 Please join in a moment of centering silence, so we can be fully present with each other this morning. And now let's get musically present by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn, which you find inside your order of service. That sounds so much better when the choir is in the room. Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to another Sunday here at First Unitarian Society, where independent thinkers gather in a safe, nurturing environment to explore issues of social, spiritual and ethical significance as we try to make a difference in this world. I'm Steve Goldberg, a proud member of this congregation and a proud owner of a brand new haircut. And I'd like to extend a very happy hello to those of you watching or listening at home and a special welcome to anybody who is here for the first time, as a newcomer, a guest or a visitor. This is your first visit to First Unitarian Society. I know you'll find it's a special place, and if you'd like to learn more about our special buildings, we offer guided tours after most of the services. Just gather over here by the windows and someone will take care of you. Speaking of taking care of each other, this would be a perfect time to silence those pesky electronic devices that you will not need for the next hour, I guarantee you. Thank you for taking care of that task. And while you're taking care of that simple but important task, I'll remind you that if you are accompanied this morning by a youngster, and you think that youngster would be more comfortable enjoying the service from a more private space, we offer a couple of options for you. One is our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium, and then we have some comfortable seating outside the doorway in the commons. Our service is brought to us today by a great team of volunteers whose names you get to hear right now. And just think, if you join that team, if you also volunteer to help with the preparations and delivery of this service, you too will hear your name announced from this podium. So here's what you're missing. Special thanks to our lay minister today, Tom Boykoff, our greeter who smiled at us upstairs as we arrived this morning, Mary Elizabeth Kunkel. Our ushers controlling this unruly crowd, we have Michael Lossy, Melinda Carr, Marty Hollis, and Anne Ostrom. The all-important hospitality and coffee are provided by Sandra Plisch, and that is the end of the volunteer list. Please thank them when you get a chance. Just a couple announcements before we begin the service. Remember that this afternoon following the 11 o'clock service at 12.15, right here, starting with a tasty lunch catered by the world-famous food haulers, our parish meeting, where you get a chance to hear an update on our finances and some other important information about this democratically organized congregation. So that's your opportunity this afternoon starting around 12.15. Starting a little bit earlier than that, in fact, during this service, you get to witness and enjoy, experience the annual banner parade from our children's religious education group. This is a treat, whether you've experienced it before or not, it's a real treat, because the students in each class will parade throughout the auditorium, displaying banners that express and capture the essence of what they've been learning and discussing and experiencing in their religious education program. So it's one small way of them thanking you and expressing to what they've been learning and experiencing in that program. So enjoy those creative banners as they march throughout the auditorium. Be sure to check out some other displays in the commons after the service and the toughest, the most important part, hold your applause until the end of the parade. The last announcement is that the cabaret countdown continues 90 days, three months until Friday, April 22nd, where you get to experience in this very facility an evening of nonstop musical performances, great food, and a lively, silent and live auction to raise money for the organization we all love so well, First Unitarian Society. So end of the announcements, I invite you to sit back or lean forward to enjoy this morning's service. I know it will touch your heart, stir your spirit, and trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here. Our opening words are from the 20th century novelist and poet D.H. Lawrence. This is what I believe. That I am I. That my soul is a dark forest and that my known self will never be more than a clearing in that forest. And that gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self and then they go back again. And I must have the courage to let them come and to let them go. I invite you to rise and body and spirit for the lighting of our chalice. Please join me in the words of affirmation printed in this morning's program. An energetic spirit, openness to new possibilities, intentionality of purpose, widening circles of caring, deepening commitment to personal growth, which leads to faith in action. These are the marks of a healthy, spiritually alive congregation. Let them be marks of ours as well. And now on this finally January morning, please turn to your neighbor, exchange with them a warm and friendly greeting. Just leave one. Steve, here's some newer ones. Please be seated. At the end of the month, we