent No one had ever heard or imagined that there could be such a beautiful sound And looking around the servant tried to glimpse the bird What kind of a bird must make such incredible music? It must be an amazingly beautiful bird And the kitchen maid pointed up to a branch in a tree and it was this little dull brown bird I never imagined that the nightingale would be so plain said the servant The kitchen maid walked up to the nightingale and said my friend the emperor would like to hear your song It would be my pleasure said the nightingale thinking that the emperor was there in the forest with all the rest of them But the servant explained that no the nightingale needed to come to the palace But but it's best to hear my song amidst all the trees said the nightingale But in the end he followed the servant back to the palace But even indoors in that big palace the song of the nightingale was so Exquisite so beautiful that tears began to flow down the emperor's cheeks and the sight of those tears made the bird sing even more lovingly And so the emperor ordered that a golden perch should be made for the bird to sit on And that the bird should remain near him all the time Now the bird could no longer be free to go back into the forest But the nightingale was so moved by the emperor's tears that he agreed to stay Everyone spoke about this remarkable bird but then one day The emperor received another gift and it was a mechanical nightingale That was made to look just like the real one except that it was made of silver and gold and covered with all these precious jewels And it could be wound up and made to play the same single song over and over It is simply marvelous said the emperor's servants Now the people believed that the mechanical bird was much more beautiful to behold and More dependable than the real thing because it would sing the same song over and over Without ever making a mistake without any variation whatsoever Nothing was unexpected And so the emperor and his servants listened to the mechanical bird sing 33 times a day Until the emperor announced that maybe the bird needs to rest for a while And then While the mechanical bird was resting the emperor remembered the real nightingale and said Bring the real nightingale to sing for me again But the real bird was no longer in the court being ignored. He had flown back to the forest But the best bird remains the emperor's servant declared And the emperor agreed and so the mechanical bird sat on a silk pillow and was wound up every day to sing its single song But of course it was a machine And what happens to machines when you use them too much? They break and so one day the mechanical bird broke No one was able to repair it and so it was brought out every once in a while on its silk pillow just to be admired Now a few years later the emperor of china became very very sick And the doctors agreed that he was so sick and getting so weak that he probably was not going to get well And so all day the emperor laid in his bed just waiting to die One night he was having horrible dreams And he awoke with a shout for someone to come and to play music and to comfort him The mechanical bird was brought out of storage and wound up but all it made was this mechanical whoring noise The room was still Tears of frustration began to flow down the emperor's cheeks But then the silence was broken by this beautiful song The nightingale had returned from the heart of the forest to sing for the dying ruler whose cries he had heard through the window And the bird sang song after song without any effort whatsoever and everyone in the room began to weep The emperor shoot everybody out of the room and looked lovingly at the nightingale Thank you. Thank you. He whispered With pride and with foolishness. I have ignored you and now it is you who come back to give me comfort How can I reward you? I only ask for one things at the nightingale Do not force me to live here in the palace Allow me to go home to the forest and I promise you that not a day will go by that I will not come and sit on the branch outside your window and sing for you You must only sing when you desire to do so said the emperor But the nightingale flew back from the forest every day And as he sang for the emperor he grew stronger and stronger and the doctors they were scratching their head Why was he getting better? He was supposed to die The emperor just smiled because he found the songs of this dull done colored bird to be a feast for the soul Better than anything else that he had in his ornate palace So that's the song and the story of the nightingale I wish I had something that I could play the song for you But maybe you'll you'll be lucky enough at some point in the future to be able to hear one from yourself So that's our our story for today. And now as you're going out. We're going to sing you out ourselves Selections this morning By Lincoln Perry who is an artist that works in many different media and has shown his work throughout the united states This from the american scholar An essay entitled states of change Herbert Hoover commissioned john flanagan to create a silver washington quarter dollar in 1932 during the depths of the depression Now from 1885 to 1890 flanagan had worked in a student as a studio assistant to our country's greatest sculptor augustus san gondes The creator of among many things the monument to general Sherman in new york city and the memorial to robert guldshaw on boston commons flanagan's apprenticeship served him well to judge from the quality of his quarter dollar Look at the coin as a tando that is a circular work of art And then notice how comfortable old george is in his round setting This tiny object is a jewel to be held lovingly in one's hand And now look very carefully at a