 Please join me in a moment of centering silence. Good morning. Welcome to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a place where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical, and social issues in a safe and accepting environment. Unitarian universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. I'm Maureen Friend. And on behalf of the congregation, I'd like to extend a special welcome to visitors. We're a welcoming congregation. So whoever you are, we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after services 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 lay ministry will be on hand to welcome you. This would be a good time to turn off all your electronics. Experience guides are generally available to give a building tour after each service. So if you would like to learn more about the sustainably designed addition to our National Landmark Meeting House, please meet near the glass windows on the left side of the auditorium. So having said that, I'm not sure we actually have a guide today. Is anyone here a guide? No, sorry. False advertising. So we welcome children to stay with us during the service. Please remember, it often becomes difficult for those in attendance to hear in this lively, acoustical environment. And our child haven, which is in the back corner, and the commons are excellent places to go when you or your child needs to talk or to move around. The service can still be seen and heard from those areas. And now I'd like to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly. The sound operator is Mark Schultz, our lay ministers, and Smiley. The greeters, Janine Nussbaum, and is also doubling as an usher today. So she's doing two jobs. Thank her. Karen Jager was the other usher. And on hospitality, so the people who make our delicious coffee are Jeannie Hills and Terry Felton. Please note the announcements in the red floors insert of your order of service, which describes upcoming events at the society and provides more information about today's activities. And we do have a special announcement today. So Saturday, July 16, FUS is hosting Funky Town, which is our family-friendly dance party. It's going to be from 6.30 to 8.30. And we're going to put on our boogie shoes and dance to the groovy hits of 60s, the 70s, the 80s, and beyond. So everybody's welcome. We'll have refreshments. There'll be a photo booth. You are welcome to dress up in one of those eras, but you don't have to wear a costume. You should just come if you want to. We'd love to have you. Suggested donation for the event is $5 for individuals and $20 for a family. And we'll collect those at the door. So stop by the table, which is right next to the library, to learn more about it and to let us know that you're coming. So again, welcome. We hope today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart, and stir your spirit. These are the times that try men's souls. Words uttered 250 years ago by Thomas Payne at the outset of the Revolutionary War. Words that seem equally pertinent today. These are trying times for our society as we continue to struggle with the realities of racial inequality and resentment, wholesale gun violence, widespread mistrust and disillusionment with the criminal justice system. We grieve again over the senseless loss of so much life and the fear, the suspicion, and the hatred that engenders it. If we feel sick at heart over the events of last week, perhaps that's completely understandable. But may we hope against hope that we have perhaps reached a turning point, a communal recognition, as Mahatma Gandhi once put it, that the ethos of an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. These are the words of Rebecca Parker. There is an embrace of kindness that encompasses all of life, even yours. And while there is injustice, insensitivity, and evil, there moves a wholly disturbance, a benevolent rage, a revolutionary love that is protesting and urging and insisting that all which is sacred will not be defiled. Those who bless the world live their life as a gesture of thanks for this beauty, this kindness, and this rage. I invite you to rise and bow to your spirit for the lighting of our chalice. Please join me in reading the words of affirmation printed in your program. It is eternity now. We are in the midst of it. It is about us in the sunshine. We are in it as the butterfly in the light laden air. Nothing has to come. It is now. Now is eternity. Now is the immortal life. And now on this fine July Sunday, please turn to your neighbor in exchange with Emma Warme greeting. Please be seated. And if there are some children that would like to come to the front for the message for all ages, I would invite you warmly to do so. Once in a while, we actually have some older people that want to be kids for a few minutes. So this is a story about someone with a very long and strange name, Avalokita Shvara. Avalokita Shvara. We're going to call her Avalokita for short, because I can pronounce that throughout the whole story. And this is a story out of the religious tradition called Buddhism. And Avalokita was born from a ray of light. She came into being from a ray of light that came from the right eye of her father, who was named Amitabha. And Amitabha was also called boundless radiance, because his light had created everything that we know the entire universe. And at her birth, Avalokita immediately uttered this sacred phrase she could already talk when she was born, om