generally set aside a few minutes in our service for the sharing of joys and sorrows, a time for 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. General announcements and news items and partisan appeals are not appropriate during the sharing of joys and sorrows. And so for the next few minutes, anyone who wishes is invited to step to the front of the auditorium, light a candle in one of the two candelabra to my right or to my left 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, so listeners are not restricted to those sitting in this room. And so now I would open the floor to the sharing of these important matters of our lives. My name is Ruth Schmidt. I light this candle in memory of the passing of an incredibly dear friend and colleague, Mary Babula, who was a force of nature and a grandmother in the early learning world in Wisconsin. My name is Laura Lee, and I give a candle for my niece, Rachel, who just gave her to her third healthy daughter yesterday. My name is Charlotte Wolf, and I'm going to light two candles today. One is for a sorrow for Jean Bullock Wilson, who was a wonderful friend who died December 31st. He was the music director for many years at the Unitarian Church in Carmel, California. My other candle is one of great concern. My brother-in-law, Myron Eichler, has been in and out of the hospital with several challenges. It's now been placed back in the hospital with pneumonia and MRSA, I guess that's how it's pronounced. We're hoping to recover it. My name is Anthony Reeves. My father, who passed away, who died, won Le Roy Gay Reeves on June 11th of this past year of congestive heart failure. My name is Teresa, and this is from my mother, who is 89 years old, and my sister, who is her primary caregiver, who is on dialysis and is seeming to be spiraling down. We're just not quite sure where this is all going to lead, but I led a candle for our family. My name is Gail Bliss, and I will light this candle in memory of Patricia Leonardi, whose birthday would be this week. My name is Alyssa Ryan-Joy. I'm leading this candle for Jane Lindner, who was the church organist and youth choir director at my home congregation at Faith Lutheran in Winona, Minnesota. She passed away about a month ago, and she was an incredible presence in a lot of my friends' lives growing up. It's a time to really light one more candle to symbolize all of those joys and sorrows that remained unexpressed but that occurred to us as we were sharing the others, and we hold those with equal concern in our hearts. And because of our banner parade, we do not really have many children who are left here who would otherwise be going to classes, but if there are some children among us still who do have a classroom to attend, this would be the time for you to do so. And for the rest of us, please rise in broad ear and spirit as we sing together hymn number 128. This week, as well as last week, we are sharing our offering with the UW-Madison's Odyssey Project. The description of their work is included in your program. And as part of our services last week and this week, alumni from the Odyssey Program are assisting with our worship. And so this morning, we welcome Rene Robinson, who is going to be sharing with us a very powerful poem by the late Maya Angelou. Good morning. Morning. It is indeed a pleasure to be here today to stand before you to recite Maya Angelou's I Rise. You may write to me down in history with your bitter twisted lies. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? Because I walk like I've got oil wells pumping in my living room? Just like moons and like suns, with the certainty of tides, just like hopes springing high, still, I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken, bowed head and lowered eyes, shoulders falling down like teardrops, weakened by my soulful cries? Does my heartiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard? Because I laugh like I've got gold mines digging in my own backyard. You may shoot me with your words. You may cut me with your eyes. You may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise that I dance like I've got diamonds at the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history's shame, I rise up from a past that's rooted in pain. I rise, I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, welling and swelling. I bear the tide, leaving behind the nights of terror and fear. I rise into a daybreak that's wondrously clear. I rise bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave. I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise, I rise, I rise. Powerful poetry, powerful music. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. He was ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister in 1829. He immediately accepted a call to Second Congregation Unitarian in Boston, Massachusetts. But over the course of the next three years, Emerson became increasingly disenchanted, both with his work as a minister and with the movement that he served, which at the time left very little room for personal spiritual expression. Writing to his brother Charles, Emerson noted that he had, up until that point, written and delivered 146 sermons. How many and yet not one. Although sometimes less than orthodox, the Unitarianism of the first half of the 19th century was in many respects traditional, conservative, and above all respectable. Preachers were expected to be cultivated and scholarly, but not especially original. Like all good Protestants, Unitarians looked almost exclusively to the Bible for inspiration and edification. But for the young Emerson, who was not yet 30, when he tendered his resignation to Second Church, for Emerson, this relationship was far from satisfactory. Increasingly, he felt hypocritical like he was leading a false life. And so cutting ties was a huge relief, and he celebrated his liberation with this short poem. I will now live out of me. I will not see with others' eyes, my good is good, my evil ill, I would be free. It was a big risk that he took. Ralph Waldo Emerson was not born into wealth. His father was also a minister, and he was trading a secure, prestigious, remunerative position for an uncertain future. And henceforth, he threw all of that aside and said, I am resolved to live completely on my own terms. Now, Emerson had already begun keeping journals, journals in which he copied passages from his wide-ranging reading that had struck him as particularly significant. And these passages were accompanied by half-formed but potentially fruitful ideas that had occurred to him in the course of his investigations. The young minister's love of reading and writing persisted, unabated, but without a pulpit. How could that passion translate into a livelihood? Now, fortunately, Emerson's spiritual crisis coincided in the early 1800s with the rise of the Lyceum Lecture Circuit, which provided the perfect vehicle for his prolific pen. In the years that followed, he became a sought-after public speaker able to expound on a wide variety of interesting subjects. He had found his niche. But then in 1838, Emerson was invited to address the graduating class of his alma mater, Harvard Divinity School. He seized the opportunity. Recognizing it is his chance to instruct a new generation of unitarian clergy in the virtues of fresh independent thinking. And so let me admonish you to go it alone, he told those young aspiring ministers, refuse the good models, even those which are sacred to the imagination of men. Dare to love God without mediator or veil. Yourself, a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity. And so in his Harvard remarks, Emerson dilated at length on the shortcomings of the historic church and of conventional preaching. Since leaving the ministry, he had become increasingly convinced that the ultimate locus of religious authority was to stay within the individual. And so in another place, he wrote, the hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbance can shake his will, but pleasantly and as it were merrily, he advances to his own music. Now, a reaction to Emerson's Divinity School address came swiftly. Speaking for the unitarian establishment, Andrews Norton, perhaps the most formidable intellect of his generation, Andrews Norton dismissed this young upstart's arguments by saying, this is an insult to religion. All true Christianity must appeal to the Bible. It's recorded miracles to the church and its authorities, or it is not worthy of the name Christian. There can be no intuition. There can be no direct perception of the truths of Christianity, Norton scoffed. Ralph Emerson was a retiring gentleman. He was no provocateur. And he was mortified by the sermon's critical reception. And that controversy over the Divinity School address made a lasting impression demonstrating to Emerson the lengths to which society will go to bring unconventional, independent thinkers back into line. Self-reliance, perhaps his most notable and widely quoted essay, was a direct result of and a rejoinder to the rebukes that he had received in 1838. And now Emerson insisted even more strenuously that ultimate authority resides within the individual. I remember, he wrote, I remember an answer which, when quite young, I was prompted to make to a valued advisor who was want to impertune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, what do I have to do with the sacredness of traditions if I live wholly from within, my friend suggested, but there are impulses that may come from below as well as from above. I replied, they do not seem to me to be such, but if I am the devil's child, I will live then from the devil. No law can be sacred to me but the law of my own nature, and the only right is what is after my own constitution, the only wrong what is against my constitution. Emerson's influence on our own self-understanding has been considerable. And if his essays do not make for gripping reading these days, as Americans, we still pride ourselves on being independent-minded, no longer beholden to ancient institutions, hereditary nobles, authoritarian religions like our more deferential European cousins. Accordingly, citizens of the United States have in significant numbers always been drawn to populist anti-establishment politicians like Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryan. And moreover, native religious movements such as Christian Science, Free Will Baptist, Pentecostal, Free Thought have all placed a high value on personal insight and inspiration. And Emerson himself spoke very highly of Quakerism, considering it to be the ultimate Protestantism because it privileged individual inspiration