 Because in that world, they don't, like, they're not the nicest people in the country. You know, it's not like those Breton girls that all do the same thing together, they're all the same jeans and the same backpack, and they all sound like they're one place. They're not the same girls. So, it's like, you know, it's not the same. It's like, yeah, it's like, yeah. It's not like all of it. You can get an answer and you can get an answer. They get an answer and you can get an answer. You can get an answer and you can get an answer. That's just not... That's a never-ending question. It's something that I just know it's a never-ending question. You hear it from a kid. I have this question. So you got a book, a book, a free-division book, and you got a book over here. Anyway, now we're going to shoot the next shoot. This is not a cowboy car, it's not an X-Men movie, it's a great car, it's a cowboy car. It's a smart machine, and the values are good. Ooh! And if it stinks, then I'm gonna have to do something. Oh, it stinks. So, you guys, how do you make a typewriter? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you? Do you? And so, at the time, this is the time when we were making a movie, we were making movies, and we liked them. And it just couldn't be so good. So we decided to make a movie. And so we decided to make a movie. Because it was a movie. It was kind of boring. It was like a movie. Let's not interfere yourself. Please, let's join together in a few moments of sentering silence. Please remain seated as we sing our In Gathering hymn number 1023. And the words also appear in your order of service. Good morning. Welcome to the first Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical, and social issues in an accepting and nurturing environment. Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. My name is Karen Rose Gredler, and on behalf of the entire congregation, I would like to extend a special welcome to visitors who may be with us this morning. We are a welcoming congregation, so whomever you are, and wherever you happen to be on your life journey, we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library, which is directly across from the center doors of this auditorium. Bring your drinks and your questions. Members of our staff and my ministry will be on hand to welcome you. You may also look for persons holding teal-colored stoneware coffee modes. These are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community who would be pleased to visit with you. Experienced guides are generally available to give a building tour after this service. I'm not aware of there being one signed up for this service. Any chance any of you are guides who would, yes, Harry, thank you. So if you would like to have a tour, well, actually, if you'd like to volunteer to be a guide, talk to Harry about that, but the rest of you, if you would like a tour of this building or our landmark meeting house, he'll go all the way around, please meet Harry up on this side of the auditorium, which is your left by the windows immediately after the service. Thank you, Harry. That's wonderful. We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service. However, because it is difficult for some of us in attendance to hear in this lively acoustical environment, our child Haven back in that corner and the commons all along the back of the auditorium are available as great places to go if your child wants to talk, sing, dance, run around or any other normal childhood things. The service can still be seen and heard well from there. This would also be a great time to turn off any noisy appendages you may have such as a cell phone. Excuse me. I make a joke and I suffer. You know, it's my payment. The, um, please try not to disturb the service with any of those noises and we will all appreciate it very much. I'd now like to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly. We have Marine friend on sound and smiley as our lay minister, Tamara Bryant as our greeter and our ushers are and smiley Karen and Doug Hill. And as you can tell by and doing double duty, if any of you would like to volunteer to be ushers, that would be fine too. Not today, but I mean sign up and then join us another day. Hospitality is Jeannie Hills and now Harry Carnes will be our tour guide. Wonderful. Okay. I would also like to call your attention to the announcements in the red floors insert in your order of service, which describe upcoming events of the society and provide more information about today's activities. I would especially like to call your attention to the fact that we will be having a landmark roof forum on August 6th given the breadth and scope of the project to repair the landmark roof. A parish forum on the subject has been scheduled for Sunday, August 6th, following the 11 o'clock service. This forum will provide you and everyone with an opportunity to learn more about the needed repairs and various options available to us to correct this need. Please come and ask questions. Light refreshments and snacks will be provided in the atrium comments. Thank you. It is also my extreme pleasure to tell you a little bit about our speaker today who is Representative Chris Taylor. She was elected to the State Assembly in August of 2011 and quickly redistricted into a new