 Please join me for a few moments of centering silence. Please remain seated as we sing our in-gathering hymn, which is number 132, and the words also appear in your order of service. 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 to gather we seek to be a force for good in the world. My name is Karen Rose Gredler, and on behalf of the congregation I would like to extend a special welcome to any visitors and guests who are with us today. We are a welcoming congregation, so whomever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life's journey, we celebrate your presence among us. Visitors are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service, and to look for people holding teal-colored stoneware mugs. These are FUS members knowledgeable about our programs and community life, and they look forward to the chance of speaking with you this morning. You may also stop by our information table out in the commons to find out more information about upcoming events and programs at the Society. In this lively, acoustical environment, it can sometimes be a bit difficult to hear what's happening in our services. So we remind you that our child haven back in that corner and the commons area behind the auditorium are excellent places to go when anyone needs to talk or move around a bit. The service can still be seen and heard well from those areas. We also have hearing devices available. Please see one of the ushers if you think that might be helpful to you. This would also be an excellent time to turn off any electronic equipment that might disrupt the service, including cute little cell phone ringers. Experience guides are generally available to give building tours after each service. I'm not sure if we have one for this service. Anybody want to claim to be a guide and willing to lead a—well, we'll see. We'll try to come up with one by the end of the service. If you would like to learn more about this sustainably designed addition or our National Landmark Meeting House across the parking lot, please meet on this side, your left of the auditorium near the big windows over there after the service and hopefully if you are there, he or she will come as a guide. Now I'd like to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly. For this service, that's Dan back there, right? Not Marine Friend, but she's with us in spirit, but thank you, Dan. Our lay minister is Ann Smiley. Our greeters, Arlene Lorne and Lenskobi, I believe. Our ushers are Ann Smiley, Rick Debede, Karen Jager and Patricia Becker. Hospitality, those folks making coffee back in the kitchen, are Blaise Thompson and Jeannie Hills. The lovely flowers on either side of the podium are in honor and memory of Nancy and Bob Dot, beloved members, both of whom we lost recently. Nancy Webster was responsible for plant care for today. Also please note the announcements in our red floors insert to your order of service with lots of information about upcoming events at the society and more information about today and what's going on. This weekend, again, we welcome you. We hope today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart and stir your spirit. In this quiet hour, may our spirits be renewed, and in this gathering of kindred spirits, may we be ready to extend ourselves to those in need and with trust receive the hand that is offered to us. In this community of ideals, may we remember the principles that guide us and reflect upon those things that give our life greater meaning, renewing our dedication to serve the highest that we know. May our minds be open during this time to new insights. May our hearts be moved to greater compassion as we give thanks for the lives that we are blessed to share. I invite you to rise in body and spirit for the lighting of the chalice. Please join me in the words of affirmation, printed in this morning's program. I believe that unarmed truth and conditional love will have the final word in reality. I have the audacity to believe that people's everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered people have torn down, other centered people can build up. And in the spirit of that other centeredness, please exchange a warm and friendly greeting with your neighbor. If you seated, now I'd like to invite our children to come forward for the message for all ages. Time to go to sleep on the carpet. Okay. Well, welcome everybody. I see at least one of you has brought a toy from home maybe. And does everybody have a toy at home somewhere? No toys? I find that hard to believe. Do you have a lot of toys? Yeah? You have too many toys? How do you know when you have too many toys? When you, more than 100, you have too many toys when you can't play with all your toys, right? Yeah, that's what I thought. Well, this is a story that is kind of like that when you're kind of looking around and saying, hmm, I wonder whether I've got enough or too many toys. So Simon the Fiddler, he had a cozy little house and he had everything that he thought he needed. He had a chair to sit in. You got a chair? Okay. He had a bed to sleep in. He had food to eat. Clothes to wear. I see you've all got clothes on. He had a soft hat, okay, and a toy animal and he had good friends and most of all, he had a beautiful fiddle, like a violin whose voice was as sweet as honey. And for a long time, Simon was perfectly happy in his small house. He took care of his house and he spent lots of time with his friends and he played his fiddle to his heart's content, made beautiful music. But then one day Simon was looking around his little house and he thought, I don't have