 Good morning. Please join me in a moment of centering silence. And now please remain seated as we join together in our in-gathering hymn, number 360, printed in your order of service. Here in Society of Madison, this is a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical and social issues in an environment that is accepting and nurturing. Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we seek to be a force for good in this world. My name is Lorna Aronson 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 and wherever you happen to be on your life journey we celebrate your presence among us. New comers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service 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. You may also look for persons holding teal stoneware mugs. These are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community who would love to visit with you. Experience guides are generally available to give a building tour after each service. So if you'd like to learn more about this sustainably designed addition or our national landmark meeting house please meet near the large glass windows over here on the left side of the auditorium immediately after the service. We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service. However because it's difficult for some in attendance to hear in this lively acoustical environment our child haven and commons are excellent places to retire if a child needs to talk or move around. The service can still be seen and heard from these areas and this would also be a good time to turn off all electronic devices that might cause a disturbance in the service. I'd like to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly and I want to add a little editorial comment that we needed to do some last minute recruiting to fill some of these positions. So I encourage you to go on the FUS website under serve click on volunteer and you too could take over some of these duties. So thank you very much to our sound operator Mary Manoring. Our greeter this morning was Karen Hill. Ann Ostrom and Doug Hill are two of our volunteers and Charles Stinger and Pat Stinger stepped in at the last moment to fill two positions. We're also especially looking for volunteers today to provide our hospitality. The staff stepped in this morning to make sure that we would have coffee and tea at the end of the service but again this is a really valuable service that brings us together and we encourage you to volunteer. Hathaway Hasler has offered our pulpit flowers today and John Hill will be our tour guide. Please note the announcements in the red floors insert in your order of service which describe upcoming events at the society and provide more information about today's activities. I do have one special announcement that I'd like to highlight that's in the order in the red floors. An informational session about Quest, our two year adult spiritual deepening program will be held this month on two dates. The first is this morning between the two services in the landmark auditorium and the second is Saturday February 28 following the worship service after the 430 worship service in the landmark auditorium. For further information contact Janet Swanson. Again welcome. We hope that today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart and stir your spirit. This morning we reaffirm our unbreakable ties to our heritage to our environment and to the human community and this morning we recommit ourselves to a vital and healthy planet to a realm of love and justice and opportunity for all and we express gratitude for the many gifts the many advantages that we ourselves have received. We would be reminded of the human spirit's potential to be healed from the error and the grief of the past and of its unfailing ambition to push past the troubles of today toward the brighter promises of tomorrow. I invite you to rise and body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice and if you will join me in reading the words of affirmation printed in this morning's program. We are children of yesterday fully alive today and with hearts and minds trained on the future. As people with a history let us heed the lessons of the past. As people freely joined in community let us rise to meet the challenges of the present. As people of faith let us bring forth visions of a brighter tomorrow. May we commit ourselves as a community to profiting from the past serving the present and protecting the future. Now I invite you on this chilly morning to turn to your neighbor in exchange with them a warm greeting. Try to set aside a few minutes at the beginning of the hour for the sharing of joys and sorrows. Members, friends and even visitors to our congregation to relate to the entire gathered community some special event or circumstance that has affected your life or the life of someone close to you in recent days or weeks. More general announcements, news items, partisan appeals are discouraged during joys and sorrows. And so for the next few minutes anyone who wishes is invited to step to the front of the auditorium and with the assistance of our lay ministers light a candle and either the candle labra to my left or my right and then using the microphone provided share your name if that feels comfortable as well as your brief message. Please note that our services are live cast to a larger audience so listeners are not restricted to the people sitting in this room. You may also step forward and wordlessly light a candle of commemoration and then simply return to your seat. And now I would open the floor for the sharing of these important and personal matters of our lives and I would begin by noting that yesterday I spent a half hour or so with Shirley Drayton over at the Hebron Nursing Care Center at Oakwood and