 and welcome to the First Unitarian Society. My name is Kelly Crocker and I'm one of the ministers here. Today I am joined by my colleague, the Reverend Kelly S. Bruce Jackson and the worship team of Linda Warren, Drew Collins, Stephen Gregorius and Daniel Carnes. Today's flowers are in memory of Eva Wright whose memorial service was held here yesterday. The vision of First Unitarian Society is growing souls, connecting with one another and embodying our Unitarian Universalist values in our lives, in our community and in our world. If you're visiting us today, welcome. We're so very glad that you are with us. If you would like more information about First Unitarian Society, please stop by the welcome table that is located in the commons to your right by the elevator. We hope you'll be able to stay and join us for coffee hour immediately following the service which is also right out here in the commons. And for those of you connecting virtually with us today, we are glad that you are with us as well. The information about First Unitarian Society, all of those slides that were shown at the beginning of the service will be shown again after. So we encourage you to take a moment and watch those and learn more about upcoming programs and activities. And now, I invite you to join me in a moment of silence as we center ourselves and bring ourselves fully into this time, joining together once again in community. But we have been separately and all that we will become together is stretched out before and behind us like stars scattered across a canvas of sky. We stand at the precipice, arms locked together like tandem skydivers working up the courage to jump. Tell me friends, what have we got to lose? Our fear of failure, our mistrust of our own talents? What have we got to lose? A poverty of the spirit, the lie that we are alone. What wonders await us in the space between the first leap and the moment our feet or our wheels, however we move our bodies across this precious earth, touchdown softly on unknown soil? What have we got to lose that we can't replace with some previously unimaginable joy? Blessed are you, spirit of life who has sustained us and livened us and enabled us to reach this moment. Give us courage in our leaping and gratitude in our landing and share with us in the joy of a long and fruitful ministry together. And I invite you now to rise in all the ways we do joining together in our words of affirmation as we light our chalice. We light this chalice in memory of the courage of those who have struggled for freedom, the persistence of those who struggled for justice and the love of those who built beloved communities to carry on the light of hope. We have a new chalice response for October. Let's sing it twice. Choose before I'll let us sing our opening hymn, number 1015, I Know I Can. To hear a story, I have a story for you this morning which is called What the Hair Heard. And it's not this kind of hair, it's that kind of hair, hair, which is just another name for a rabbit, basically, yes. No, like another word for rabbit is a hair. Like another word for rabbit is a bunny. So bunny, rabbit, hair, there you go. That would be very unfortunate for the bunny. I think the bunny needs its hair. If it didn't have to be a bunny, it couldn't be a hair if it didn't have hair. So here's the story. One time there was a hare or a rabbit or a bunny, if you prefer, and it was hanging out by a tree, minding its own business, not doing anything in particular, when a piece of fruit fell down from one of the branches of that tree and landed with a thunk on the ground. Now, it wasn't watching the tree when the piece of fruit fell, it just heard the sound and just hearing the sound, that rabbit leapt to a conclusion. It decided that because it heard this loud thunking sound right behind it, that must mean that the world was falling apart. It's a pretty big leap to make. I'm not encouraging you to make the same assumption if you hear a loud noise in the future. I think you'll see that sort of the point of this story. So anyway, the rabbit was very afraid because it thought that the world was coming to an end. So it started running as fast as it could in the opposite direction, trying to get away from whatever bad thing was happening that made that loud thunking sound. Yes! You think you know this story? Well, then you can tell me at the end if it ends the way that you think that it was going to end, okay? Keep that in mind. The bird said this guy was falling. I think, are you thinking of the bird saying this guy was falling story? Yes, okay. So that's a popular opinion. What do we got? The nut and the hair. Okay, I would like to hear that story from you. Maybe you can tell it to me after the service. Yes! Oh, you've read a book about the spider weaving a web between the sky and the ground? Oh, yeah. There are a lot of good stories about animals and how the world works. And I can see that you're very excited to share something. Yes, chicken little. I think chicken little is the chicken story in question that we're thinking about, right? So in this particular story, instead of a chicken, there's a rabbit. But I think it's the same principle at play because the rabbit went running in one direction and then another rabbit saw that rabbit and said, hey, why are you running so fast? What are you running away from? What do you think that the first rabbit said to that question? The sky is falling. I think we're gonna blend the stories at this point. Okay, so the rabbit said the sky is falling. And of course, of course, the second rabbit was very concerned about that, just like the first rabbit was concerned about that. So along, now they're both running, the first rabbit and the second rabbit, and then some