district, the 76th, which includes the ISMAS, UW campus and parts of the North, East and West sides. That's a big responsibility area. Representative Taylor currently sits on five assembly committees and chairs the women's health work group and the progressive caucus. Chris has successfully worked across the aisle. They emphasize across the aisle to pass good public policy, including a first in national law requiring outside investigations involving law enforcement and to address confidentiality programs for victims of domestic violence, harassment and human trafficking. Chris and her husband Jim live on the neary side of Madison where Chris has lived for almost 25 years. They are proud parents of two young boys, Sam and Ben. Chris earned her law degree in 1995 from UW Madison after receiving her undergrad degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1990. Learning to come and be a badger is prior to being elected to the legislature. Chris practiced law at several private law firms before becoming the public policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. She has also been a member of FUS for several years. So I'm thrilled that she's here. Again, welcome. We hope today's service will stimulate your mind. Touch your heart and stir your spirit. Opening words are from the sage of Concord Ralph Waldo Emerson. In a virtuous community, people of sense and principle will always be placed at the head of affairs. In a declining state of public morals, people will be so blinded to their own true interests that they will put incapable and unworthy people at the helm. It is therefore vain to complain about the follies and the crimes of government. We must lay our own hands on our hearts and say, here is the sin that makes for the public sin. I invite you to rise in body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice. And would you please join with me in reading the words of affirmation created in this morning's program. A Unitarian Universalist congregation strives to be a community where every person is valued, where we work together to create a more just and caring world. We join our hearts and minds today, drawing each and all into this circle of commitment. And now on this fine July morning, I invite you to turn to your neighbor, exchange with them a warm and friendly greeting. Please be seated. If we have some young folks who are in the congregation this morning that would like to come to the front for the message for all ages, would love to have you join me, provide me a little company. So there is a book and a movie that actually one of my favorites and I'm not sure if some of you are old enough to have seen the movie or mostly you're not old enough to have read the books, but the books are called the Lord of the Rings. Anybody heard of the Lord of the Rings? I know you all have, right? Okay, very good. And so if you've seen the movie or read the books, you know, there's all kinds of strange creatures in the Lord of the Rings. There's dwarves and there's elves and hobbits and wizards and goblins and there are ants. Ents are trees, but they aren't like ordinary maple or oak trees that we're all familiar with because the ants can move around and they can talk to each other. So this is a story about trees, not about ants, but it's said that a long, long time ago trees could actually talk to each other just like the ants could. Now, of course, we know that if living things can talk to each other, they can also get into arguments. They can also begin to quarrel and to kind of fight with each other. And the trees long ago they began to quarrel with each other so often that they finally decided they had to do something about that. They said, we need a king to rule over us and to keep the peace. So at first, all the trees of the forest began thinking to themselves, I'd make a really good king. I'll bet I'd make the most wonderful king in all the forest and so all the trees began boasting to each other saying, let me be the king. I would be the best king ever. I'm the best person for that job. But then one of the older and wiser trees called out to the rest of them saying, stop. Just think about this for a minute. You cannot be the king and keep doing the things that you're doing now. Whoever is chosen as our king has to change their way of life entirely. And so he said, if you're a fruit tree, you're going to have to stop using all of that energy to put fruit on your branches. You're going to need to have all of your strength to grow so high and so strong that you can wave your mighty branches over the entire forest. And that's the only kind of tree that can keep us peaceable with each other. Well, on hearing this, the trees stopped all their boasting and they grew very quiet. They began thinking and they began talking to each other more seriously and saying to each other, well, which tree would be the best one to be our king? And so they talked for a long, long time before making their first choice and the first choice to be the king was the olive tree. And so they all went to the olive tree and said, we want you to be our king. And the olive tree said to them, why should I give up making all these fine olives just so I can grow so high and strong and wave my branches over all the rest of you? Because my olives, the fruit of my tree, that