Shirley had been suffering from Parkinson's disease for the last 10 or 12 years and I learned this morning from her daughter that she had passed away quietly yesterday afternoon shortly after I left. So a candle of sorrow and grieving for Shirley and for her family. And now your joys and sorrows. We're celebrating the birth of our third grandson on Wednesday Lucas Morgan Carlson eight pounds nine ounces big and healthy. So my name is Mike Whistler my wife is Abby and I'm just up here to share a joy kind of making my heart sing this week. My son Connor who is seven years old he is starring or co-starring in his first musical at Minona Grove. He is young will in the musical Big Fish and he's got quite a big part we didn't realize that but he's doing fantastic and it just makes our heart sing. So he's too embarrassed to come up here but I told him I was gonna do this. My name is Michelle Reese and I'm lighting this candle in honor of my uncle who is in hospice with a brain tumor. I'm Elizabeth and I'm lighting a candle of gratitude for this community all the people in it and all the opportunities that are here. I'm Amalia Hicks and I'm also gonna light a candle of gratitude. My dad had a bone marrow transplant last month and he's out of the hospital. He got out two weeks early with flying colors. He's really tired right now but so far everything's going great. Kim Staggy and Kurt and I are going to Vermont for my brother's retirement party and very happy for him after 40 years of case management and social work on Friday. Hi my name is Greg Frankos. I just found out to the joy of my sister my brother-in-law my parents and myself my sister's 35 and I'm going to be an uncle. I'm lighting this candle as a joy my boyfriend had heart surgery about three weeks ago. Had surgery on a Thursday a surgery on a Friday and then went home from the hospital on the Saturday. He's been healing wonderfully. He's back at work and doing really well and I'm really grateful to all the awesome doctors at UW who did such a great job. A candle representing all of those unexpressed joys and sorrows that may have occurred to those of you who are listening as others were speaking we hold those with equal compassion in our hearts. Now our children can leave for their classes as we sing them out with hymn number 322 verses 1 2 and 5. Please be seated. Gary Snyder was a well-known beat poet continues to write poetry from his home in California. He also studied for quite a number of years in Japan in the Zen Buddhist tradition. We are free to find our own way over rocks through the trees where there are no trails. The ridge and the forest present themselves to our eyes and our feet which decide for themselves in their own learned wisdom of doing where the wild will take us. We have been here before. It's more intimate somehow than walking the paths that lay out some route that you must stick to. All paths are possible. Many will work and being blocked is its own kind of pleasure. Getting through is a joy. The side trips and the detours show down the logs and the flowers. The deer paths straight up the squirrel tracks across the outcroppings lead us on over resting on tree trunks stepping out on bedrock angling and eyeing. Both make choices now parting our ways later rejoining. I'm right. You're right. We come out together. Motake pine mushroom heaves at the base of a stump the dense matted floor of red fur needles and twigs. This is wild. We laugh wild for sure because no other place is more than another all places total and our ankles knees shoulders and haunches know right where they are. Recall how the Dowde Ching puts it. The trails not the way. No path will get you there. We're off the trail. You and I and we chose it. Our trips out of doors through the years have been practice for this ramble together deep in the mountains side by side over the rocks and through the trees. The second selection in a somewhat different although related vein from Robert Folgem's the names that remain. Folgem is of course a humorous the author of many books of short essays and a former Unitarian Universalist minister. My task for the next two days organize my address books bring order out of that chaos of names and numbers in reviewing this mess. I am reminded how much of my life is lived relating to this passing procession of people who come and go by happenstance not by design. The neighbors business colleagues fellow travelers members of clubs tradesmen. Some of the names are mysterious. Who is this? Why are they in my book? So many of the names need to be crossed off actors on the stage of one's life who have few lines play a small part go off stage never to return. But I will not throw the used books away a decision inspired by a friend who thinks of his little black books as personal history. He has eight of his from as far back as his college days. Once in a while he says he reads through them. He says that I take up several pages in his book because I'm such a transient. I wonder how many other places my name and number are recorded. And I wonder if there are those who will review their books and files this year find my name and eliminate it as no longer being on the stage of their play. Forget him whoever he was. But I miss some of the individuals listed in my books. And I wonder do they miss me. But thanks to the plus side of life's lottery there are those whose names have been there for years beyond remembering. There are many numbers may change but they remain to play primary roles in my life year after year wherever they are. Not so many names really and less as age and disability and death remove them from the active list. But these are the names that I know by heart whose telephone numbers are stored in the meat of my mind whose images are not digital but mental. And when I triage