and insight. Interest in Emerson's individualistic thought has waxed and waned over the decades. But it seems to me that in recent decades it has increasingly come into vogue. And this is partly a result of the scandals that have further damaged the credibility and eroded the authority of traditional institutions. So as we know, trust in government, in the established church, in corporations, in health care providers, even in science, is at or near an all-time low. And as a result of this, a substantial number of Americans have been drawn to political insurgents like Ted Cruz, the man most despised by his Senate peers, or Bernie Sanders, who initially ran for the U.S. Senate as a democratic socialist and an independent. And it doesn't end there. Many of us today ingest supplements and adopt diets based on our own private research on hunches rather than our physician's advice. We forsake faith communities intending to blaze our own idiosyncratic spiritual path. As consumers, we opt for products that advertisers promise will set us apart and make us special. As Andrew O'Hare has recently observed, these days everyone gets to choose his beliefs, his experts, his evidence. This is something like the crisis, he says, the crisis of meaning that Nietzsche foresaw when in the 19th century he pronounced that God was dead. The foregoing is relevant to our lives and to our self-understanding for two reasons. First, the confidence that we now place on private insight and self-reliance can lead to some rather serious problems. But on the other hand, such confidence can, at times, provide the resolve that we do need to stand up for what is right, knowing the difference can be tricky. The second point to consider is whether this emersonian ideal I've described is really attainable. How much of our thought is truly original? To what extent are the conclusions we reach and the decisions we make arrived at freely? Probably much less than we would imagine. But back to the first point. Recent developments attest that the exercise of private judgment isn't always advisable, nor is it profitable to ourselves or to society at large. Opportunistic politicians trading on the low repute of America's traditional institutions pander to their audiences, telling listeners, hey, you're the American public, you know best. And so thus, if a person wants to stake out a position on climate change, immigration, the harvesting of fetal body parts, evolution, if they want to take a position that flies in the face of the facts, hey, it's your right as Americans. Individualism has thrived in a society where old institutions are all on the defensive, David Callahan says. And the new individualism has emerged within a social order that does little to counterbalance its worst aspects. Our mainstream media contributes to the problem by routinely suggesting that all opinions are equal and that fair and balanced means giving credence to perspectives that are at best dubious and occasionally just plain wrong. And so a lot of what passes for informed opinion on television today is anything but informed. But in the absence of diligent fact-checking or in-depth analysis, Americans in significant numbers continue to cling to what I can only believe are rather nonsensical notions. And moreover, disconfirming evidence when confronted with it is very easy to ignore. When challenged, media mavens can simply switch channels or search the Internet for a site that will reassure them that their instincts were right in the first place. And it certainly doesn't help that so much disinformation and deceptive data are continually circulating. Stanford University's Robert Proctor has coined a term for this, a neologism. Agnotology. It's a combination of the words agnostic and ontology. Proctor defines agnotology as the study of willful acts to spread confusion and deceit especially for the purpose of selling a product or winning a favor. Agnotology is most effective when the public really doesn't understand a concept or an issue because then a vested interest can exploit that ignorance to its own advantage. And so tobacco companies that downplayed the dangers of smoking, fossil fuel firms that dispute the data on climate change. Politicians who exaggerate the threat of Muslim and Latino immigrants. These are all examples of agnotology at work. And ultimately this serves to reinforce people's confidence in their own personal chosen biases by suppressing important information. Now fortunately there is another more positive side to the story for there are indeed occasions when it is vitally important to stand by and to act upon one's convictions. So earlier in our service we heard that powerful expression of self assertion by the late poet Maya Angelou. You may shoot me with your words. You may cut me with your eyes. You may kill me with your hatefulness but still like air I'll rise. And one could cite other examples of individuals whose passion for truth and justice proved stronger than conventional wisdom and the customs that may have prevailed at the time. James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Shirley Chisholm whose quotation is found on the cover of your program. Tony Morrison. All of them refused the good models as Emerson put it each in his or her own way exposing the ugly racist underbelly of American history