brings me great honor among men. So no, I don't want to stop being an olive bearing tree and be your king. So he refused. So then they went to their second choice. That was the orange tree and they offered the orange tree the position of king. But the orange tree replied, my oranges are so sweet that they keep all the people of the world cheerful, keep a smile on their face. I love to be praised for my beautiful fruit. So no, I don't want to be your king either. So then they went to their third choice. And a third choice was the almond tree. Almonds are wonderful, sweet nuts. And the almond tree also turned them down, saying, I don't want to be your king. And one after another, they went to all the trees in the forest. They were all invited to be the king and none of them wanted to be the king. Finally, they said to themselves, what are we going to do? Everybody wants to stay just the way they are. Nobody wants to be king. So there was one tree, however, that they hadn't asked. It was the lowly thorn bush. And the thorn bush said to himself, now this is my chance to be somebody important. Nobody ever noticed me before, but I want to be different. So sure enough, the trees could not find anybody else in the forest that was willing to change his way. So they went to the thorn bush and said kind of half heartedly, will you be our king? Well, at first the thorn bush thought that this was all a big joke. You really and truly want you need to be your king, he said. And they all slowly nodded. Yeah, guess so. And at this the thorn bush chuckled to himself and he called out in a loud voice, come and crawl under my shadow all ye trees of the forest and be safe. Do what I say and you will always be at peace. And while the thorn bush was saying this, he began to grow bigger and bigger and bigger until his branches spread far and wide over the entire forest. And then knowing that he was now so big and powerful, the thorn bush called out again in a voice that was sharp and cruel. Listen well to my words, you trees of the forest, you have chosen me to be your king. And so from now on you must obey me and only me. And if at any time any one of you trees refuses to do what I command, I'm going to call the humans into the forest. And I'm going to say to them, gather up from the ground all the branches and all the leaves that had fallen, make a fire of them and burn down the entire forest. Well the trees, as you can imagine, were so frightened by this threat that they never quarreled again. And in fact, they have not spoken since. Which is why when you go in the forest, you might hear the leaves rustling a little bit, but you're never going to hear them talk to each other. That's a bad acting. Now this is what we call an allegory. You're going to learn all about allegories when you're maybe a freshman in high school, a little bit older. But the main thing is, you know, be careful who you choose as a leader, because some people who want to lead don't want to be helpful, they just like the power. You don't hear your trees in your yard? That's why. Yeah, yeah. So that's the story of the trees. So we invite you now to go to your Summer Fun program and hope you have fun as we sing you out with him number 1010. Thanks for joining me. Please be seated. So we continue with two readings in anticipation of Chris Taylor's reflections. The first from Parker Palmer's book, Healing the Heart of Democracy. Palmer writes, I came across words written by Terry Tempest Williams as I was emerging from the dark passage of personal and political heartbreak. Republicans happen to be in power at the time, but Democrats have broken my heart too, proving that it is a bad idea politically as well as personally to go looking for love in all the wrong places. So Terry Tempest Williams wrote about living democracy and these words, they uplifted me with the reminder that none of us are powerless. The human heart is the first home of democracy, Tempest Williams wrote. It is where we embrace our questions. Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings and not just with our minds? Can we offer our attention rather than our opinions? And do we have enough resolve in our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly without giving up ever and trusting our fellow citizens to join with us in our determined pursuit of a living democracy? Well, if the heart is democracy's first home that each of us each of us has a share of the power that's required to bring democracy back to its roots. But even as her words restored me, they also rebuked me. I had not been holding the questions that Williams names questions about my capacity for citizenship with openness, honesty, trust and persistence. I had allowed my heart to harden had lost faith in my fellow citizens. And so the uplift and the upbraiding that I found in Williams words, these sparked a resolve to reclaim my active citizenship. The second reading from Lewis Lapham's essay, Democracy in America for many years, Lewis Lapham was the editor of Harper's magazine. Although I know that Jefferson once said that it is never permissible to despair of the Commonwealth. I think it is possible that the American experiment with democracy just may have run its course, not because of the malevolence or the cunning of some foreign power, but because a