enough. I want more. So Simon got himself another chair and another and another and then a few more and soon Simon had many chairs but Simon was still thinking to himself, I don't have enough. So he got another hat and another and another and then a few more and soon Simon had a whole bunch of hats but still Simon thought to himself, I don't have enough. So he got himself another animal toy and another another and then he got a few more and soon Simon had many toys and for a while he really enjoyed having more until he noticed that his house was getting a rather crowded and in fact it got so crowded he could hardly move around. At that point Simon kind of missed his simple life. He missed taking care of his simple house. He missed spending time with his friends and playing his beautiful fiddle. He had all this stuff he had to take care of. He said, I've got too much. So he set up a long table and he put all the chairs he'd gotten around the table and he put a hat and a toy animal next to each one of those chairs on the table and then he decorated his house and he baked a cake and when everything was ready he invited all of his friends to come over for a wonderful party and when Simon's friends arrived they said, Simon hello it's been so long and they all sat down on the chairs and they put on the hats and they played with those toy animals and it was a wonderful party everyone talked and they sang and they danced even dancing on the table and they ate cake until only the crumbs were left but the party finally was over and the friends began taking off their hats and putting down the toy animals but but Simon said no no don't do that please keep the hats on your head keep those animals in your arms you take them home with you and you take the chairs too because I don't want to have more anymore well thank you thank you everyone said really surprised this really was a wonderful party and then Simon the Fiddler breathed a big sigh of relief he had just enough and not too much and with that he was perfectly happy again so a question here of course is how much is too much or too little and what is just enough something each person's got to decide for themselves isn't it that's right too much might be more than 100 toys it could be well thank you for listening to my story about Simon the Fiddler we're gonna sing you out now to your classes with him number 315 please be seated we do have some special guests this morning from the UW Madison Odyssey project we have had participants from the Odyssey project with us in the past we always enjoy hearing what they have to say and they're going to be sharing two original compositions Char Braxton Keena Atkinson welcome thank you for having us I'm a graduate of the UW Odyssey project my poem is poverty the access to basic needs clean water the water that flows from my faucet is contaminated the lake the oceans do people and animals really matter shelter look around the schools the churches and yes even Madison the Odyssey program has women men and children that need housing high rent temporary shelters unjust application procedures our administration just empty chatter chatter chatter food processed and non nutritious dollar store budget I make too much money the state has cut me off food stamps and my kids are crying and hungry did I ask for this cold dark cool and new poverty in America no no no I will teach my kids that you can change and teach a world that sees you as a victim of poverty because we walk with dignity love and clarity my name is Keena Atkinson and I'm reading a piece that I wrote called rich poor woman rich is better than poor until the cost to be rich is paid and intoxicated blows to my teenage body kicks and fists delivered by the father of my child soaked in alcoholic rage please and screams for help absorbed and unanswered hopeless tears landing on eggshells that I didn't tiptoe on gently enough leave I can't leave that's impossible no longer was I his girlfriend I'd become his property leaving was never an option I never imagined a life outside of stable and unpredictable abuse as a little girl we snuck out in the middle of the night leaving everything including the state we lived in to escape my abusive father and there I was just years again just years later in the same cycle with my own child this time rich is better than poor when starting over as a myth if I leave him he will find me and kill me there is nowhere to hide nowhere to go being rich seems better when I was poor in my esteem poor in my self-worth poor in my understanding of love when I left him I had nothing when I finally left him no money no plan and eventually no home just me and my toddler starting over with nothing but freedom I was poor but for the first time I felt rich dinners at a soup kitchen showers in a gym writing again exploring talents and hobbies laughing without guilt smiling without fear none of that cost me a dime and as a poor woman free was within my budget having say so over my body every day poor in my pockets rich in my joy don't pity me because I am now happy and free either I was brave enough to leave or I had nothing else to lose facing the unknown and starting from scratch growing in confidence creativity and boldness every time the sun rises on my skin and every time I go to sleep without worrying about that drunken boogie man stumbling through my front door I know that I made the right choice to start over and be poor everything in life comes with a sacrifice a side effect or a cost breaking this cycle of abuse was my choice poor isn't my name and it doesn't define me poor happens