 Please join in a moment of centering silence, so we can be fully present with each other this morning. And now let's get musically present by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn, which you'll find inside your order of service. Oh, thanks and good morning everybody. 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 and deal with our turkey hangovers. I'm Steve Goldberg, a proud and highly respected member of this congregation, and I'd like to extend a special welcome and a happy hello to all guests, visitors, and newcomers. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I know you'll find that it's a special place. And if you'd like to learn more about our special buildings, we'll be conducting a guided tour after this service. Just gather over here by the windows and we'll take good care of you. Speaking of taking good care of each other, this would be a perfect time to silence those pesky electronic devices that you simply will not need at all for the next hour. And while you're doing that, if you are accompanied by a youngster today and you think that youngster might prefer to enjoy the service from a more private space, we offer a couple options for you. One is our child haven at the back corner of the auditorium, and then we have some comfortable seating right outside the doorway in the commons. The service, as is the case every weekend, today is brought to us by a great team of volunteers whose names I'm going to announce proudly to you right now. Handling the sound system is Mary Manoring. Tom Boykoff is our lay minister. Thank you, Tom. We were greeted upstairs by Paddy Whitty. Our ushers are Anne Ostrom, Marty Hollis, and Paula Alt. Nancy Koseff is the one you should thank for the hospitality and the coffee a little bit later. And if you're sticking around for the tour after the service, you'll be guided by John Powell. So take an opportunity to thank these people, give them a high five or a handshake or better yet, offer to give them some of your Thanksgiving leftovers. So the only other announcement before we begin the service is I still do not know how many days until the next cabaret, but I'll let you know as soon as I can. Meanwhile, please sit back or lean forward to enjoy this morning's service. And know it will touch your heart, stir your spirit, and trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here. To our bodies, to each other, and to life as we were intended to live it. Those exempt from work have 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 only available to the miners, the farmers, and, dare I say it, the carpenters. Because 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. I welcome you to church this morning, and I ask that you rise and body your spirit to light our chalice. The words of the chalice lighting can be found in your order of service. 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 experiment. And perhaps you can experiment with getting to know someone new as you turn to each other and have friendly greetings this morning. The more people are coming, that's reassuring things. Read a book called The Table Where Rich People Sit. If you could see us sitting here, that is a logistical problem, we might have to deal with that later. If you could see us sitting here at our old scratched up homemade kitchen table, you'd know that we are not rich. But my father is 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 that he wears to first grade? And why does he think that that old rattle trap truck is parked at our door? You 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 says, well, we're rich and we sit here every day. Sometimes I think I'm the only one in my whole family who is sensible. Maybe I should mention that my parents made this table out of lumber somebody else threw away. They even had a celebration when they finished it. Understand, I like this table 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 could buy a lot of nice new things. I tell them I look worse than anybody in school. I hate to bring this up, I say. But it would help if you two had a little more ambition. They look surprised. You can see that they never think about all the things that we need. Right here I might as well admit that my parents have some strange ideas about working. They think the only jobs worth having are jobs that are outdoors. They want cliffs and canyons or deserts or mountains around them wherever they work. And 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 wild and beautiful. Planting of fields they say are the sweet corn or the alfalfa. They like to pick chili and squash and tomatoes. They'll put up strong fences or trade young wild horses. But they say they can't stand to be 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 can make more money working in a building downtown somewhere. Remember our number one rule, they say, we have to see the sky. You could look through a window, I say. But they won't even think about it. Do you see what I mean about my maybe 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 is not really mountain girl. They call me that because I was born in a cabin on the side of the mountain. They say it was the most magical, the most beautiful mountain that they'd ever climbed. And maybe it was, but you know how they like to exaggerate. Anyway, they wanted my first sight to be that mountain side. So they held me up outdoors at sunrise when I was just about eight minutes old. To tell the truth, I still like sunrises quite a lot. And can you believe, though, 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, we can't get very far with this discussion if you won't even admit that we're poor. I'll prove it to you right now. He says, let's make a list of all the money that we earn in a year. How much is that? I ask, I'll write it down. But he says, not so fast. Yes, we have a lot of things to think about before we add it up. What kinds of things? My mother says, well, we don't just take our pay in cash. You know, we have a special plan where we get paid in sunsets, too. And having time to hike around canyons and look for eagle 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 and feel the wind and smell the rain and hour before it's really raining. 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. When the cactus blooms, you should be there and watch it because it might be a color that you won't see again any other day of your life. How much would you say that that color is worth? 