and American culture. And likewise Rachel Carson, James Hansen, E. O. Wilson they jarred the scientific world with claims concerning pesticide poisoning, climate change, biological determinism respectively. And Alan Turning, World War II code breaker and father of the computer age immortalized in the recent film The Imitation Game. All four of these individuals went out on a limb their views however have stood up to scrutiny and we are indeed fortunate that such individuals trusted themselves enough to push their ideas to the forefront of their discipline. We owe them a deep debt of gratitude but while self-reliance as these examples indicate can serve us and can serve society very well it can also make it very hard for any of us to adjust our outlook and to alter our opinions even when it makes preeminent sense to do so. Emerson was himself quite resolute, quite unreceptive to any kind of correction to repeat the statement that I delivered earlier. If I am the devil's child I will live then from the devil. No law can be sacred to me but my own nature. The only right is what is right after my own constitution the only wrong what is against it. I would all agree that that's just a tad extreme suggesting as it does the wholesale rejection of social accountability. And so we need to be careful William Siegel writes for many of these inner guides seem to speak at random giving wrong or unhelpful advice even leading the seeker astray. Jane Austen the great British novelist chimes in the wild imaginations that one forms where the dear self is concerned how sure to be mistaken. Austen's point is a good one for when it comes to the dear self we are often mistaken. We imagine that we arrive at our opinions independently through intuition or through rational deliberation we pat ourselves on the back for making these free autonomous decisions often imagining that the angels of our better nature inform our choices. But as Siegel said care is called for here for what psychoanalysts call the id or the shadow this could also powerfully affect our thinking and our behavior the darker side of our human nature is highly susceptible to manipulation by outside forces. Commenting on fascism's powerful propaganda machine shortly after World War II Eric Frome wrote we humans have become prey to a new kind of authority we are automatons who live under the illusion of being self-willing individuals. The Stanford philosopher René Girard also raises questions about independent thought. Quite often he says we human beings fall under the sway of what he says are our mimetic desires a natural tendency to imitate and to embrace what others are doing or what others happen to want. Girard argues that we choose an idea or we choose a commodity not so much on its intrinsic merits but simply because we observe that this is what others are doing this is what others want. And so our wishes and our values quite often are really not our own we are put into our heads from the outside and all of this suggests Ralph Waldo Emerson notwithstanding that no one really dances to his or her own tune. Yes we enjoy a modicum of independence but for the most part we are indeed creatures of our physical and our social environments relational and imitative beings par excellence. You know in one sense though maybe humbling but it's good news because it means that when we are wrong or when we are misguided it's like placing a wager on a slow horse. We may stand to lose a little money but it doesn't have to damage our egos if there's a better horse in the stable we can bet on it in the next race. And so we should be willing to go back to the drawing board revisiting the positions we had previously staked out and there's nothing diminishing about that since for the most part our convictions were pretty much socially constructed to begin with and it's also helpful to have someone trustworthy looking over our shoulder as we reconsider our options as the Buddhist teacher Marina Kaplan suggests we need the help of an external guide to provide the mirror for that which we resist seeing but which is absolutely necessary to see and that's one of the functions of an open inclusive faith community such as the one that we are involved with here. Now an iron string as Emerson described it is by nature hard to bend and likewise an absolute trust in self can be just as rigid and so in maturity I have found it useful to hold my resolutions and my convictions tightly but also lightly and this can produce a great deal of tension sometimes an uncomfortable degree of tension but it's a tension that I believe we can all learn to live with. Blessed be and amen. And as I mentioned earlier in the giving and receiving of our offering a portion of our gifts will be shared with the UW-Madison's Odyssey Project please be generous. I invite you to turn to our closing hymn number 293 A Star of Truth May our tongues refuse to speak when we are tempted to express hasty and harsh opinions when we would elevate ourselves to the judgment seat to weigh the acts and the thoughts of others when challenges do come may we act with a sense of humility and a realization of our own limitations let us do our duty with intelligence patience and thoroughness our opinions tempered by sympathy, tolerance and ever broader vision may it be so please be seated for the postlude