my little black book and begin a new one I will write their names and their numbers first of all. These are the essential friends the companions of a lifetime. Those I can call in the middle of the night anytime anywhere in sorrow enjoy. We need we know each other so well we don't even need to identify ourselves. We know the sound of the voice on the phone from the first word uttered. The conversation never begins from scratch it's ongoing. And now as time takes its toll these are the voices that will speak over graves in the end. We don't know which voices will give whose eulogy but we know we are keepers of each other's history that we are witnesses to one another's lives. We will be there one way or another. The updating of my little black book goes slowly but I don't mind. I review these names. I connect them to memories. I get lost in nostalgia. The names that remain remind me that I am a very rich and a very lucky man and not nearly as alone as I sometimes fear that I am. Here's from now. Will you still be sending me a valentine? Birthdays, greetings, bottle of wine, meet me? Will you still feed me when I'm 64? We just hear and say. That's significant irony accompanies the song that you just heard when I'm 64. Apparently it was one of the first tunes that the Beatles frontman Paul McCartney ever wrote. He was 16 years old. The group played variations of that song from time to time but it wasn't recorded until many years later, 1967, inspired perhaps by the 64th birthday of Paul McCartney's father. Now as I read it the song conveys sentiments that a spouse, a lover wishes to share with his or her partner. Though still early in the romantic phase of the partnership, the writer wonders whether the bond is strong enough, the commitment staunch enough to keep them together well past middle age. You'll be older too McCartney writes and if you say the word I could stay with you. The tone is both hopeful and tender but unfortunately and here's where the irony kicks in the reality of Paul McCartney's life failed to reflect that song's yearning. Paul's own mother, Mary, had died of breast cancer after only 15 years of marriage to her father, his father. She was 47 years old and then years later and just months after the song was finally released Paul's fiance abruptly ended their five-year relationship on grounds of infidelity. Paul subsequently married another woman, a divorcee whom he had met shortly before when I'm 64 hit the charts and as it turned out she was the one but his own dream of growing old with the love of his life Linda Eastman that dream was shattered when she like his own mother succumbed to breast cancer just shy of the couple's 30th wedding anniversary. Now Trina and I have been fortunate this month we both reached the 64 milestone having celebrated 47 Valentine's Day together and logged almost 42 years as marriage partners. So during that time we have relocated, moved to new homes on five occasions, we have raised a child to adulthood, we have suffered the loss of both of Trina's parents, we have endured various health crises, coped with professional setbacks, done our level best to manage the sundry stresses and strains of daily living and it has not as I'm sure Trina would affirm it's not always been easy but I think we can both honestly say that life together has never been boring and always deeply rewarding. In traditional Irish lore the Celtic term Anamkara is used to describe a relationship whose bonds are all but indecisible. Anamkara means soul friend which develops when in the words of John Donahue two people have broken through the barriers of persona and egoism and achieved a unity of their two souls that is not easily severed. This isn't something that happens magically or without any real effort on our part perhaps there are people who stumble into one another who are amazed by their natural compatibility feel completely blessed with the by the relationship just as it is but that still doesn't mean that they don't have to work at it it does not mean that they cannot be willing and should not be willing to commit. If we are really serious about a person at some point we we have to stop hedging our bets because many of the commitments that we do make are in fact provisional ones tentative ones we enter into those commitments with a set of personal expectations that must be fulfilled in order for the relationship to continue and if we don't feel satisfied with it if the arrangement is not producing the rewards that we'd envisioned then we may consider our commitment to be null and void but if it is contingent upon the profit that we ourselves derive from the relationship any commitment that we make is bound to be very fragile because conditions change people change the tides of positive emotion ebb and flow and a true commitment accepts all of these contingencies many others that can't be foreseen and so I remind couples in one of my wedding homilies that being joined in marriage does not ensure that a couple will live in a steady state of undiluted contentment what a good relationship does afford over and over again is the opportunity for renewal it represents that abiding shared hope that after every long Wisconsin winter the sweet breezes of summer will blow again that after every fierce storm the sun will come out and shine again now for most of human history people did not expect to make long-term commitments life spans were relatively short many wives died in childbirth many men succumbed to war and to workplace accidents to survive as a couple to the age of 64 that was a luxury a few couples could count on today however life expects expectancy for the average American male is 76 81 for females my own parents will mark their 67th wedding anniversary in June and an impressive number of couples do survive to