majority of Americans apparently have come to think of democracy as a matter of consensus and parades as if it were something easy and quiet and orderly and safe. I keep running across people who speak fondly of what they imagine to be the comforts of autocracy, who long for a man on a white horse who will do something hard, something puritanical about the moral relativism that has made such a mess of our cities and our schools and primetime TV. Now to be sure, the word democracy is never easy to define. It's meaning changes with the vagaries of time and place and circumstance. The American democracy of 1990 is not what it was in 1890. Democracy in France is not what it is in England or Norway or even in the United States. What remains more or less constant, however, is the temperament or the spirit of the mind, not some code of laws or set of immutable virtues or a table of bureaucratic organization. And that temperament, that temperament is skeptical, it is contentious, and if democracy means anything at all, if it isn't what Gore-Vidal once called the great American nonsense word, then it does mean freedom of thought and the perpetual expansion and discovery that the world is not one's self. Freedom of thought brings society the unwelcome news that it is in trouble. But because all societies, just like all individuals are always in trouble, that news does not cause them to perish. They die instead when they cease to be thoughtful. Isn't that beautiful? Thank you. Well, hello, Chris. It's such a great pleasure to be here. Thank you so much, Karen, for that. Wonderful introduction. Thank you to Michael for inviting me. I do represent in the state assembly, the 76th assembly district, which is really the central part of Madison. It's a very active district, which I love. So it's my great honor. I'm also a member here at FUS. I usually attend the nine o'clock service when I can get there on time, frankly. It's usually a little after nine. So those of you who go to that service, if you haven't seen my children, you have heard my children because they go to their religious education classes during that service. I'm also wife, have many different roles like you all have here. So you're constantly balancing and juggling. But it really was helpful for me to think about what I was going to speak with you about here today. Usually I'm used to giving political speeches, very much political. And I'm used to an audience where I say, okay, what do you think? Can you raise your hand and we have a conversation? So this is a bit different for me. But I wanted to start when I was thinking about diving a little deeper into what is going on and what sustains us, what motivates us and how do we keep kind of going through this hard political terrain? My husband reminded me that several months ago, we went to see a political comedian, Mark Marin, who was performing at the Orphean. Did any of you see him when he was in town? It was in April. Okay, so one person. And when my husband came home, I think it was February and said, we're going to go see this political comic. I was not so excited. I was not laughing too hard about what was going on politically. But he said, well, I got a babysitter. So I said, okay, you got a babysitter. I'm in. And literally Mark started with a very simple question and that was, so what do you think he'll do next? And we all were wondering the same thing and we're still wondering that. But this question seems as relevant today as it did then. And though I have long turned off that little ping on my cell phone that tells me I have a new email, I get those New York Times breaking news constantly across my phone. And so I'm very wary when I open my phone, I brace myself for what I'm going to see. We know the devastating consequences of this national agenda that we're seeing because we've seen it here in our state, this emphasis on privatization, deregulation, an economic agenda that really is focused on tax cuts for the most wealthy. That has been the agenda of the majority since I've been in the legislature. So it's all very, very familiar to us. And I'm not going to detail the litany of abuses that have occurred for this congregation because I know you all are very, very well informed. Last fall I attend, I sometimes go to the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC meetings. ALEC is the group that comes up with some of these very harmful model policies that we see in our state. And it's kind of this network of big corporations and right wing think tanks and state legislators. So I have gone to these meetings because I want to know what's coming up in our state legislature. Not because I support their agenda, but I want, I really want to know what they're up to and I want people to know what they're up to. So in November I attended this ALEC meeting and Newt Gingrich was there and he said, you know, we got to get Donald Trump to be exactly like Scott Walker. And I shouted out, no. And I know I'm the only out Democrat there. I mean, there might be some Democrats lurking in the shadows, but I couldn't help myself. You know, it's just this visceral reaction, I think that we have. So in the words of Terry Tempest-Williams from the readings today, the human heart is the first home of democracy. You know, I so believed that. You know, we, I