mani padmahum, which means hail the great wisdom jewel at the heart of the lotus. Now much later after she'd gotten bigger and having learned much about why the world works the way that it does, Avalokita looked around the whole world and could see that there were many people that were unhappy and they were suffering and they were in pain. And she said to herself, I've grown so much in wisdom. I have so much knowledge and I have so many special powers that I've reached the point where I can leave this earth and go someplace else where I'll always be peaceful and always feel happy. But she said, even though I can do this, I don't want to do that because as I've gotten older, I've not only gotten smarter, I've also become more kind and more compassionate. And I have this really strong need inside of me to save all those who are hurting and in pain from any further suffering. I cannot watch these beings suffer because I feel like I'm suffering when I see them suffer. And so Avalokita made a promise, a vow, and she told her father, Amitabha, the boundless radiance, that I am going to ease the suffering and the pain of all created beings at all levels of reality and I will not stop until I have completed this task and if I don't do it, may my head be split open like a coconut. And so Avalokita began her work. And first, she went to a different realm than where we live on earth. It was called the hell realm. And she wanted to relieve the suffering of all those who were dwelling in the hell realm. And those were people who had at one time been here on earth, but they'd done so many bad things that they ended up in this place where there was a lot of suffering and a lot of pain. And Avalokita went to the hell realm and she used all of her magical powers and her sounds and in just three days, six hours and 23 minutes, she had removed the suffering from all the people that were in the hell realm, pretty quick work. And so then she moved on to another realm called the realm of the Preta or the hungry ghosts. And she made pretty good progress there but then she kinda looked back at the hell realm and she could see that the hell realm was filling up with more souls more quickly than she could empty them out again because there were so many people doing bad things here on earth that they were ending up going to the hell realm. And she thought to herself, I can't keep up with this even with all my special powers. And so she sat down and she said, I quit, I can't do this. Well, at this point, Amitabha, her father, remembered Avalokita's vow and he tapped her on the top of the head and her head split open just like a coconut. That caused her great pain but her father said, Avalokita, if you wanna get rid of this headache then right now you can go to this realm of peace and happiness and not have to worry about all these people suffering anymore. Your headache will be gone. Avalokita thought for a minute, she said, no, I can't do this. Tapping me on the head has knocked some sense in to me. When I look back at all the worlds and I see all the suffering, my heartache is so much greater than my headache. I need to keep on working. And her father, Amitabha, was so impressed with Avalokita's determination that what did he do? He hit around the head a few more times. And each time he did so, a new head appeared, sometimes with three faces on it and each face radiated with all of this kindness and this compassionate energy enough to liberate people from all the realms. And then another amazing thing happened. Avalokita began to sprout new arms and hands. He had two at first and then there were four and then there were six and eight. And after a while, there were a thousand arms and hands, each one of them brilliant like a ray of light. And in the center of each one of those hands, there was an eye that could see and respond in love and compassion to all the world's suffering masses. And then in addition to this, Avalokita now had the ability to send out this compassionate and kindly energy out of herself into the world, some of it coming into we human beings so that we could help to save others from suffering. And so from that time forward, there was still pain and suffering in the world, but there was also now all of this kindness and compassion and the possibility that all people might eventually experience a greater measure of peace and happiness. So that's the story of Avalokita Shivara and a Buddhist story. It's a very famous story in Buddhism and I hope you've enjoyed it and that you have a great time and summer fun this morning. We're gonna sing you out with our next hymn. Thank you for listening. So several months ago, I received from Bruce Meredith an essay in defense of Boogeberry that intrigued me and that ultimately I thought might be a fitting subject for a Sunday celebration given that in my 28 years here, I've never addressed the topic of purgatory. And so Bruce did after some thought and deliberation agree that he would be a part of this service and I'd like to invite him up to share his thoughts on Boogeberry. Good morning. So I guess we go on a field trip this nice Sunday morning to Boogeberry, place that not many people know about. I didn't intend to watch. I was just trying to get to the weather channel. Unfortunately, I couldn't get past the spectacle. A bevy of journalists aiming their cameras and commentary at a closed door. Mike Huckabee was standing guard. According to the commentators, he wanted to make sure Ted Cruz