more recent redesigned quarter The one i'm holding presently is from 2004 george resembles a fallen souffle His head is a series of unrelated marks fighting each other with no sense of harmony He has no volume no presence certainly no potential psychology Now i can sympathize with the artist's plight being told to cram in all those extra words on the face of the coin The new coins add quarter dollar The united states of america too in god we trust liberty and the year of issue But that doesn't excuse or explain that horrible head this truly grotesque coin Now turn each coin over Old george's accompanying eagle is grand Its full chest logically placed in the center its wings nicely echoing its curved cage My new coin happens to represent florida With a sailing ship some palm trees and a space shuttle all floating free of each other The images fill the circle indifferently with no real poetry of call and response They remind me of cheap carnival tokens Now i am not a numismatist But i like to think that i am sensitive to beautiful things and that my distress over our new coins Is more than peak peak or pickiness It's a sense that we are perhaps unknowingly Making our civilization more callous more disembodied less about contemplation than instant gratification Perhaps the little chunks of metal we carry in our pockets Soon to be replaced by newer versions or by chips embedded in our hands Could remind us of a choice between two approaches to life If only we would pay attention The second reading is a poem entitled Singapore by Mary Oliver In Singapore in the airport a darkness was ripped from my eyes In the women's restroom one compartment stood open A woman knelt there washing something in a white bowl Disgust argued in my stomach and I felt in my pocket for my ticket A poem should always have birds in it Kingfishers say with their bold eyes and gaudy wings Rivers are pleasant and of course trees A waterfall if that's not possible a fountain rising and falling A person wants to stand in a happy place in a poem When the woman turned I could not answer her face Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together and neither could win She smiled and I smiled What kind of nonsense is this everyone needs a job Yes a person wants to stand in a happy place in a poem But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor which is dull enough She's washing the tops of airport ashtrays as big as hubcaps with a blue rag Her small hands turn the metals scrubbing and rinsing And she does not work slowly nor quickly like a river And her dark hair is like the wing of a bird I don't doubt for a moment that she loves her life And I want her to rise up from the crust and the slop and fly down the river This probably won't happen But maybe it will If the world were only pain and logic who would want it Of course it isn't And neither do I mean anything miraculous but only the light that can shine out of a life I mean the way that she unfolded and refolded that blue cloth The way her smile was only for my sake I mean the way this poem is filled with trees and with birds As I was leaving the meeting house the other afternoon The sun had just slipped below the horizon and the sky was awash with color Wispy red and orange clouds stood out against the fading azure field As I paused to admire a spectacle that's rather unusual for this time of the year Although I still had responsibilities to attend to the hunger for beauty So characteristic of our speeches prevail for just those few precious moments As Howard Gardner notes the pursuit of experiences that are beautiful constitutes a crucial part of life Particularly once one's basic needs have been satisfied But beauty's power to inspire can be felt even under conditions of extreme deprivation Even as one teeters on the edge of existence Victor Frankel survived the rigors of the Nazi concentration camp And for he and his fellow prisoners just staying alive was an all-consuming task But then one evening Frankel remembers when we were already resting on the floor of our hut Dead tired soup bowls in our hands a fellow prisoner rushed in and asked us to run to the assembly grounds to see this wonderful sunset And standing outside we saw the sinister clouds glowing in the west and the whole sky was alive with color The desolate gray mud huts provided a sharp contrast while the puddles on the muddy ground reflected that glowing sky And after a few moments of moving silence one prisoner turned to another and said How beautiful the world could be Experiences such as these can in fact help any of us get through a difficult day An encounter with beauty may compensate for disappointments For hardships that otherwise would leave us despondent and spiritless And this is as true for auditory as it is for visual beauty the reclusive philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein confided to one of his few friends That at one time the slow movement of Brahms's third quartet had pulled him back from the brink of suicide Here in the west beauty has generally been highly esteemed And in the platonic tradition it together with truth and goodness has enjoyed a transcendental status life's sumum bonum Truth goodness and beauty these are the ultimate ends the pursuit of which make life meaningful Whose acquisition renders it complete And moreover these three ideals are intertwined what is true is also beautiful What is beautiful must of necessity be good Recall these memorable lines from emily dickinson I died for beauty But was scarce adjusted in the tomb when one who died for truth was lain in an adjoining room He questioned softly why I failed For beauty I replied And I for truth the two are one we brethren are he said Now the ancients were quite clear about what exactly constituted