50 cents, my brother asks, but they decide on $10,000. So now I write $40,000. But I'd forgotten how much my father likes to make bird sounds and he can copy any bird, but he's best at white-winged doves and ravens and red-tailed hawks and quail. So of course, he has to add another $10,000 for both daybirds and nightbirds around us. So I cross out what I had written. $50,000. And 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 I'm worth $10,000, and my little brother laughs. Don't underestimate yourself, my father said. Remember all those good lists you make for us? And he's right, I do. I make lists of the best books each one of us has read and lists of all the ones we want to read again. And I also made a list of all the animals each one of us has seen and the ones we still want to see out wild and not just in the zoo. They end up deciding I'm worth about a million dollars. I say I don't think I am, but I write it down anyway. In fact, it turns out every one of us is worth a million dollars. So we have four million and fifty thousand dollars. But then I realize I want to add $5,000 for myself. For the pleasure I have in wandering in the open country alone, free as a lizard, not following trails, not having a plan, just turning whatever way the wild turns me. And they say that's certainly worth $5,000. So that makes four million and fifty-five thousand dollars. And finally, my brother says to put down seven more dollars for all the nights we spend outside under the stars. And we say that seven doesn't sound like enough, so we talk him into making it five thousand. And now my paper says four million and sixty thousand dollars and we haven't started counting actual cash. To tell the truth, though, the cash part doesn't seem to matter anymore. And I suggest it shouldn't even be on the list of our kind of riches. And so the meeting is over. The rest of them have gone 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 and I'm glad it's ours. In fact, I think the title of my book is going to be The Table Where Rich People Sit. And normally this would be the time where we sing you out to your classes, but it's a special day and I was hoping you guys could stick around and hang out with us for the rest of the service. The thing is, the next song? The next song is a raffy song? Oh no! You still help us out with it because I bet you know it better than the adults. Okay, so why don't you guys go back with your parents and you can help us out with it if you feel like it. I want to sing along. Information about almost everything. Relief in the weight of wet clothes, causing the wicker basket to creak as I carry it out to the clothes line. Every time I bend down to shake loose a piece of laundry, I smell the grass. I smell the sun. And above all, I smell a clean laundry. 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, and then pinning it to the clothes 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 the Penley Corporation of West Paris, Maine, which is still willing to make them out of wood, instead of colored plastic. 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 would be a staccato downward descending scale. The socks all go in a row and end like an exclamation point. All day long, I watch the breeze toss these clothes in the wind, and I imagine my prayers spinning away over the tops of trees. This is good work, this prayer. This is good prayer, this work. So as digging in the garden, cleaning the chicken pens, washing the potatoes, and 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 to do them. These are the practices that sustain life. Not only my life, and the lives intertwined with mine, but all the lives of all the beings. When I haul water, I am in 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 bearers. To deliver water for drinking, for cooking, for washing, and for bathing, this is what muscles are for. To watch a thirsty creature dip its head into the bucket and drink, I'm happy to sweat for this. A long time ago, when I was a young man, I had a piano teacher by the name of Flavio Varani. And Flavio Varani was from the country of Brazil in South America. And when he was a young man, he went to the country of France, where he studied piano with a composer, a man who wrote music, called Francis Poulenc. And Francis Poulenc is the composer of the music that I'm playing on the piano this morning. And my teacher Flavio used to play a set of pieces by Francis Poulenc called Sweet Française, which is a set of pieces from France. And the melodies and rhythms are based on folk music, the music of the farmers and the hunters and gatherers. And so I enjoyed listening to my teacher play this music, so now that I got old, I decided I'd play the music myself, and I've been enjoying playing it very much. The first two pieces that I'm playing today, the first one's called a bronzel, the second one's called a bronzel also. And a bronzel is a kind of dance. In fact, it's the oldest dance that we know of. It's called a circle dance. We know this because of old paintings. And the old paintings show people dancing in a circle, and they join hands up high, and they twirl around like this in the paintings. This next piece I'm going to play, this circle dance called Bronzel de Champagne. It's called that because the music, the melody comes from the region of France called Champagne, which we say Champagne, the name of a very famous drink in this country and around the world. This circle dance I'm about to play is not quite as fast as the first one. So if you feel like getting up and dancing and twirling around in a circle, please be my guest. You could also sit and twirl in your chairs too. That's also good. I'd like to say that everyone here this morning gets super extra bonus points for coming to church on a holiday weekend. I mean, the holidays are a really, really full time. Sometimes they can be bright and happy, full of lights and family and food and shopping. And sometimes they can be kind of fraught and stressful, filled with bells and lights and songs and family and food and shopping. And for some of us, the holidays are a sad time. They are a sad time because they are filled with so much silence that reminds us of a lack of songs and bells and lights and family and food and shopping. So the holidays are a full time. They are a time when we can experience joy and stress and sadness all at once. And yet you took an hour out of your morning to come be here today and I wonder if that's because you know something, you know a secret, which is that the times in which you can experience joy and stress and sometimes sadness all at once, those