didn't steal his show. The TV scroll said Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who went to jail rather than permit her staff to issue marriage licenses to gay couples would soon emerge from jail. Less than 10 commercials later, the door opened and a large crowd cheered and hoisted their black and white signs. Remarried after three divorces, Miss Davis wasn't the ideal spokesperson for defending the sanctity of marriage. But several years earlier, she had renounced the devil and accepted Jesus Christ as her savior. Having professed her faith, Huckabee let us know that Jesus had forgiven her sins and that God didn't hold grudges. Just asked the myriad of politicians who stood before other TV cameras accompanied by their somber wives and proclaimed their faith in God's grace in unbounded mercy. Since God had forgiven them, so should the voters. Maybe they were right. I hadn't studied the Bible as much as they claimed. I went to Catholic schools where the Bible was read by prescription only. Instead, we studied Catholic dogma. Even as a first grader, I was instructed to recite obtuse matters of theology and then cross-examine by stern-looking nuns wearing outfits that are now mainly seen in Star War bars. We did our best, but most of us just repeated words. Words we didn't understand. But early on, I learned that forgiveness was tricky. In most cases, it required confession, penance, and most often, a trip to Bougalberry. When I told my parents about Bougalberry, they laughed and wanted to know why I thought I would end up there. So I explained that after death, people went to heaven, hell, or Bougalberry. My parents were shrewd enough, however, to know no matter how good or bad a person was, no one spent an eternity in an obscured jam. They quickly determined that I was referring to Purgatory. According to the nuns who taught 50 antsy kids, trapped in rows of small desks, Purgatory was a place where good but sometimes naughty children were seared in flames before entering heaven. With some nuns, the pain was intense. With others, it was more like a really bad sunburn. As my religious education progressed, I learned more about Purgatory, even though hell and the sins that got you there got top billing. It seemed Purgatory was a place for purification. For those who had committed mortal sins, religious felonies, that had been confessed and forgiven, are venial sins, misdemeanors that hadn't. Once purified, you headed straight to heaven. Except for the flames, Purgatory seemed like a reasonable idea, like taking a shower before going to a really nice restaurant. But then things really got technical. You could get out sooner if individuals prayed or had masses said for you before or even after you died. But the surest way to get to heaven was to cash in your accumulated indulgences. A plenary indulgence was a prize to get out of jail free card, allowing the holder to bypass Purgatory entirely under certain circumstances. I didn't fully understand the accounting, but I prayed to bank easy to get indulgences. Simple phrases like Jesus, Mary, Joseph, said reverentially could earn you 300 days early release, more than enough to compensate for the venial sins of saying the same words in anger. When I got to a Jesuit high school, however, purgatory and indulgences, like my old baseball cards, were mainly confined to the closet. Purgatory was still there, but if you had a good lawyer, especially a Jesuit trained one, you didn't have to spend much hard time. Good works, not indulgences, were emphasized. It wasn't until I got to Georgetown, a Jesuit college, that I learned some Christians didn't think purgatory existed at all. In fact, many thought it was a medieval Ponzi scheme. According to those Christians, God only gave pass-fail tests with no makeups. Grace, not good works, was the key to getting into heaven. By the time I left Georgetown, my theology professors, Rand andquisitor types, had convinced me that much of what the nuns had taught me was either wrong or a muddle. So purgatory and its indulgences were at best a footnote to my critique of my birth religion. It wasn't until about four years ago that I again gave Googleberry renewed consideration. I had developed a close friendship with a card-carrying Calvinist who loved to talk about religion. For the first time, I discovered the true hatred some Protestants had for purgatory. It was despised more than held. Who knew? Since I was no longer practicing law, I had lots of time to vote to arcane religious discussions. My friend's main critique of purgatory was biblical. No mention of it by name anywhere in either the Old or New Testament. Worse, the church was belittling the concepts of grace. You didn't earn grace, and it certainly couldn't be bought or sold. God gave it freely whether you deserved it or not. Just look at the poor laborers in the vineyard in the New Testament. Those who came to work early got paid exactly the same as those that sauntered in just before closing time. According to him, God could save anyone she damn well pleased. As a lawyer, I recognized his arguments. He was a strict constructionist, and his case was solid. My friend had convinced me until I reread the Catholic grief in support of purgatory. To my surprise, I discovered the Catholic case wasn't hopeless. Maybe the nuns were right after all. There was language in both the Old and New Testament that could be read as referring to purgatory. As long as you knew where to look and