celebrate a half century of marriage but many more relationships as we know and much earlier for a variety of reasons including unrealistic expectations you know I've always liked what the novelist Jane Smiley had to say about this you know what getting married is Smiley writes it's agreeing to take this person who is right now at the top of his form full of hopes and ideas feeling good looking good wildly interested in you because you're the same way and then sticking by him while he slowly disintegrates and he does the same for you you're his responsibility now and he is yours if no one else will take care of him you will if everyone else rejects you he won't what do you think love is she says going to bed all the time the problem is that Americans are for the most part in curable romantics and we have been conditioned to expect our partners to be reliable sources of stimulation and arousal and that's not necessarily a bad thing and during the first blooming of a relationship people should feel this strong kinetic attraction but at some point the libido cools and our ideal partner becomes less intoxicating the luster begins to fade explaining the breakdown of his own marriage to winnie now some Mandela said she married a man who became a myth then the myth returned home and proved to be just a man after all fairy tale romances typically end with that trite line and they lived happily ever after and as long as we understand that this is the language of fairy tales and not applicable to flesh and blood relationships then will probably be okay but unfortunately that distinction isn't made often enough in our culture as the Jungian counselor and psychologist Robert Johnson observes human love is so obscured by the inflations and the commotions of romance that we almost never look for love in its own right and we hardly know what to look for when we do go in search of it Johnson warns that when we enter into a relationship with an idealized vision of the love object with this glamorous version of what life together is going to be like then then the partnership is unlikely to succeed based on an unrealistically high standard entered into for the purpose of fulfilling our own ego needs it simply lacks the kind of commitment that true love demands romance Johnson writes is not a love that is directed at another human being let me repeat that romance is not a love that is directed toward another human being the passion of romance he says is always directed at our own projections our own expectations and our own fantasies so any commitment that takes only our own gratification into account will not weather the pressures that reality places upon it it will not survive the obligations that must be honored the disappointments that inevitably crowd in the compromises that must be made romantic love can only last as long as two people are high on one another Johnson says to enter into the entire spectrum of human life together that is beyond romance's capacity the whole American ethos of individual autonomy and the encouragement we are given to pursue our own self-interest that does not serve our relational lives very well a marriage partner is not a service provider and expecting another person to provide us with happiness or security expecting that of them that is not loving love begins John Odani who says love begins with paying attention to others with an act of gracious self forgetting now to be sure some relationships do endure for decades on less than ideal terms without love such relationships may be characterized by codependency a situation in which the less assertive party routinely satisfies the needs of his or her more forceful partner a close and perhaps enmeshed connection is established that left to itself can feel pretty stable it is not conducive to mutual happiness when one truly loves when Anamkara or soul friendship informs the relationship we quite naturally want for our partner the best that we can offer in its very essence Robert Johnson says love is an appreciation and it is just as important for us that our partner should live fully as that our own needs should be met and when this is the case we don't need a lot of excitement to feel close to someone sharing small pleasures simple entertainments completing domestic tasks together patiently untangling interpersonal puzzles working through problems this is the stuff out of which enduring relationships are forged as the 19th century Unitarian poet James Russell Lowell once wrote true love is but a humble low-born thing and it hath its food served up in earthenware it is a thing to walk with hand in hand through the everydayness of the workday world it's a simple fireside thing whose quiet smile can warm earth's poorest hovel to a home a commitment is a principle we would do well to honor in certain other areas of life for instance developing a close connection to a particular locale that can be almost as important as creating that bond with another person a key problem in American society right now is people's lack of commitment to any given place Gary Snyder complained in a recent interview and if you read my 2009 book making the good life last you would know that for Trina and me this has been a high priority as I mentioned earlier during the first years of our marriage we moved around quite a bit that was okay because for the most part when we were younger we enjoyed exploring new territory Florida northern California great planes upstate New York but when we made the decision to come to Madison with an infant in tow it was with the intention of settling in partly we were seeking stability for our young son but also for the two of us after a couple of very peripatetic decades we wanted to place that we could truly learn to call home but this hankering on our part to stay put isn't