beauty Whether the object under consideration was a temple a statue a coin an amphora or the human form itself It had to possess a certain balance and symmetry and proportionality An artist like lincoln perry whom we heard from a few moments ago still uses standards similar to these Engaging the beauty of an artifact And a structure like our own meeting house fulfills these same standards in many respects And in addition certain sights and sounds seem to have near universal appeal the song of a nightingale Or the sight of a colorful sunset But then that hardly means that we have reached A consensus and we know that any given era may recognize beauty where a previous or later one does not Today the works of the great impressionist painters fetch astronomical prices But 19th century critics dismissed them as amateurish and frankly ugly During his lifetime vincent van go did not sell a single painting And of those he gave away Many were simply discarded The arts howard gardener writes proceed along unpredictable historical cultural and individual tracks We can marvel at works of art, but we will not be able to come up with an algorithm that explains their meaning or accounts for their appeal Nor our beauty truth and goodness as closely related to one another as philosophers and artists once insisted Certain expressions of beauty are notoriously deceptive Take glamour for instance We are drawn to and we admire the glamorous stars of film and stage But what attracts us often is not is a beauty that quite literally is skin deep etymologically glamour derives from a french word that originally meant Enchantment to be placed under a spell Glamour does not exist in and of itself jenny dickie writes it consists of yearning and of lies similarly A word that steve invoked when he was doing his introduction charm The word charming is often used to describe a beautiful and winsome personality, which of course steve has Those who possess this attribute have a talent for making other people feel good, which he does They are positive upbeat engaging and well spoken But charming people aren't always trustworthy or well intentioned He could charm the hind legs off a donkey is a familiar saying Charmers know that they can influence people that they can gain their confidence But charm is not a reliable indicator of either truth or goodness. Yes, in some cases it is The line between charmer and sociopath is very fine indeed Charm is charming, but just don't be charmed by it We know and love you steve These observations about glamour and charm are consistent with what the late unitarian universalist minister forester church had to say about the devil It is a mistake church argued to think of the devil as a repulsive being as medieval commentators once did The devil's trademark is not evil dressed as evil church says but evil dressed as good If we were to sketch the devil's nature and personality He is beautiful. He is proud. He is brilliant. He is clever in the ways of the world and he is a liar The habit of associating ugliness with evil and beauty with goodness Can leave us exposed vulnerable to exploitation and seduction by maleficent forces Forest church did not harbor a literal belief in satan Satan served as a legendary and literary stand-in for especially diabolical human beings adolf hitler and his Nazi henchmen for instance now We know that hitler was trained not as a politician But as an artist and he was as martin filler points out fully aware of the propagandistic power of the arts Colorful torch lit choreography grand architecture stirring music arresting poster art handsome uniforms All of these factored into the nazi's rise to absolute power They did much filler rights to support authoritarian might through the consistent artistic projection of strength order And beauty the point is as edifying and elevating as beauty might be we must remember that it isn't always trustworthy And it isn't always true And on the other hand because something strikes us as ugly Does not mean that we ought to treat it with contempt To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers The abstract artist paul clay once said indeed by linking beauty with truth and goodness We may be establishing something close to a false dichotomy which then causes us to devalue certain aspects of life a priori If the ugly is devoid of truth and goodness, why should we bother with it at all? The concept of beauty is itself based on a hierarchy that labels some things as undeniably beautiful And others is irretrievably ugly Now we know that a fair amount of recent art and music pushes back against our traditional assessments of beauty Violating previous canons of taste Much modern art deliberately presents itself as unbeautiful or as discordant To be sure traditional notions of duty still prevail But how our gardener points out that more and more physical and psychic space is now open to works and experiences That would be better characterized as interesting perhaps even awful But still memorable in their mode of presentation and inviting further exploration And so writing last august about his native land The indian novelist atish tasir commented on the illusory image that he and many others retained about their country India is a beautiful country. We tell ourselves But any honest appraisal would conclude just the opposite. Yes, there are splashes of beauty in india But today in india ugliness prevails Our environmental problems are among the grimace in the world tasir laments and abject poverty is everywhere And tasir says that as an artist he has found it very challenging to address the ugliness of a place that he loves so deeply Like mary oliver his impulse has always been to focus on the beautiful india of his imagination But he says the greatest