was asked a couple months ago to talk to the Prairie UU congregation to address whether democracy was dead. What an ominous topic, right? I want to talk about and, you know, I told them absolutely I don't believe. I don't believe democracy is dead. I definitively do not believe that. I believe as Terry Tempest-Williams said that it's really democracy starts with us. It starts in our spirit. And I believe that human beings have an indelible thirst for democracy, for freedom, for justice, for fairness and for government that is just and truly represents the people. This is part, I believe, of our human spirit and it causes us to rise up and it causes us to speak out and to act. But it does seem that sometimes democracy throughout history has twisted and turned in the wind. And, you know, it might be that time now that we see the twisting and turning of democracy more important than ever for us, in my opinion, to reach very, very deep and find that the spirit in us that really does thirst for fairness and justice. I see the living democracy that Terry Tempest-Williams refers to all the time and I feel like in my position as an elective representative, I see things probably you all don't. I have the privilege of seeing things that you all don't. I see democracy every day in our community. There are incredible individuals doing such important meaningful work to remedy injustice right here in our community to create opportunities for individuals and there's so many organizations. I marvel at the hundreds of organizations right here in our community that exist to do just those things. I see democracy in this congregation. I'm so proud that we have a social justice coordinator who I see in the Capitol coming to events and speaking out and being present and encouraging us to be active and encouraging our commitment to ensuring a fairer, more just society. I see democracy on the faces of all these new activists that have contacted my office. People I have never seen before. I've never heard from them, but individuals and I'm not just talking one, dozens and dozens of individuals who have been very much inspired by this last election and they want to be engaged and they want to reach out and they want to be relevant and all these new organizations, not just here in Madison, all around this state there are new organizations popping up dedicated to really ensuring a fairer government, a more just society. And I even see democracy in the Capitol. Big surprise, right? Where you should see it. But citizens come every single week to the Capitol, every single week to testify on policy, to raise their voices, to participate in our democracy and to speak out for really good policies. Our challenge I think is to keep rising up, to keep active even when we are feeling very wary. Even when we are tired, we feel defeated. So how do we embrace this concept of living democracy that does begin with us? And how do we strengthen it when we feel like we can't bear to turn on the television? So these are questions I ask myself constantly. So I wanted to share with you some things that I have learned in my six years in the legislature that keep me going and help me and sustain me when it feels like things are very, very tough. The first lesson is to listen to our children and to engage our young people. I heard once and I don't know who said this. If anybody knows, please come up to me. I've tried to Google it. I've tried to research it. But I heard once that children are sent to us from God to teach us what we needed to learn. And I have found that to be true in my own children. But also in looking at the social movements and the movements for justice and equality throughout our history have often been led by young people. It was nine children in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas that tried to get into Little Rock High School. They were the first group to integrate that high school. Some as young as 14 years old. And this group of kids went through bigoted crowds that were yelling and spitting on them. And they were actually the first time they tried. They were blocked by the National Guard. The National Guard was actually utilized to block these children from getting into this high school. But they got in eventually. And anytime I'm feeling like, oh, this is getting hard. Wow, this is really getting to be a big barrier. I go back and look at the pictures and the video of these kids and what they did and they did get into that school and many of them did graduate. I think about Congressman John Lewis who some of you might know, he's been in Congress for a while now but he was in his early 20s when he helped organize the march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama. This is in 1965. And this really spurred the Voting Rights Act that was signed later that year. He with a bunch of his young friends helped organize this march and the first time they set off across the Selma Bridge, they knew that on the other side of that bridge there were dozens and dozens of law enforcement with clubs and pistols ready to take these protesters on. How many of you saw Selma? Did you all see that? Yeah. And it's such an inspiring, incredibly inspiring story. And you know what? They knew they were going to be beaten. They knew that they may be killed and they still crossed