 Welcome to First Unitarian Society of Madison, Wisconsin. This is one of two weekends each year when we shine a light on the role music plays in our worship. These are our all-music services. I am Drew Collins, Music Director for FUS, and I'm joined today by the worship team of Reverend Kelly Askruth Jackson, my colleagues in the FUS Music Program, Assistant Music Director Linda Warren, and Heather Thorpe, and the FUS Children's Choir, Teen Choir, and Combined Adult Choirs, with technical support by Daniel Carnes and Stephen Gregorius. The vision of FUS is growing souls, connecting with one another and embodying our UU values in our lives, community, and the world. For those worshiping with us in person today, it's a joy to be with you. While in our buildings we do ask that you wear your mask, unless you're preaching, and that you not sing along with the hymns, though we do invite you to hum, immediately following the postlude for everyone's safety, we ask that you exit the building. For those joining us virtually today, we're so glad to have you with us, and we hope you join us for our virtual coffee hour immediately following our service. The information for joining can be found on the home page of our website, fussmedicine.org, as well as on the slide that will be seen again after the postlude. Our announcement slides will also be shown briefly after today's service, and we encourage you to take a moment and learn about upcoming programs and activities. And now let us prepare our hearts and minds for worship. I invite you to center yourself and bring yourself fully into this time and place as we join together once again in community. Famous Divinity School Address, Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke of a certain preacher whose words compared unfavorably with the falling snow. I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to say, I would go to church no more. Men go, thought I, where they are want to go. Else had no soul entered the temple in the afternoon. A snowstorm was falling around us. The snow was real. The preacher merely spectral. And the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him and then out of the window behind him into the beautiful meteor of the snow. He had lived in vain. He had not one word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been commended or cheated or chagrined. If he had ever lived and acted, we were none the wiser for it. The capital secret of his profession, namely to convert life into truth, he had not learned. What might not be obvious from the text, but what most of Emerson's audience almost certainly knew by implication, is that this anonymous minister wasn't actually anonymous. Barzali Frost, then less than two years into his settlement as the minister of the first parish church in Concord, Massachusetts, where Emerson was a member. More than once, I have thought with sympathy about that poor soul who, while only trying to perform the challenging duties of his office, made his ignominious way into one of the most important documents in Unitarian Universalist history. I have worshipped at the first parish in Concord and can report that none of the present or future successors to Barzali should ever suffer such an unflattering comparison again. This is because, at some point in the last 150 odd years, the good people of Concord saw fit to plaster over the window behind their pulpit, the son of a Unitarian minister. His poetic style plays with metaphor and structure to the point of both irreverent nonsense and a deeply reverent mysticism. Here's one of his poems. You are like the snow only purer, fleeter, like the rain only sweeter, frailer you, whom certain flowers resemble but trembling, cowards which fear to miss within your least gesture the hurting skill which lives, and since nothing lingers beyond a little instant, along with rhyme and with laughter, oh my lady and every brittle, marvelous breathing thing, since I and you are on our ways to dust of your fragility but chiefly of your smile, most suddenly which is of love and death a marriage. You give me courage so that against myself the sharp days slobber in vain. Nor am I afraid that this which we call autumn cleverly dies and over the ripe world wanders with a near and careful smile in his mouth, making everything suddenly old and with his awkward eyes pushing sleep under and thoroughly into all beautiful things. Winter, whom spring shall kill, into this time of giving and receiving where we give freely and generously to this offering which sustains and strengthens our community. As is our custom, today's offering in its entirety will be dedicated to the ongoing work of the music program and the work of the professionals and volunteers who week after week help to animate and energize our spiritual community with a reverent, joyful noise. You will see the information on how to give through our website fussmedicine.org or through the text to give option on the screen. Thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life we create together. A season when much of the world's attention and our own turns towards a story set long ago in a land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. So it seems fitting that we should hear from a poet who is native to that land. Mahmood Darwish is not simply a poet from Palestine. He is commonly acclaimed as the national Palestinian poet. His tomb and museum can be found in Ramallah which is about 12 miles north of present day Bethlehem. These are his words. The white air thickens, slows down and spreads like combed cotton in space. When it comes into contact with the body of night it lights it up on all sides. Snow. The electricity is cut off and I rely on the light from the snow to find my way to the path. The musical interlude between two walls and to the room next to the six palm trees that stand like nuns on the valley shoulder. An almost metaphysical joy enters me from everything external and I thank the wind that has brought the snow from regions accessible only in spirit. If I were different I would try hard to describe the snow but as I have been snatched away into these white cosmic pastures I break free for myself and neither me nor someone else. For both of us are guests on the carpet of glittering white jewels which are visible and wide open to interpretation. When the electricity is restored I switch off the light and remain standing at the window and see myself over there an apparition beyond the snow. Number 232. The hills are bare at Bethlehem. As a poet and a novelist at a time and in a place where those were socially and culturally impossible things for a woman to be. Yet she and her sisters Charlotte and Anne persisted in writing publishing their work under assumed names. In this poem Emily imagines her own imprisonment we might think of many reasons why but she finds solace and comfort in the falling snow. O transient voyager of heaven O silent sign of winter skies what adverse wind thy sail has driven to dungeons or a prisoner lies me thinks the hands that shut the sun so sternly from this morning brow might still their rebel task have done and checked a thing so frail as thou. They would have done it had they known the talisman that dwelt in thee for all the suns that ever shone have never been so kind to me. For many a week and many a day my heart was weighed with sinking gloom when morning rose in morning gray and faintly lit my prison room but angel like when I awoke thy silvery form so soft and fair shining through darkness sweetly spoke of cloudy skies and mountains bare. The dearest to a mountaineer who all life long has loved the snow the crowned her native summits drear better than greenest plains below and voiceless soulless messenger thy presence waked a thrilling tone that comforts me while thou art here and will sustain when thou art gone. The next piece of music come from a Sanskrit mantra composed by the contemporary yogic guru Jagdish Vasudev roughly translated they are the world is sound sound is the manifestation of the universe sound manifests itself in the form of all life sound is that which binds sound is the means for liberation sound is the bestower of all sound is the power behind everything sound is everything we gather with that are heavy with sorrow hearts that are filled with joy we come together to share these sorrows and joys knowing that they are held in the love of this community today we light a candle of sorrow and memory for Linda Katowski who passed away on December 6th Linda was a long time member of the society choir and we will miss her warm smile welcoming presence among us a memorial will be held on Sunday December 19th at 2 p.m. here in the atrium auditorium we also light a candle of sorrow and concern for all those affected by recent storms in Kentucky and Tennessee particularly those who have lost their lives our thoughts also go out to those who have lost their homes or livelihoods in addition we light a candle of celebration and solidarity with the workers of one particular coffee shop in Buffalo New York who voted this week to form the first union at any Starbucks store in the United States we light a final candle for those joys that remain in our minds and hearts unspoken in this space from Aldous Huxley from pure sensation to the intuition of beauty from pleasure and pain to love and the mystical ecstasy and death all the things that are fundamental all the things that to the human spirit are most profoundly significant can only be experienced not expressed the rest is always and everywhere silence after silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music