to be a side effect of generations of domestic abuse untreated mental health issues turned into substance abuse my single mom doing her best the best she could to raise her daughters alone with few resources not being able to teach us something she didn't know herself and me not being able to fix something that I didn't even know was wrong rich is better than poor but poor is one of the side effects of a bigger deeper issue that started generations ago I'm just working relentlessly to break free from the cycles in this journey of growth knowledge and purpose I have become a rich poor woman knowing no limits I'm a rich poor woman breaking cycles and chains thank you sure for joining us again and sharing their experiences and their thoughts and also to the festival choir for gracing our auditorium with their wonderful music once more it's always good to have you all here the story of Siddhartha Gautama's sacrifice of a privileged princely princely life for a life of physical austerity that's a familiar story confronted once he had left the palace of his father confronted with the spectacle of poverty and illness and aging and death Siddhartha set out to discover the underlying source of all this human suffering and and how it might be remedied and Siddhartha like many before and after him was initially convinced that only by literally killing off all the human passions denying himself every aspect of physical comfort and pleasure only then could a person achieve perfect peace and equanimity and permanent release from life's travails and so rigorous did his aesthetic practices become that it very nearly cost Siddhartha his life and so discovering him severely malnourished and in a semi stupor a passerby revived him with an offering of milk and gradually he regained sufficient strength to continue his spiritual journey and as we know it was not long before Siddhartha achieved enlightenment and became the awakened one the Buddha and at that point he eschewed the aesthetic path and he advocated a more moderate approach to spiritual seeking what he called the middle way or as Simon the fiddler put it just enough and not too much the 19th century transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau was of much the same mind advocating what he called voluntary poverty and Thoreau argued that if one had just secured the basics the basics in terms of food and shelter and clothing and fuel at that point the individual would be in a position like the Buddha to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and the prospect of success and besides bestowing individual benefits Thoreau claimed that this voluntary poverty could also be a boon to society at large I am convinced he wrote that if all men all men were to live simply then thievery and robbery would be unknown because these take place only in communities where some have more than is sufficient while others have not enough now Thoreau and the Buddha could perhaps be described as moderates in this regard but others have been moved to make more extreme material sacrifices like Siddhartha St. Francis of Assisi was born into wealth and privilege he was the sign of a rich merchant family in medieval Italy and indeed the whole prospect of poverty or disease frightened Francis and he would go out of his way on his business trips to avoid coming into any contact whatsoever with members of medieval societies underclass but then then legend has it he received this revelation Francis disembodied voice told him Francis everything that you have loved and desired in the flesh it will be your duty now to despise and to hate and the voice which Francis took to be God's voice went on to reassure Francis that he would come to abhor the comforts and that he would find his true delight among the ranks of the poor whose cause he should then make his own and thus encouraged in this way Francis took that leap of faith renounced all of his wealth and his status and founded this order the Franciscans that was dedicated to serving the poor and paradoxically he did then experience a freedom from fear and a joy that he had never previously known now when he died at the hands of an assassin some 70 years ago Mohandas K Gandhi's personal possessions consisted of a pair of eyeglasses sandals a spinning wheel pocket watch a rice bowl and a walking stick sometimes described as the ultimate minimalist Gandhi steadily reduced his food requirements until he was able to consume as he put it the most nonviolent vegetarian meal that the poorest human being can afford that's what he lived on like Francis Gandhi's choice of clothing typically nothing more than a loincloth or a doti was also dictated by his desire to live in this state of holy poverty and for him the doti symbolized his solidarity with the poor because as long as India's poor were kept naked because of British imperialism Gandhi proclaimed that he would wear nothing more than the poorest Indian could afford even if he were called into the presence of the king of England both Gandhi and Francis were God possessed and they they felt called by a higher power to embrace a life of poverty I know that God is more often found in the lowliest of his creatures than in the high and mighty Gandhi explained and I am struggling to reach the status of these hence my passion for service to the suppressed classes now what's noteworthy about these several examples of what I call holy poverty is that each of them features to a greater or lesser degree a social as well as a personal spiritual dimension the rose concerns about growing economic inequality in the 1840s