over that bridge. How many of you, and I don't want you to raise your hands but this is a rhetorical question, how many of you would have done it? I asked myself this question. Would I have the courage to cross that bridge knowing that you were, and John Lewis, he got his skull cracked. But these were young people. I think right here at home to the three elementary school girls who came to my office and said, we are committed to ensuring women are paid equally for equal work. And I contacted these three girls later when we were doing a press conference for a bill that was an equal pay for equal work bill. And you know right in front of us really were these three lone girls at this press conference who talked about why this was so important to them. And then of course I've been totally inspired by my own my own children who have taught me so much. My older son Sam came to me shortly after the last election. I think he knew, you know, it's a little bit blue in our house. We had a little bit of despair. So he came to me and he said, you know, I really would like you to read this book. And this book was called Wonder. And the author is a woman, RJ Palacio. And this book, and actually it's becoming a movie now. So you all should read the book. And definitely I don't know about the movie but the book is absolutely fantastic. It's about a boy, a ten-year-old boy. So the same age as my son at the time, I was reading this, who was born with severe facial deformities. And his mother has homeschooled him and kept him at home. And Telly's about ten. And she realizes that her capacity to teach this very bright child, anything else, has been stretched to the limit and that he must go to school. So my, you know, I honestly, I cried from the first page. I thought I would read this with my son. And I quickly realized I was going to be, this whole book I would cry through because it was just such a moving book. So I read it on my own and he came back to me and said, well, you know, what character did you like the most? And I could tell he wanted me to say the protagonist, the ten-year-old boy, August is his name. But really the character that so inspired me the most was the mother, was the mother who I identified with. Because though she knows that her son is going to experience heartbreaking cruelty and he does, she also realizes that he's going to experience friendship and compassion and love. And she knows that this is the right thing to do. And I have to say the story of this book and this family, after this election that left me speechless and really grasping, brought me back to my basic humanity and reconnected me to empathy and love that really has got to guide us. It absolutely has to guide us. But it was my son who brought me back from the edge of despair, my ten-year-old son. So we need to listen to our children. It doesn't mean that they have candy for breakfast. That's not going to happen. But we need to engage them and learn from them and include them in this long march for justice and for equality. We need to empower them to lead and we need to know when to follow them. This is something my party has not done well. But our existence and our future depends on it. The second lesson that I've learned is to really find support and strengthen empowerment in your spiritual community. This has been extremely important to me. I grew up a Methodist, my husband is Jewish, and now I'm a UU. So it sounds like I could write a song about all of this. And I really do incorporate all these face or I try to incorporate all these face to keep me centered and focused, which sometimes is very difficult. From my Methodist upbringing, I returned to the story of Christ. Was he a savior? I was taught maybe. Was he a revolutionary? I was taught definitely. The story of Christ, regardless of your belief of who he was, did exist. What did he do? Is the story of someone who challenged and tore down the status quo? Someone who didn't sit it out. He said and did what needed to be done to address the inequities in his time. The story of Christ provides an example of what moral courage looks like. And I believe this moral courage is a core tenant of democracy. I believe we all have it in us, but sometimes it needs to be awakened. It needs to be summoned up. There are so many occasions in my short commute to the Capitol where I have been praying for moral courage to say what needs to be said, to do what needs to be done, to have the courage to act. And I have not perfected this. I have to say I'm still, you know, you still try to get it. You still nurture it in yourself. As an adult, really, FUS is my spiritual home. I started regularly coming here when my first child was born because I wanted him to be grounded and to grow up with these values that we have. And I wanted him to be religiously literate to have some background in the religions of the world. But what I really realized in coming here was, perhaps I needed it more than my children or as much as my children, I should say. For me, FUS really is a sanctuary. It's really a safe place for me where I can come in all my imperfections, can come with kids who their hair is not brushed, you know, they're making noise, their shoes are untied, they're fighting over the Lego Club magazine. We've had that here in the sanctuary. But after