aesthetic discovery of my life Has been to see the ugliness And then to find a way to write about it To find a lexicon for the ugly In the west as in india. We are also biased in beauty's favor But then western literature includes a number of cautionary tales that cut against the grain the princess and the frog beauty and the beast And in the arthurian legends the story of gallant sir gay sir gawain and his liaison with the repugnant dame ragnell And each instance that which is initially perceived as repellent Shelters an intrinsic beauty that will remain hidden Until its carrier is seen and accepted in his or her wholeness As treb Johnson puts it Daring to touch the unbeautiful We realize that not only are we not dragged down into something loathsome But that just the reverse occurs we feel empowered joy is connected with the other To give beauty to another person to a group of people even to damaged places on earth is to move past The fear and the revulsion that keeps us at a distance from life as it is And so johnson goes on to describe certain activities that were undertaken In conjunction with the 2010 global earth exchange Teams of people throughout the planet visited areas that had been made ugly Made ugly by clear cutting mining pollution and other indiscriminate forms of industrial activity And after going to these areas and surveying them Taking in and assimilating all of their ugliness the team members would then engage in small acts of beauty One such team in great britain visited a dump in a forlorn industrial park There was no evidence at all of plant or animal life. It just felt dead After an hour or so of contemplation in that bleak environment The men and women began gathering pieces of trash And out of them they created a sculpture And they sat there The late afternoon shadows lengthened No one wanted to leave After spending time there in such an intimate way lucy hinton later wrote I felt as if we had given something of ourselves to that place and it to us And by the time we did leave we felt like pioneers who had begun the process of breaking through some invisible barrier That until now had held this wounded place in some kind of soulless imprisonment We dreamed of returning Helping to break up the hard baked topsoil so that seeds could emerge from the surface crust And birds and color might eventually return once more It is true that philosophy and religion have historically advanced an aesthetic of the beautiful For instance christian iconography has invariably presented christ as Handsome strikingly handsome and mother mary as comely But what we need to remember is that jesus himself was drawn to lepers and persons with disabilities and those who were considered Unclean and untouchable by polite society jesus recognized an interview that eluded the myopic religious establishment Likewise buddhist statuary is meant to draw in the subject with its sublime sublime beauty buddhism free of shawan writes acknowledges the existential power of beauty It uses harmony and symmetry as a skillful means to strengthen the individual's aspiration And to enhance his or her spiritual practice, but buddhism doesn't stop there Because it warns us over and over again about holding these fixed views these habits of thinking and of judgment In order to acquire a clear accurate view of reality We have to be alert to the biases that we hold that color our outlook We must be as gina sharp says Aware that the basis for a beautiful life is a beautiful mind and that beauty comes from a mind that is capable of seeing things Just as they are moment by moment being able to repose in that The state of mind that i call beautiful is not possible if i am busy excluding things Joyce cornblatt Is an australian buddhist teacher and she speaks in a similar vein of wilderness mind A mind that recognizes change as the only constant And so oriented wilderness mind is able to appreciate the ephemeral beauty in things that are aging or decaying And it's by turning toward rather than away from impermanence That we foster a closer and more honest relationship with the world and with one another cornblatt writes This isn't always easy she admits Because we are culturally conditioned to turn away from to reject the old the damage the misshapen She herself suffers lapses as when her daughter's raggedy and doll A doll given to her in infancy became threadbare its facial features practically worn away Isn't the time we got you a new raggedy and she suggested to her daughter one day The daughter was aghast scolded her mother If i had an accident and my face was ruined would you get a new child? I love raggedy and justice she is My child's wisdom humbled me cornblatt wrote What aversions could withstand such clear-eyed devotion to the truth of how things really are So yes beauty does lie in the eye of the beholder we say But as that little girl knew at a more profound level and in the most significant sense Its true home is in the soul of the beholder Blessed be We gather each week as a community of memory and of hope And to this time and place we bring our whole and sometimes our broken cells We carry with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past And we seek here a place where they might be received and celebrated and shared And so now we would pause to acknowledge A message from dory lightfoot Her father-in-law died in columbia last friday december the fourth And her husband had traveled there for the funeral. So we share in the sorrow of that family's loss And lorna erinson writes that url banks her brother of mckinney texas Recently died due to complications of a massive stroke that he had suffered earlier this year And our very warmest wishes to lorna and we would also note that Lloyd egan's father just died this this