and how it affected human relationships those concerns are equally relevant today if people would just recognize that less is more and if they would be more willing to work for a fairer distribution of wealth we would all be better off thorough predicted Francis Gandhi they chose to be poor ostensibly for religious reasons but this is not to say that because they chose to be poor that they sanctioned the poverty both of them deplored the plight of the dispossessed and they used their stature as holy figures to combat the stigma of poverty and to underscore our common humanity both of these men initiated movements that were meant to improve the lives of the poor and to shame the rich for his part the Buddha was convinced from his own personal experience that want and hunger are an impediment to spiritual practice contemporary research appears to bear him out few years ago researchers at the University of Minnesota recruited a few healthy volunteers who would be willing to reduce their caloric intake to just slightly above the starvation level and the subjects later described their experience as horrific not just because of the physical discomfort but because they said food became the only thing that they thought about or cared about scarcity as cast Sunstein summarize the outcome scarcity captures the mind this is especially true for children we sometimes wonder why academic success often eludes kids from impoverished families well there is of course lack of stable housing overwhelmed parents those are part of the reasons but but so is hunger hunger makes a child feel cold all the time Ursula Lageen recently wrote hunger makes a child stupid hunger makes a child sick and then she goes on to note that one school aged child in three in this country cannot count on three meals a day one in three but despite the incredible wealth at our disposal far in excess of anything that Francis or even Gandhi could possibly have imagined there's neither much sympathy for the least of those among us or much in the way of an active ongoing effort to improve their lot these days it's hard to imagine isn't it any any same politician mounting a war on poverty as Lyndon Baines Johnson did in 1964 when the national poverty level was about the same as it is today this is what I call unholy poverty it's unchosen and it is usually inadvertent and yet there is a widespread feeling among many Americans and even among many poor people themselves that that if you are thus disadvantaged you have only yourself to blame 60% of Americans surveyed in 2014 described the poor as lazy 60% that was an attitude shared by only 24% of Europeans even more surprising given Jesus is often often expressed concern for the plight of the poor even more surprising is that 46% of American Christians and 53% of white evangelical Christians fault the poor for their lack of effort you're just not trying hard enough other critics have argued that the poor act financially irresponsibly like Iowa Center Chuck Grassley who attributed the failure of low income individuals to climb the economic ladder to their quote habit of spending all their money on booze women and movies now although it does exist reckless spending is hardly the rule among those mired in poverty more often low-income Americans have to make some very hard choices week in and week out whether to pay the rent the utility company or spring for a bag of nutritious groceries some 58 million American workers earn less than $15 an hour 42 million of those earn less than a poverty wage of $12 an hour 12 million working Americans are dependent on payday lenders and absorb those huge interest payments in order to meet their basic needs Matthew Desmond writes in his feel that surprise winning book evicted that exploitation thrives when it comes to the essentials these loans are typically used to pay for life's necessities not for its little luxuries of those who hold poor people responsible for their status will often point to those prominent individuals in our society who overcame these formidable obstacles and ascended into the ranks of the middle class or even the upper class and so they will say look at that person it's all about willpower and perseverance and making the most of one's God-given gifts and there is no denying that a limited number of impressive men and women do exactly this thus lending credence to that Hori Horatio Alger story the story of the self-made man or woman the Horatio Alger was a product of 19th century fiction a character invented in fact by a former Unitarian minister so yes I mean to some extent we're absolutely correct your individual advancement is possible in the United States as our two readers char and and Kina demonstrated before I mean they are working hard to get where they have gotten today and to move even further but when it comes to overall social mobility in this country we rank at the bottom compared to other so-called wealthy nations at the bottom as Jeff Madrick recently observed the more privileged parents are the more likely their children will be upwardly mobile and the rest are typically left behind and that gap is steadily widening and there are reasons why it has become increasingly difficult for impoverished families to improve upon their situation these days the truly destitute face what the social historian Earl Shores describes as a surround of force a surround of force it was described earlier in the two poems by Kina and char this is what Shora says their environment contains so many inhibiting forces hunger abuse isolation exploitative landlords police drugs illness