I dropped them off in their religious education classes and I probably shouldn't tell you all this because I break the rules a little bit, just a little bit. I sneak in the back, I get a cup of coffee and I sit. I usually sit in the back or I sit in the side and I'm quiet and I listen and I always feel or most of the time I feel like the message is exactly what I needed to hear. Is exactly what I needed to hear. I'm rejuvenated, I'm moved, I'm inspired to act. And so that is what this congregation has given to me. But probably as important is the lesson that I keep having to learn again and again. Isn't it annoying when you think you have mastered a concept and then you realize actually that's a lesson. I don't know that I'm ever going to master that lesson. But it's this, that our advocacy and our activism and our commitment has to come from love. It cannot come from anger. It cannot come from hatred. Hate burns you up. It burns you out. But love really does sustain us. This is a hard concept. I can't say that every time I stand up to speak on the assembly floor, I'm loving all my colleagues. You know, it's really hard sometimes. But I'm always reminded in this place and we sing about it to stand on the side of love. And that is one of the most important lessons that I've learned. And finally, and there's many other lessons, but these are some of the some of the highlights for me. Lesson number three for me is to act, but actively listen as well. In my opinion, democracy depends on all of us being comfortable as political actors. And sometimes that takes courage, you know, it's it's intimidating sometimes to call your legislator or to send an email or to write a letter. But I really do believe there's not one savior for the ills that we see right now in our government. It's going to be a collective effort. It's going to take everybody to be involved. We don't have to do everything to keep fighting for a government that truly is representative of the people that truly represents fairness and justice, but we must do something. My favorite quote by Martin Luther King Jr., which he said long ago is, if you can't fly, then run. If you can't run, then walk. If you cannot walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you must keep moving forward. And I truly believe that that it requires democracy requires action and it could be one action a week. It could be one action a day. It doesn't take a lot, but it does take something. But equally important is our ability to listen to those who may be quite different than us. They may have different belief systems. They may have a different religious tradition. And this can be very, very hard. This is something that I struggle with. You know, when you're having that disagreement with your significant other and you stop listening because you're more concerned about how you're going to respond and what you're going to say. I'm working on this. I don't know if my husband actually made it here. I don't see him. But anyway, I am working on this. Now, this in no way involves accepting racist or sexist or homophobic or bigoted attitudes, which we have to stand up to and we have to reject. But we must look for things that do unite us. Not divide us, but that actually unite us. I have knocked on doors for various candidates up and down the ticket from the top of the ticket, the bottom of the ticket, all over our state. I mean, I have knocked on thousands and thousands of doors. I've gone to suburban communities, urban, rural. And despite all the talk about an urban, rural divide in our state and how many of you have read Kathy Cramer's work, who's a UW professor, some of you have, and she writes about this urban, rural divide. And I'm not saying that it doesn't exist. I believe that it does. But really in my experience, people are not that different. They don't say very, very different things at the door when you're talking to them about what's important to them. People want a chance to succeed. They want a good paying job that enables them to support their families. They want to be able to pay their mortgage. They want to be able to send their kids to college and make sure their kids have opportunities. I have never, ever knocked on a door of someone who said, I don't want clean water or I don't want to breathe clean air. You know, that's not what people say when they're talking to you. So people, you know, I really do believe they want to be respected. They want to have a government that protects them that has their back. This is what people have said to me all over the state. So I don't think people really fundamentally are that different. I really don't. We change when we listen. We change when we listen. When I was first elected back in 2011, I said to myself, I'm not going to change. I'm not going to become a politician. You know, I didn't like politicians quite frankly. I thought they were fake and phony. I didn't want to look like one or talk like one or dress like one. I really, you know, ran because in 2011, you can think back to what was going on in 2011 because I was upset about what was happening. And honestly, I didn't know what else to do. And the seat came open and I ran for it. I had run for nothing else. I had, well, I can't say that when I was in high school, I was the student body vice president. So