are the times that you really need to come to places that fill your soul. When I was younger, I tried to cheat. I tried to have a thing that filled my soul as my everyday living. I went to go work for a non-profit and I thought, well I really believe in this mission of this non-profit so it's going to fill my soul on an everyday basis. But it turned out working as the development director of a non-profit, working with spreadsheets and numbers didn't really get me involved with the programs and the community and it didn't, it didn't feed my soul so I needed to go find another place that would. So I dedicated myself to going to church every week. I said I'm going to go to church every week and it's going to feed my soul. And it did for a while. And so I became very grateful for the church and I wanted to give back. So I joined the board of trustees and the worship committee and the membership team and the canvas committee and then when the new minister was coming of course I joined the search committee to find them so pretty soon church kind of felt like work too. I had that hour that fed my soul and then a whole lot of meetings. So I said okay, alright, I'm doing this work that I like and this church that I like but I need something that's going to feed my soul. So I found this after-school program. I found this after-school program where I could teach art and music and theater, really just music and theater because I'm not so great with art, to kids who were in an inner-city school that didn't have money to pay for music and theater programs in their classes. And I worked this out by getting to work really early in the morning and then leaving mid-afternoon so I could go be with these kids but I thought it'll be worth it because art feeds my soul. Art feeds my soul. Kids hanging out with young people feeds my soul, it should work out, right? The thing was these kids, they were brilliant and beautiful but their stories, a lot of them were pretty tragic and it took a lot out of me to go every day and it fed my soul but not in the ways that fill me up and give me energy. So every day I would get up morning and go to work and then in the afternoons I would go to this after-school program and then at night and on the weekends I had about a gazillion church meetings but I had Sunday evening. I had Sunday evening all to myself and I thought, you know what? I'm gonna find something to feed my soul in which I can be absolutely and totally useless. And so every week I would ride my bike from church to the Detroit Zen Center. I would go to this place that was quiet and still and I would take off my winter coat and my anxiety and hang it on a peg outside of a room that was laden with cushions and then someone wearing impossibly comfortable looking clothing would ring a chime and I would just sit. For 45 glorious minutes I would just sit and be still and quiet and the only thing that I could hear was the trickle of a fountain at the feet of a big Buddha statue and he sat there jolly and serene. He sat with me. That fed my soul in the way that I needed it. That replenished me in the way that I needed it. So every week that I would come in I would sort of come in wearing the stress of the world on me. I would be a whirlwind of fraughtness and I would come and take off my coat and go to sit in the room and one day Myeongju one of their monks there level of monk that you attain when you've got so much inner peace that it literally seeps out of your skin that's what she was. And she came up to me and she said 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 not saying anything and she said you have to practice sitting while you're not sitting. The thing that I sort of skipped over was before the person in the impossibly comfortable looking clothing would ring the chime they would teach us lessons from Buddhist teachings and I think I kind of skipped over this part because to tell the truth I'm a really really bad Buddhist. They would teach about specifically two things mindfulness and detachment mindfulness being the practice of being where you are every moment experiencing the things that you're experiencing in the here and now noticing that there is beautiful sun coming through these windows and we are all here together and there are lovely people in this room and not thinking about what your uncle said at Thanksgiving or what you're going to do after church today but being here now is mindfulness and then detachment is not really interacting so much with how that affects you not holding on to the need for sunlight or the people appreciating what comes into your life and then letting it go being okay letting it pass through and around you Myungjoo taught me that I should enter every room with the same noticing that I entered the Zen sitting room and that some rooms would be jolly and serene and some rooms would be stark and fraught but that it shouldn't matter because I shouldn't interact too much with how it was affecting me and I love the idea of mindfulness I love the idea of active awareness of purposeful noticing but detachment is where you lose me The thing is I want to be attached to the things in my life I want to truly believe in the mission of that nonprofit I want to care about the outcome of the stories of those kids in that classroom I want to be overwrought with how much I need my church and I want to be attached to that 45 minutes when I get to sit and recoup from caring so much I can feel joy and stress and sometimes sadness all at one time you can too we're complicated beings and that ability to feel those things is simply part of being human the ability to interact with our experiences and our emotions it's part of the covenant that we have with existence in order to be alive sometimes it seems like Myeongju was teaching me that I should avoid the experience of being in a body but despite all of my belief systems despite everything that I think theologically or philosophically all I know for sure is that I have this time in this life on this earth and I want to experience everything I want to experience every human memory regardless of how bitter or sweet I want to experience every human connection regardless of what combination of broken or wholesome or the length of duration and I want to perform every chore because the grace of daily obligation it reminds me how to be in the world I want to fill all of my days and when my bones get old and tired I want them to feel like they've earned it and so I wonder if we could do a little activity I especially like the kids help with