racism that poor people literally cannot find an exit and in many cases they have ceased believing that any avenues of escape exist and so the Milwaukee families that Matthew Desmond followed over a period of time in his study of eviction in that city that's a case in point and he shows that when a family loses their home because they cannot afford the rent payments which typically consume 50 60 75% of their take-home pay then it creates a whole cascade of other problems furniture clothing books will all be lost in the process support networks will be sundered schooling will be disrupted and once you've been evicted the tenant is considered to be a poor risk by other landlords and so their applications will be rejected at that point the affected individual may then have no option but to move into substandard housing in a dangerous neighborhood which Desmond says is a blow to one's psychological health and engenders fatigue and hopelessness are these conditions affect not just people of color in our inner cities but poor whites in deteriorating rural communities as well surveys indicate that members of this particular cohort are losing confidence quickly confidence in their ability to alter their conditions and these folks poor whites represent two-thirds of America's poor and they are now the most pessimistic of all racial and ethnic groups so in the end poverty not only captures the mind it kills the human spirit now what makes today's poverty so unholy is not just the mental and the physical suffering not just the reduced lifespans that it engenders but the realization that those who have the power to create a different scenario a more equitable culture that the people in charge just don't care so it's almost as if many of our leaders have been channeling for the past decade or two and Rand who put it this way in his inner essay entitled man's rights she wrote there are no economic rights there are no collective rights there are no public interest rights the right to life means that a man has the right to support his own life by his own work and it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life every man and women for him herself the US social search social safety net is now the weakest among the world's wealthy nations according to the organization for economic cooperation and development our country's overall poverty prevention rating our poverty prevention rating is significantly lower not only than Germany's and Sweden's and Norway's and Denmark's it is lower than Poland's and Portugal's and South Korea's and Turkey's Jeff Madrick says no moral code no ethical principle no piece of scripture no holy teaching can be summoned to defend what we have allowed this country to become so perhaps what we need folks is another great depression there's a wake-up call back in the 1930s as more and more jobs were lost as as the unemployment figures rose up close to 30% sympathy for the poor increased and support grew for social security for the works progress administration for the Civilian Conservation Corps the survival of the fittest social Darwinism that had dictated policy during the gilded age it went out of favor and building on those new deal initiatives after World War two the government passed a generously funded GI bill that enabled millions of returning service personnel to attend college to acquire homes and to be covered by unemployment insurance and by these collective means a whole generation of white yes white Americans were able to achieve middle-class status of course people of color were left out of that equation now what's truly disappointing about all this is that many many the people who benefited from this grand social experiment in the redistribution of wealth those same people have no interest whatsoever in extending a similar consideration to those who are struggling today millions of Americans face eviction every year for lack of resources in many communities the waiting period for public housing is counted not in weeks or months or years it is counted in decades and only one family in three in this country receives any kind of support for their rent payments whatsoever as Dr. King observed with more than a little irony 50 years ago so out so often in America we have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor now society's resources are allocated as we well know not on the basis of need but in proportion to a particular constituency's political clout and as a result 20% of the US population now has a negative net worth they owe more than they own one fifth of the population more and more of our jobs are part-time their temporary their contract work which means that they do not include benefits they do not include sick leave or vacation or retirement plans and thanks to the tireless efforts of the business class and its political allies the strength of organized labor continues to slide with fewer than 11% of Americans now covered by a union contract that's about to get lower than that with the next Supreme Court ruling on public sector unions and there has been no mass movement of low-income earners or the poor that has arisen since 1967 when Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy Jr. mounted the poor people's campaign that then faltered after King was assassinated writing in the New York review of books recently Nicholas Kristof mused about the seeming passivity of today's poor in America he said they are far too willing to acquiesce because they have now been conditioned to retreat to the margins and so I have found myself thinking that the problem is not that the poor riot