past week in in milwaukee after a somewhat lengthy illness And a long period of decline and we wish the best to pat and loyde And finally patricia leonardy a longtime member of this congregation died earlier in november and her memorial service for those who knew patricia and want to attend will be held in a landmark auditorium Next saturday december 19th at 1 p.m In addition to those mentioned We would acknowledge all of those unarticulated joys and sorrows that remain among us And that as a community we hold with equal concern in our hearts Let us sit silently for just a moment or two in the spirit of empathy and of hope And so by virtue of our time spent together today May our burdens be lightened and our joys expanded And now please join in the giving and receiving of our offering And as you can see your gifts today will be shared with briar patch youth services Which does very important work for young people in our community. Please be generous As part of our services this weekend We recognize those individuals who have formally and officially joined first unitarian society since last may Overall 26 individuals have taken that step And at least a few of them are in attendance at the nine o'clock hour Member of this congregation is on one hand Fairly straightforward one generally attends a series of orientation classes Signifies their intention professes agreement with our uu principles and f us's bond of union And then enters their name in our membership registry in terms of actual actual preliminaries and mechanics That's all there is to it. No immersion. No anointing with oil. No doctrinal tests to pass But then we would need to ask why would someone want to do such a thing We joined in the first place because we believe that the promotion of liberal religious values Will make a difference in the world That a strong unitarian universalist movement will help to make our community and our planet a more peaceful and enlightened place We make this commitment because we do believe in the transformative power of this tradition We joined because we want to be part of an enterprise that can elevate humankind ethically And at a personal level fulfill us spiritually We join also because we hunger to be in relationship with people who like ourselves Regard religion as an open-ended ongoing quest for deeper meaning and more honest and authentic religious connections As members we are responsible for strengthening this institution so that it can perform these life affirming tasks We agree that religion is as much a public as a private affair And intensely communal as well as an individual commitment. We honor our responsibility when we do the following Make an effort to learn about our tradition its history and its theology in order to understand what it really means to be a unitarian universalist Make generous ungrudging contributions of time talent and treasure Trusting that when we give from the heart we grow in spirit Make a good faith effort to participate in the open democratic process by which this community orders its affairs We should be prepared to become active citizens not just passive consumers of service in keeping with our denomination's long-standing commitment to congregational empowerment This is not a casual commitment that we ask people to make And that is why we take the time twice a year to recognize and to celebrate those who have accepted these solemn responsibilities For themselves And now Ann Moser will read the names of those who indicated that they would probably be here at the nine o'clock hour Thank you as I call your names. Please come up with your insert from the order of service today Ginny and Garrett Hughes Alicia and matt anderson Cassie and mike Lotter with Good morning To our new members Do you accept the responsibilities and freedoms associated with membership in a unitarian universalist congregation? Do you pledge to support this religious community with your words your time and your substance? Are you willing to join the members of first unitarian society in a common quest for religious and spiritual understanding and for the common purpose of living reverent and compassionate lives? And to the congregation Do you accept these people into our into this community as companions in the spiritual journey? Do you pledge to rejoice with them in times of happiness? To grieve with them in times of sorrow and to share with them all the blessings of our free faith We do and now let's read the continuing bond of union We the members of the first unitarian society of Madison Desiring a religious organization in the spirit of jesus of nazareff Which shall make the integrity of life its first pain and leave thought free Associate ourselves together And now we will offer to our new members the right hand of fellowship and ancient tradition and a symbol of full inclusion in our community The flowers probably have symbolic value, but if not, they're still beautiful And Let's give our new members a big hand And as they are returning to their seats, I invite you to turn to our closing ham number 330 and please be seated for the benediction and the postlude we close with these words from the navajo tradition In beauty may I walk all day long may I walk Through the returning seasons may I walk Beautifully I will possess again beautiful birds beautiful joyful birds On a trail marked with pollen may I walk with grasshoppers around my feet may I walk with dew about my feet may I walk With beauty may I walk With beauty before me may I walk with beauty behind me may I walk with beauty above me may I Beauty all around me may I walk In old age wandering on a trail of beauty lively may I walk In old age wandering on a trail of beauty living again may I walk It is finished in beauty It is finished in beauty