this one I wonder is there anyone here stand up or raise your hand if you like raking the leaves everybody who likes raking the leaves stand up or raise your hand is there anyone this little girl likes raking the leaves do you want to tell us why or are you too shy alright who else likes raking the leaves anyone do you mind telling us why you like raking the leaves do you want to use the microphone or do you just want me to repeat it alright well one reason I raised my hand is because I miss it so I'm not sure if I would have just raked a big pile you know last weekend but I do remember being outside and the smells and the work and the results so not everyone likes raking the leaves but who likes stand or raise your hand who likes being outside and smelling fresh fallen leaves and the results of a freshly raked lawn that's mostly everybody right alright who here likes doing their homework is there anyone that likes doing their homework you got a couple of people who like doing their homework does anybody want to tell us why they like doing their homework alright this gentleman in the back how do you like doing your homework sir I'm in the Plato group and it's classes I really want to take and I want to learn and recently I studied with a man he's 94 years old and he was on in a walker on oxygen the last three semesters his name was Jim Christensen and he led his first class of this semester and died before his second class and we all love the class so much and most of us were in the class because we loved him but we carried on the class through the next nine weeks which ended last week and we love to learn and the book was the five things you cannot change and the happiness you gain by embracing them topical so not everybody likes doing their homework but who likes learning new things and watching people achieve things through education raise your hand okay pretty much everybody likes doing that let's do one more who likes taking care of their little brothers or sisters or kids or grandkids some people does anybody want to say why would you like to say why alright alright we won't force you does anybody want to say why it's a lady over here I like taking care of grandkids they're so excited about everything in the world and they look at things so differently and so I come forward with some things that I think might be fun and they invent things that I never thought of okay so not everyone likes having to look after young children running around everywhere but who likes watching people look at the world with wonder and experiment and new things raise your hand if you like that the poets and the scholars talk about this thing called the grace of daily obligation they talk about how using your hands and doing your chores reminds us that we are deeply human because I don't think the gods do laundry a lot of times at this time of year especially people have a gratitude practice I've seen these lists that say I'm grateful for the laundry because it means I have clothes to wear I'm grateful for a lawn to rake because it means I have a home I'm grateful for children to care for because it means that I have family I was thinking about this and there was something about it there was something about it wasn't quite hitting for me although I really liked the idea and I was experimenting with these thoughts in our ministers meeting this week and I told Michael and Kelly about it and Kelly said that stuff to me it's really annoying yeah just like I don't want anyone to tell me that I can't be attached to my emotions that I can't be attached to my experiences I don't want anyone to limit my experience with my noticing of my life to just the good things I don't want to be limited to gratitude as much as I want it to be in my life so I wonder what would happen if we developed a practice of mindful attachment I wonder what would happen if we said I'm noticing that I'm raking the leaves and my back hurts and it's a lot of work and I would rather be watching whatever was just released on Netflix right now and I love the smell of the leaves and I love being outside I'm grateful for so many things and I notice all of these other things we are complicated human beings and we get to live in a messy world where there is good and there is bad and maybe the real practice of gratitude is embracing all of it not just the things that make us immediately happy but also the things that make us learn and grow I will leave you with words from my favorite childhood philosopher Piglet went to Winnie the Pooh's house and said Pooh what is the first thing that you think of when you get up in the morning and Pooh said breakfast and Piglet said well yes don't you think about all the things that you could do that day all of the things that might happen to you all of the things that you can experience and Pooh said yes it's the same thing and to that I say amen part of being human is being in a body and those bodies are sometimes hungry our offering today will be taken for St. Vincent's food pantry so that those of us who have can give to those who do not please give generously a famous musician whose name I don't remember once said that music must either sing or dance the first two pieces I played were dances these next two are songs they sing out the first one Sicilian is named after the island of Sicily that's near Italy so the French call it a Sicilian it's a special rhythm that's used the last piece I play is called carillon a carillon is the largest instrument in the world in fact we have one here in Madison carillons live in towers they're big collections of bells big bells medium sized bells and little bells and there are wires that come from the clappers and the bells that come down and are attached to short sticks and people who play the carillon play them with their fists and their feet and cause these bells to ring and near the end of this piece called carillon Poulin makes some bell sounds I'll look up and see if you recognize the bell sounds patience you strain in the mud to be done again and 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 bag along who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire must be put out the work of the world is as common as mud botched it smears the hands crumbles to dust but a thing done well has a shape that satisfies clean and evident hopey vases that held corn are put in museums but you know they were meant to be used the pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real blessings to you in this day go out experience ex-superiority go in peace and return in love