I was a senior in high school. I ran for that, but I hadn't run for anything. And the, the, I'll never forget the evening before my election. It was a very competitive six way primary. My husband, I was going to bed and I turned to him and said, you know, do you think I could win because I was so involved in the mechanics of a campaign, which is very fast moving. It didn't occur to me. You know, you actually might win and my husband said to me, yeah, I think you might win. You know, and so when the AP called me the next day at 815 at night, I was actually in the shower. They called me to tell me I'd won. So anyway, everyone, you know, you can do things you never imagined yourself doing. You really, you really can. But I will say this, my, that initial commitment that, oh, I'm not going to change. I'm going to be my core self. That was not true because what I learned is when you sit next to a mother whose child has been murdered or you're sitting with somebody who's dying of some kind of debilitating condition that changes you. It sears you open. It changes your heart and it should change you. It should change you. It should connect you. It should sharing stories and listening to each other. Even when you don't always agree should open our hearts. It should not close our hearts. It should open our hearts in these experiences experiences of listening to each other is very difficult. I know it's so difficult. I struggle with this too, but just the act of listening can connect us in really critical ways in ways that we were not connected before. In my opinion, the story of democracy is really the story of people uniting around common goals and mobilizing to actualize these goals through collective power, not separately. You know, you hear sometimes I've heard, oh, democracy, you know, it's a it's not a spectator sport. Well, I would add that's true. It's not a spectator sport, but it's also not an individual sport. It's a team sport and it requires all of us in in very different ways. It inquires all of us to be engaged. I still really believe in the collective power of people to make their government to control their government in their own image and should change their communities for the better. Perhaps we're in a rebirth of democracy. I like to think of it that way. Perhaps our current leaders at the state and federal level have awakened us. Now it is time for us to stay awake. I want to close with a quote from one of my favorite political activists who happens to be a Reverend in North Carolina. And some of you may have heard of him, Reverend Barber, the second who's been here and I love him. I have gone to see him speak. He started the forward together moral Monday movements in North Carolina. So he got a group of people together and they would gather in the capital in North Carolina and be there for justice and be there to advocate for fairness and equality. This is what he says. We must shock this nation with the power of love. We must shock this nation with the power of mercy. We must shock this nation and fight for justice for all. We can't give up on the heart of our democracy not now not ever. So let us together make another commitment to never give up. Thank you all so much and we will have the offering now. Thank you my gifted soprano friends. We gather each week as a community of memory and of hope and to this time and this place we bring our whole and sometimes our broken selves. We carry with us the joys and the sorrows of the recent past seeking here a place where these might be received and celebrated and shared. We would pause to acknowledge now an entry from Jim Jaeger who will be our speaker next week by the way and he says just a remembrance of my friend and teacher the Reverend Bill Murray who we learned had passed away recently Bill Murray was for quite a number of years the president of our seminary in Chicago meet Bill Lombard and I knew Bill well as well and we just received news of his passing within the last day or two. In addition to that care just mentioned we would acknowledge any others that remain among us and we hold those as a community with equal concern in our hearts. Let us pause now for just a few moments of silence in the spirit of empathy and of hope and so by virtue of our brief time together today may our burdens be lightened and our joys expanded. Invite you to rise once more and body or in spirit as we sing together a closing him number ten eighteen. Please be seated for the benediction and the postlude. We close with these words from the Unitarian hymnal of nineteen thirty seven words composed in the depth of the Great Depression. Author of life who has made us one nation out of many peoples unite us in a common love of freedom and a high ambition for our national life deep in in us a devotion to the common good so that we may open new doors to the neglected and the oppressed. Cleanse our hearts from the greed that praise on others and deliver our politics from corruption help us to establish this land in righteousness and now with the spirit of wisdom those entrusted with authority that we may stand among the nations of the earth as an example of justice and responsible power may the religion of virtue in which the founders rejoiced find new expression in our own words and our own deeds. Blessed be and amen.