weren't a stickler for detail, the church was merely construing an ambiguous document to find God's true intent. Catholics just needed to find a liberal judge. More important to me, the original purgatory was well intended. The early church theologians wanted to provide a type of order and logic and predictability they saw in God's creation. They mused about limbo to make sure innocent but unbaptized children did not go to hell. And they mapped out purgatory in order to provide both hope and justice to the imperfect. It wasn't their fault that centuries later, a syndicate of slick calerical venture capitalists decided to use purgatory as the centerpiece of a complicated indulgence marketing scheme. Of course, we now know the universe isn't so orderly after all. Maybe grace and forgiveness were meant to be as unpredictable and chaotic as clusters of atoms swirling around. My friend's concept of grace, almost worry-free and automatic, created its own set of problems. Without the need of penance or purification, grace can become a type of ritualistic, no fuss, no bother, plenary indulgence. Just as in the pre-lutheran church, individuals could book a free passage to heaven regardless of their deeds. To me, purgatory could best be seen as a shrewd early attempt at restorative justice, a primitive way to make humans understand more fully that bad behavior has consequences and that sometimes forgiveness must be earned. But even those fond of purification must recognize that purgatory has a dubious past. It was basically a type of a spiritual debtor's prison. If purgatory is going to work as a place of restorative justice, it needs to be reimagined. Perhaps it should be renamed Boogalberry. For starters, no one could take a place named Boogalberry too seriously. So maybe Catholics and Protestants would be less fervent in their competing dogmas and find more common ground. The new, improved Boogalberry would recognize God's grace, but also acknowledge that human failures have consequences and that God is no one's fool. Purgatory would be a place to relearn, in a community setting, the golden rule, the importance of, and the importance of humility. Perhaps if Boogalberry became accepted dogma, individuals would focus more on their actions and less on their professions of faith, think more critically about justice and how their actions affect others, and become more compassionate. Who knows, Boogalberry might give me a chance to meet Kim Davis and to discuss the Bible, divine justice, and the full existence of preachers and politicians who claim to know exactly how God thinks. Thank you so much. Absolutely lovely. Jose of Baloo was a high-profile universalist minister in the early decades of the 19th century. He was a preacher known for his homespun but instructive stories, and Baloo was also a penetrating theologian whose Treatise on Atonement, published in 1805, enjoyed a wide readership and drew many into the universalist fold. But Baloo's persuasive power is not withstanding. In orthodox circles, the universalists were the objects of withering criticism, the most dangerous heresy in America, its detractors maintained. Because by denying the existence of hellfire and eternal punishment, and by holding out this prospect of universal salvation, Baloo and the universalists effectively removed the chief incentive for men and women to avoid sin and to live good and upright lives, spare the rod and spoil the child, so to speak. Now the universalists politely disagreed with their adversaries, pointing out that the threat of future punishment had been in the past an ineffective deterrent to sin. And they argued further that when people are really convinced of God's love, and when they know that they are recipients of the Lord's forgiveness and compassion, then they will be moved to be more compassionate and forgiving themselves. Moreover, Baloo asserted, sin is inherently unpleasant. So people simply need to be convinced that righteousness brings an ample reward in this present life. Righteousness brings a lot more happiness than sin. Hosea Baloo used the following story to emphasize this point. It seems that one day he was riding through the countryside, it was a Saturday afternoon, and he was on his way to a small town where he was scheduled to preach the next day. Now after a while, he was joined by another rider who happened to be a hard-shell Baptist minister. He was headed in the same direction, so the two of them began to banter to chat back and forth, and ultimately Baloo began to share his ideas and convictions about the afterlife to which the Baptist minister responded. Brother Baloo, this is the problem that I see with your position. If I were a universalist, I could this moment hit you over the head, steal your horse, and still be assured of a place in heaven, to which Baloo is alleged to have responded. My good Baptist brother, if you were a universalist, that idea would never even occur to you. All the universalists of that time period accepted the doctrine of universal salvation, that's where the name came from, an idea that according to biblical scholars, the apostle Paul and the author of John's Gospel also found attractive. But Hosea Baloo was something of an outlier, even in his own denomination, because you see, Baloo did not believe in post-mortem punishment of any sort, and so he was known as an ultra universalist, or a death and glory universalist. You die, you go directly to glory. Hell, Baloo maintained, is a