something that comes naturally to us as homo sapiens until the advent of agriculture and settled villages some 10,000 years ago human beings were principally nomadic mobility is the rule in human history Scott Sanders said rootedness is the exception it would be naive to think he goes on that Spanish horses corrupted the plains Indians tempting a sedentary people to begin rushing about it would be just as naive to say that the automobile gave rise to our restlessness on the contrary our restlessness gave rise to the automobile and it as it led earlier on to the taming of horses and the carving of dugout canoes with each invention Sanders said the means of moving farther and faster has answered an itch that coils in our genes but this deeply embedded attribute may well have outlived its usefulness and it may now jeopardize our children's and our grandchildren's future unless more people commit to a place and are willing to study it to learn from it to love it and to work to keep it livable then those places are almost bound to deteriorate every township every field and creek every mountain and forest on earth would benefit from the attention of stationary men and women Sanders insists the question he says is not whether the land belongs to us through titles that are registered at the courthouse but whether we belong to the land through our loyalty and through our awareness now the city of Madison Dane County has changed a lot since Trina and I moved here in 1988 but the quality of life here I think remains remarkably high thanks to the commitment of citizens who have stayed who have put down their roots and who now sit on the Landmark Commission who supply leadership to its many neighborhood associations who support the work of organizations that are committed to protecting and restoring Dane County's natural assets the natural heritage land trust Madsen Audubon the pheasant branch Conservancy the water sentinels to name just a few now many residents of the city way out in the northwest the city of Seattle are equally loyal to their community and have helped to maintain its high quality of life and recently Robert Folgem a resident of Seattle took notice of a phenomena in his city that many others in their rushing about overlook Seattle has placed these islands in the middle of neighborhood streets to pacify traffic and to discourage commuters from using those streets instead of the main arteries if you go down to Farley Avenue just a couple of blocks out of here you will see similar islands now in Seattle Folgem observes some of those islands are pretty unkempt uncared for but there are others that feature ornamental grasses and flowers and even fruit trees what's the difference he wondered well in some of those neighborhoods the islands have been adopted by area residents who tend them on a regular basis and these volunteers receive no compensation but it appears as Folgem says that the island keepers have a larger view of what it means to take care of their corner of the world that's what commit that's what commitment to place is all about now it goes without saying that commitment isn't ever and always desirable because any principle even this one taken to extremes can become counterproductive I suspect that we have all had dealings with individuals who cannot say no who are unable to set proper boundaries who routinely over commit the old adage if you want something done ask a busy person that may hold true in some cases but just as often it is a recipe for failure and disappointment we have to be realistic about how many commitments any one of us can handle and similarly absolute commitments can be just as problematic as ones that lack conviction while it is important to honor the commitments we've made sometimes making them without fully understanding what they require of us that's not such a good idea many Americans were manipulated into making mortgage commitments they could never hope to fulfill and opportunists will often wrangle commitments out of unsuspecting victims at other times we misplace our loyalties committing ourselves to people or enterprises that prove unworthy of us so backing out of a commitment doesn't necessarily make us unethical at times it may be the responsible thing to do and it's not a bad idea periodically to just revisit our commitments to see if they are still valid to see if they're still serving us and our partner as well Joseph Landry has suggested just such a strategy for married couples he says that instead of separated couples going to court to get divorced couples who wish to remain married should go to court to present their case for marriage renewal husband wife children relatives in-laws would all present testimony and maybe all who were present at the original wedding should be reinvent re-invited why not have a public show of appreciation for those who continue to attempt the impossible Joe Landry calls this a crazy idea but it's not all that different from the renewal of vows celebration that Trina and I put together ten years ago and 30 or so family and friend were in attendance about to turn 64 well we're still confident about our commitment two souls whose unity cannot be severed on them car may your own commitments prove as fruitful as ours have been thank you dear and now our offering appropriately standing on the side of love our second week to collect for this wonderful denominational program invite you to rise in body or in spirit now for our closing hymn number 1053 in the teal hymnals for this hour spent in the company of one another may each of us go forth and into the week ahead better prepared than before to appreciate the joys to face the challenges to deepen our commitment to the causes the communities and the people who are standing on the side of love please be seated for the post