more rabbits joined in, and then some deer, and then some boars, and then some rhinoceros, and then some tigers, and some elephants, and now all these different animals are all running in the same direction and away from that first loud sound, there was a piece of fruit. Did we think it was a plum? So I was told it was a quince, but I think a plum is a perfectly good answer too. So, it happened that a lioness was watching all of this happen. Saw this huge parade of animals running in a very fast speed all in the same direction, all for no apparent reason. And so she raced up in front, lions are pretty fast, so she raced up in front of where the animals were headed to and she, what do you think she did? Roar! Roar! You got it! You got it! Sorry to surprise you. She roared and everybody reacted basically like you did. They stopped what they were doing, they were like, okay, there's a loud noise. We gotta stop what we're doing. And she was like, why? Why are you all running so fast in the same direction? And everybody looked at the elephants and said, the elephants know why we're doing this. The elephants said, no, we don't, we're just following the tigers. The tigers said, we don't know where we're going, we're just following the rhinoceroses. And the rhinos said, no, we were just following the boars, don't put this on us. And then to the deer and then to the rabbits and then all the other rabbits said, it was that one. And so the first rabbit explained, I heard a very loud noise and that's how I know the sky is falling. The lioness said, all right, show me where you heard this noise. So eventually they walked all the way back to where they started. The lioness looked on the ground, looked at the tree, looked at the piece of fruit under the tree and thought, aha, this noise was just a plum falling out of the tree. So the moral of this story that I have for you, you can decide if you have a different moral, okay? But the moral of the story that I have for you is that sometimes an assumption, a wrong assumption, the thing where we guess what's going on and we guess wrong, that can be contagious. Other people can take the same wrong idea and run with it, yes. Okay, so another takeaway here is avoid falling out of trees. I didn't quite follow that one, but it's all right. And you're gonna be our last voice, so what do you got? Don't jump to conclusions, I love it, I love it. Thank you so much, you've been a great audience. Have fun at class. And I invite you now into this time of giving and receiving where we give freely and generously to this offering which sustains and strengthens our community here, as well as the work of our outreach offering recipient. This week, our recipient is mentoring positives who offers a comprehensive suite of community-based mentoring and social entrepreneurship opportunities designed to bolster leadership, social skills, self-confidence, emotional learning, and well-being for many of Madison's youth. So you'll see there's multiple ways to share your gifts this morning. There are baskets at the doors of this room for those of us here in person. You will also see on the screen that you can donate directly from our website, fussmattison.org, and you'll see the text to give information there as well. We thank you for your generosity and for your faith in this life we create together. I place this question before you because our spiritual theme for this month is courage, and we cannot talk about courage without talking about fear. We sometimes think of courage as fearlessness and of courageous people as people who do not feel fear in the same way that others do. But fear is a natural part of life and a reasonable, rational response to being alive. We are all of us mortal, and everyone and everything we have been given to love upon this beautiful, fragile planet of ours is mortal too. That is reason enough for at least some quantity of fear. The most common sort of fear, at least to talk about, whether or not it's the most common sort to feel, is a hyper-awareness of the simple reality of death. In Act 2, Scene 2 of William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, the titular character somewhat famously declares, cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come. Julius Caesar, both the historical figure and the fictional imagining of him in the play, was a general and a conqueror. Death was a very real and present reality for him throughout his life. And being a soldier and a capable one, he took numerous daily precautions against the threat of dying. Donning his armor, drilling his troops, every step taken towards victory on the battlefield was a step towards the possibility of dying, yes, but also a hedge to try to make it least likely under the dangerous circumstances that he had chosen. Through Caesar's voice, Shakespeare declares that it is strange that men should fear death, but a healthy awareness of what makes death more likely or less is an essential quality in those people whose work or whose duty it is to face death on a regular basis. Our spiritual ancestor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote something between a prayer and an incantation against the fear of dying. Dan and Stephen at the soundboard might be able to quote it to you as well as I can because I recite it fairly often during the microphone check before the services. Teach me your mood, oh patient stars who climb each night the ancient sky, leaving on space no shade, no scars, no trace of age, no fear to die. Here is a man who lived a dramatically more secure life than Caesar's, less fancy but still very comfortable and spectacularly more safe, yearning for freedom from the fear of death. It is a common fear, but it is hardly the only thing to be afraid