condition that we create and that we impose on ourselves here in this world, not in some future world. It is as much the nature of sin, he said, to torment the mind as it is the nature of fire to burn our flesh. Sin deprives us of every rational enjoyment insofar as it captivates our minds. It was never able to furnish one drop of cordial for the soul. Sin's tender mercies are cruelty and her breasts of consolation are gall and wormwood, Baloo said. Or as William Shakespeare put it, hell is empty, all the devils are right here. And so hell is merely a useful metaphor, as Baloo would have it, for the pangs of a bad conscience, for the suffering that is caused by unslaked desire. Sin produces no peace, no trustworthy pleasure, and certainly no lasting satisfaction. But even among universalists, this was not the prevailing outlook. Jacob Wood was one of ultra universalism's most vociferous detractors, and in his brief essay on the doctrine of future retribution, would invade against both eternal punishment and those who would eliminate, like Baloo, all future punishment. And the latter, the ultra universalist, he wrote, do give encouragement to sin. I will not call those who believe in this system stupid animals, but I do think their opinion is very erroneous. The gross absurdities to which the doctrine of immediate universal salvation is liable, and the vicious effects which it is calculated to produce, render it a doctrine justly deserving of disapprobation and contempt. And so Reverend Wood and his allies came to be known in universalist circles as restorationists, because they believed that the human soul would only be restored to a place of glory after a period of punishment and purification. And yet, with their belief in the unlimited goodness and mercy of God, the restorationists rejected the whole orthodox notion that the almighty himself punished people for their sins. Their position was in fact much closer to that of the Hindus and the Buddhists for whom karma, the cosmic law of moral cause and effect, controlled every human being's outcome. And thus Charles Hudson, a primary opponent of Hosea Baloo, announced that any pain or any torment experienced by immortal beings after death will be, as he put it, the immediate fruit of that guilt of which the mind is conscious in consequence of their transgressions. He went on to say, It is reasonable to suppose that those who die impenitent will enter into a state of misery that consists not of hellfire, but of anxiety, guilt, remorse, which will continue until repentance or reformation is achieved. Now for their part, the Unitarians of the early 19th century and prior to the merger of our two denominations, the Unitarians exhibited a mixture of opinions. According to the Reverend James Walker of Charleston, Massachusetts, most of his Unitarian co-religionists eschewed the whole Calvinist, Puritan doctrine of everlasting punishment. They didn't want anything to do with that. But some held that souls who were guilty of serious crimes, who were unreformed, unrepentant, they would simply be wiped out, annihilated. Other Unitarians entertained the beliefs that were more or less in keeping with the Universalist restorations, that there would be a limited period of chastisement. Many early Unitarians expected post-mortem suffering to be consequential and indefinite as to its duration. But in point of fact, all of these forebears of our Unitarian and Universalists embraced the concept of purgatory, although they did not give it that name. But the Universalists and the Roman Catholics were hardly the first to speculate about and to describe, sometimes in very vivid detail, a place of limited but significant suffering. Because throughout history, east and west, people have bought into this idea because they simply could not conceive of an indifferent amoral universe, a place where brute strength and lethal cunning would have the last word. That was unacceptable. People have always needed to believe that the universe possessed a moral as well as a physical texture. And so these doctrines of compensation were developed. Theories which assured that no matter how long it might take, the requirements of justice would be fulfilled. And that we should not expect a fair apportionment of reward and punishment here in this single brief lifetime. But if human beings possess immortal souls, eventually they will be held accountable. Everyone will receive their just desserts. It could be said that our species possesses an instinct for justice which demands that a cosmic accounting take place at one time or another. As the legend of Avalokita indicated, which you heard earlier, Purgatory also figures prominently in at least some schools of Buddhism. If you accumulate enough bad karma, the Lotus Sutra promises, you can expect to be reborn in the Avicii hell, this Dante-esque chamber of torture and deprivation. Now one of the common misconceptions that Westerners often carry about Hindu-Buddhist teachings on reincarnation is that it precludes the experience of either heaven or hell. But in fact, many Buddhist and Hindu sects hold that this earthly plane is but one dimension of a multi-layered reality that includes worlds that are both much more pleasant and much more punishing than this one. But wherever one happens to end up in Buddhism, there is always the prospect of redemption and additional opportunities to improve one's karmic destiny. In India, Heinrich Zimmer writes, heaven and hell are