it's that the poor don't riot enough now as a disciple of Gandhi Martin Luther King would have questioned Nicholas Kristof solution riots but not his intent and so now 50 years later the Reverend William Barber from North Carolina has called for a new initiative patterned after King's earlier efforts to build this multiracial coalition to eradicate unholy poverty in this country and it is a movement that we as you use are called upon to join so then let us embrace Dr. King's dream not of the mountaintop but his dream of maladjustment as he wrote I never intend to adjust myself to the inequalities of an economic system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes salvation of the world lies in the hands of the maladjusted as a postscript today we celebrate the existence of the Odyssey project other projects like it that do provide underprivileged individuals with the opportunity to earn college level credits with the prospect of entering into and completing a two or a four year degree program this is one of the best avenues available for those seeking a rewarding career and an economically secure life FUS is proud to have partnered with Odyssey now for many years and as it has continued to expand its efforts however this is just one of many ways in which our faith community has sought to mitigate the effects of unholy poverty whether through eviction prevention supporting sensible family planning or working to close Dane County's racial equity gap faith in action the kind that we practice does make a difference and in time I believe it will help to foster a culture of mutual concern and sharing we gather each week as a community of memory and hope to this time we bring our whole and sometimes our broken selves carrying with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past seeking here a place where they might be received and celebrated and shared we do have a couple of items to note today earlier we did mention that the flowers on either side are in memory and celebration of the lives of Bob and Nancy Dott who died within six weeks of each other we interred Bob and Nancy's ashes together at Forest Hill Cemetery yesterday morning and Nancy's Memorial service was held here yesterday afternoon Bob Dott's Memorial was planned for the 21st of April in the landmark auditorium we also wish to celebrate the memory of Greg Erickson who died of an apparent heart attack on Wednesday and Greg's woodworking skills and his contributions to both of our buildings are on display and fondly remembered and Greg is the one that designed and built this pulpit as well as the two tables behind me and he supervised all the interior would work for this atrium auditorium so he will be you will be very very much missed and then finally warm wishes to Karen Updike who suffered an apparent stroke recently and we hope that she will soon be healthy and whole again in addition to those mentioned we would acknowledge any other unarticulated joys and sorrows that remain among us as a community we hold them with equal concern in our hearts blessed be and amen and I now invite you to participate in the giving and the receiving of our offering my husband and I first visited the meeting house about eight years ago good friends had urged us to give it a try neither of us had especially warm memories of the religious organizations we'd grown up with a situation probably a lot of people in this room can identify with still we felt the need for a spiritual home and a closer community so we gave it a try from our first visit we came away impressed but we still had our doubts would we need to sign on to a rigid set of beliefs would f us be inclusive was there a strong commitment to social justice could such a large congregation be welcoming to new members the more we learned the more we discovered it was a perfect fit in the year sense I benefited each week from thoughtful sermons and beautiful music a wonderful example we've received this morning I've been proud of our social justice efforts I've made close friendships I have a special place in my heart for my the wonderful people in my chalice group the Japanese crane meditation class as I've gotten to know first unitarian better I've looked for ways to give back most of the little things and frankly fun helping with the Easter egg hunt bringing baked goods to the art fair and singing in one of our amazing choirs I've been happy to give my time another joy has been giving financial ports financial support to f us through the annual campaign there are so many needs in the world right now it can be hard to prioritize giving but I've seen firsthand the thoughtful planning and excellent use that f us makes of our support I know the coming year is an important one in the history of our congregation I'm confident that my pledge to the annual campaign will help keep first unitarian society a force for good and a place where the next set of skeptics can find a home I'd like to consider all that f us means to you and all the ways it helps to make our world more just I hope you will keep those things in mind as you decide on your own annual pledge I would invite you once more to rise in body or in spirit for our closing hymn please be seated for the benediction and the postlude for that which has been done to lift humankind to new levels of social order and health for that let us be thankful and for that which we can do but have left undone let us strive to give it new life and for that which needs to be done but is still beyond our reach let us continue to search to seek and to nurture our hopes bless it be and amen