of. Even Caesar's and Emerson's examples are limited to the fear of one's own dying. When fear for the life of someone we love seems to me just as common, if not more so. To say nothing of all the countless fears of living, living but without a home, living but without a job, living but without someone to love us. The list of abstract possibilities is infinite and exhausting. Now there are several often ignored passages of the Hebrew Bible in which the divine is referred to in unambiguously feminine terms. One of these is found in the 13th chapter of the book of Hosea in which the voice of the God of his understanding says of those who do wrong, I will fall on them like a mother bear, robbed of her cubs, and will tear open the covering of their heart. The courage of a mother protecting her children is primal and visceral, but it is not an erasure of fear. That courage is driven by fear, produced by fear, fear for the well-being of her cubs makes the mother bear courageous beyond all other limits. Two and a half years ago, I had a ritual of my weekly trip outside the house, getting up early, driving to the grocery store, waiting in a line stretched out by social distancing, wearing gloves and a mask, and following all the arrows on the market floor so as not to have to pass directly by any other shoppers. The criticism at the time and since has been that I did all this just as many of you did the same or similar things out of fear. And the common rejoinder is that it was done out of care, out of love for myself, for my family, my community, for strangers I have never met and will never meet, but whom I want to have the best chance to stay healthy and alive. And what I am saying to you now is that in that case and many others, care and fear are not contradictions. They are actually just two perspectives on the same basic feeling. So I have no problem saying that fear is a factor in a necessary program of public health. There is a good and healthy fear to have of making the world less safe and hospitable for ourselves and everyone else. But now what in particular are you afraid of here? I will answer the question first, at least in part. I am afraid of falling short, of failing the people who need me, of not living up to my promises to them or the promises I have made to myself on their behalf. I am afraid of not being the person that the people who need me need me to be. Those people that I am afraid of failing are my children first and foremost, the rest of my family, my closest friends and then you. And nine days out of 10, I am only grateful for that fear because that fear comes from a deep appreciation for the power and importance of the trust placed in me. You see, some of what we call fear is just recognizing how precious something is, the preciousness of a person or a relationship or our own selves. And there is nothing but good in that. It is a healthy thing to care about the ones whom we care about, to honor our obligations, to protect what we love. There can be an excess of this fear as there can be for any sort. As I said, nine days out of 10, the fear of falling short of my promises is only a good thing, but on that 10th day. When I wake in the night towards no positive end, but to worry and fret, no good is added to the world by that. And it can make a soul powerfully tired. Like the little fear of death that makes you careful or prepared or more willing to take the advice of medical professionals seriously, a little fear of failure is the drive to do better as an artist or a parent or a friend. But too much of it will only grind you down and make it harder for you to be whatever you are called to be. But I was telling you what I am afraid of. And I have an entirely different fear to confess to you, friends. The fear of being a burden to or a drain on the people who love me. Perhaps you are immune to that particular mental trap. But somewhere out there today, I know that at least one of you knows what I am talking about. The fear which drives the impulse to hold back to hide yourself or at least the parts of you that you think are too sad, too hard or just too much. The fear that stops us from asking for help when we need it. And unlike in my previous example, this is a fear that has no good purpose. Nine times out of 10, even 99 times out of 100. It is possible, it's true, to ask too much of other people to take and take and never give back in return. But in my experience, the greater threat for most people is an overabundance of this fear. Not the total absence of it. Anything more than the single drop that marks our care for other people, not just as a means to our own ends, but as ends in themselves. More than this only pushes us towards isolation and alienation. In the Dune series of novels, the science fiction author Frank Herbert includes a recitation that is commonly called the litany against fear. Here's the most common version of it. I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me and when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path where fear has gone. There will be nothing. Only I will remain. The terms of these lines are stark and absolute and you're probably already expecting me to criticize them. The little death that brings total obliteration seems extreme. Better advice for God, emperors and mind witches of an impossibly distant imagined future than for actual people living actual lives. But the advice to turn the inner eye onto our fear, to observe and examine it in order to rob it of its overwhelming power, that feels much more pertinent to life on this planet at this present time. The contemporary Buddhist teacher Pima Chodron tells a parable about how listening to our fears can disarm them almost literally. This is the way that it goes. Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn't want to do that. It seemed too aggressive. It was scary. It seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her the instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times and asked, may I have permission to go into battle with you? Fear said, thank you for showing me so much respect that you asked permission. Then the young warrior said, how can I defeat you? Fear replied, my weapons are that I talk fast and I get very close to your face. And then you get completely unnerved and you do whatever I say. If you don't do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me, but if you don't do what I say, I have no power. In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear. Now here is where we come to what I believe is the formula for courage. Not to have no fear at all, but to have fear of the right sort, about the right things in the right proportions. To learn what can be of use to learn from that fear and to let go of the rest. Not to be ruled by our fears, but to be students of them. Today falls between the Jewish high holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which means that in the Jewish tradition, this is one of the days of awe. Some of us here observe this sacred time and some of us do not. One of the many beauties of our theological diversity is that we can learn from each other's practices even if we don't share in them directly. And as it happens, this practice is about a positive engagement with fear. See, during the days of awe, beginning with the Jewish New Year and ending with the day of atonement, a person is called on to reflect on their actions over the year now past. To face the fear of acknowledging having done wrong, the fear of what it would mean to apologize, take responsibility, make amends, and the fear of letting go of grievances and grudges and forgiving others for their own wrongs. The awe at play in the cosmic, in these days of awe is the cosmic awe affirmed throughout and beyond all human religion, the wonder of the soul in dialogue with the universe. How great and how glorious it is to be a part of the vastness of existence and how similarly small and vulnerable we feel when we compare ourselves to the enormity and the power of everything that is. Accepting and learning from these two fears in this season creates the conditions to move forward with courage into the year ahead. Getting right with those around us helps us to feel more at home in the universe and finding our place in the cosmic web gives us strength to seek, accept and extend forgiveness to others. The great Jewish mystic and teacher, Rabbi Nachman of Braslov, but from whom by the way we get the lyrics for our closing hymn today, has a single quotation that he might be best known for. It's translated a number of slightly different ways, but here is my preferred rendering. The whole world is a very narrow bridge. The most important thing is not to be overwhelmed by fear. Notice what it does not say. Not to be without fear, not to ignore fear, to live with it, to learn from it, but not to be overwhelmed by it. So, what are you afraid of? Whatever it may be, my friends, may you not be overwhelmed by that fear and instead find within it the courage that it has to teach you. Each week we gather, bringing with us the joys and the losses of recent days. We share these here knowing we are held in love. We light a candle for Nancy and Pete daily as they mourn the sudden death of Nancy's brother. We send them our love and our care as they remember him. And we light a candle of memory and sorrow and gratitude for the life of Al Sentie who passed away on Thursday evening. We send our love to his family and especially to his wife of 75 years, Sparrow. May Sparrow feel our love around her in the days ahead. And we light a candle in solidarity with the people of Ukraine, both in their suffering and in their struggle. Together we yearn for peace, for them and for all people and for an end to all wars of conquest anywhere and everywhere on earth. And if you'll join me now in a moment of prayer with these words from Elizabeth Buke, spirit of life, love which holds us. We gather in reverence and thanks for you. We are grateful for the gift of another breath and for each moment of connection, beauty and truth. Cry with us in our pain for our world. Remind us that we are loved just as we are. Remind us that we are connected with all that is. Remind us that we do not journey alone. Give us what we need for today. Call us back to our promises, commitments and values. Help us love ourselves and each other and to show our love in our actions. Make us instruments of justice, equity and compassion. Free us from all that is destructive. We declare that life and love are stronger than tyranny and fear, that a world of beauty and love is coming and that we must be the ones to shape it together. May we hold all this and all that lives in our hearts in a moment of silence. Blessed be and amen. Will you stand and sing with me? Our closing hymn, number 219. Oh here, my people. May you be brave enough to expose your aching and woundedness and reveal your vulnerability. May you speak your deepest truths knowing that they will change as you do. May you sing the music within you, composing your own melody, playing your song with all your heart. May you draw, paint, sculpt and sew, showing the world your vision. May you write letters, poetry, biographies, slogans, graffiti, the great novel laying bare your words to love and hate. May you love even though your heart breaks again and again. And until the end of your days, may your life be filled with possibilities and with courage. Blessed be, go in peace and please be seated for the postlude.