purgatorial stations representing degrees of realization experienced on the way to ultimate transcendence of all qualitative existence whatsoever. That being said, some contemporary Buddhists have substituted a strictly psychological reality for those older metaphysical concepts. Aggression, violence, selfishness, untame desire, moral impurity, these are behaviors, they say, that lead to self-hatred that cut us off from our fellow human beings here in this world. This is the root of hell, Martin Lowenthal writes, resisting the flow of the universe and feeling utterly separate from it. That's the kind of hell that we manufacture for ourselves in this existence and so we come full circle for this solution aligns almost perfectly with Hosea Baloo's ultra-universalism. Still, important distinctions between these ideas and those held by traditional Roman Catholics remain. Indulgences, those get-out-of-jail-free maneuvers, they played no role whatsoever in classic universalism and God's infinite graciousness received considerably greater emphasis in both unitarianism and universalism. But as Bruce noted in his remarks, the Catholic Church did map out purgatory in order to provide both hope and justice to the imperfect, which is pretty much the same argument that the proponents of restorationism put forward in 19th century universalism. We may have more in common than we have apart. Today, the vast majority of unitarian universalists give very little credence to theories and sentiments about heaven or hell or purgatory. But if it does happen that we do possess immortal souls, and there has to be a place where we pay our dues, may it utilize that humane process of restorative justice and, as Bruce alluded, may it be popularly known as Boogalberry. Everything you ever wanted to know about purgatory and Boogalberry. And now it is time for the giving and the receiving of our offertory. Your gifts will be used to support this magnificent institution. Please be generous. We gather each week as a community of memory and of hope, and through this time and place we bring our whole and sometimes our broken selves. We carry with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past, seeking here a place where they might be received and celebrated and shared. And of course, our hearts are all heavy today as we think about the losses sustained by families in St. Paul and Baton Rouge and in Dallas, and we certainly send our warmest thoughts and our prayers to those communities today. We would also note that our friend John Woods underwent a knee replacement on July the 1st, and after four days he was released to his home where he is slowly recovering. And I was aware of this because he sent me an email prior to this service saying that he watched the first service and enjoys the opportunity to be able to have live stream services in his home while he's recovering from his surgery. And we also would like to share with her friends and family a very happy birthday for Claire Box. And I'm not sure who put that in, so happy birthday, Claire. And Claire has been very, very active and currently leads our meditation group on Tuesday evenings. So thank you so much, Claire. And then we were sad to learn after last Sunday's worship services that our good friend Mara McDonald, longtime member here, very active in the congregation, passed away unexpectedly in her home. Probably from congestive heart failure, she had been not feeling well, been very tired in recent days, but then again did pass away at the age of 67. Meeting this afternoon with her brother and sister-in-law to plan a memorial service that will probably be held this coming week, and we'll certainly get word out when that date and time have been established. We have one other issue with regard to Mara's passing that is of concern. She had two animals in her home, a cat, which was very quickly adopted, but then also a 12 to 13-year-old Rottweiler German Shepherd mix by the name of Macy. And Macy has pain in her hips for which she is receiving medication. And she also has a mass of tumor in her abdomen that is likely cancerous, and that, let's say, will probably shorten her life, and she may only be around for eight to 12 more months. But she is currently at the Humane Society, and I know that Mara would be ever so grateful if there were someone that had a home without young children and without other pets that might be able to see Macy through her final months on this earth. So if you have any knowledge of someone or you yourself would take in this very sweet dog for a limited period of time, then please be in touch with me. In addition to those mentioned, we would acknowledge any other unarticulated joys or sorrows that may have occurred to you as I was sharing the four-gallot going. We hold those with equal concern. Yes, Nancy. So who did Nancy? Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Our thoughts and our prayers are with you. Lost or ten-year-old daughter. We're so sorry. It was a community. We share your sorrow. And so let us sit silently for just a moment or two 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. I invite you to rise once more in body and spirit as we sing our closing hymn, number 341. We receive fragments of holiness, glimpses of eternity, brief moments of insight. Let us gather them up for the precious gifts that they are and renewed by their grace. Move with curiosity and confidence into the unknown. Blessed be and amen. Please be seated for the post.