 and welcome to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. My name is Kelly Crocker, and I'm one of the ministers here. Today, I'm joined by my colleague, the Reverend Kelly Aspreuth Jackson, and the worship team of Linda Warren, Drew Collins, Stephen Gregorius, Daniel Carnes, and Heather Thorpe, here with our children, our chair choir, and our choristers. We are so very glad that you all are with us today. Also, a special thank you to Catherine Kluwit for being with us at this weekend's services. At First Unitarian Society, we question boldly, listen humbly, grow spiritually, act courageously, and love unapologetically. If you're visiting us today, welcome. We're so very glad that you are with us, and we hope that you will be able to stay for a coffee hour immediately following today's service right out here in the commons. Also in the commons, you will find our welcome table. If you've got questions about First Unitarian, please stop by there, right next to the elevator, and someone will be there to answer your questions. For those connecting with us virtually today, we're glad you are with us as well, and we hope that you'll be able to take a moment and watch the announcement slides immediately following today's service to find out more about what's happening here at FUS. 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. We gather together. We arrive as individuals, as couples, as families, as neighbors, as friends. We got here by walking, by biking, by riding, by driving, by connecting. We bring with us our joys and our sorrows, our laughter and our tears, our worries and our fears, our questions and our beliefs, our ethics and our values. Some of us arrived early this morning or joined us 10 minutes ago or encountered obstacles on their way or will arrive just in time for the sermon or will sign on later this week or even next month. We are sitting in chairs, leaning on walkers or canes, stretching in the aisles, settling in wheelchairs, maybe relaxing in recliners. We, members, friends and visitors alike, come from many paths and join together as one congregation to lift up our highest ideals. We have gathered. Now, let us worship. And we invite you now to rise in all the ways we do, joining together in our words of affirmation as we light our chalice. All that we have ever loved and all that we have ever been stands with us on the brink of all that we aspire to create. A deeper peace, a larger love, a more embracing hope, a deeper joy in this life we share. Please join me in singing hymn number 95. There is more love somewhere. We invite anyone who would like to come up closer and join us on the rug for our story to come on up. Howdy, howdy, hi. It's good to see you all. I know it is a ways if you're coming down from the balcony. Yeah, that's true, that's true. Hello. Not a story for you today that starts as a lot of good stories do with once upon a time. So once upon a time, there was a village with a road that went straight through the center of town. One day something strange happened. God walked right down the road and she was beautiful. She wore a long flowing robe and on top of her head was a wonderful hat. All the people stopped to stare at God as she walked by and they kept staring until she disappeared into the distance. God sure was beautiful, said one man. And what a beautiful blue hat she had on. Yes, God was beautiful, said a woman from the other side of the street, but it wasn't a blue hat she was wearing, it was red. You are wrong, said the man. It was definitely a blue hat. No, you are wrong, said the woman. It was definitely a red hat. Now as the two argued, others joined in the dispute. Soon the whole village was arguing. All the people on one side of the road were certain that God was wearing a blue hat and all the people on the other side of the road were certain that God was wearing a red hat. People got mad and started screaming at each other and finally the people got so angry that they decided to build a wall that went straight down the center of town. From that point on, the people on one side of the wall were enemies with the people who lived on the other side of the wall and they never spoke to each other. On one side of the wall, the people built a church where they worshiped a God that wore a blue hat. And on the other side of the wall, the people built a church where they worshiped a God that wore a red hat. Now many years passed and the people were still enemies. Then one day, what happens? God comes walking back through the village again. She's smiling and balancing on top of that wall that the people had built many years ago. This time she was wearing no hat at all. All the people ran to the wall and cried, you must settle our argument. Yes, said the one man. The people on that side of the street say that when you walked through the village many years ago, you were wearing a blue hat. But we know better. We know you were wearing a red hat. So tell us, God, what color was that hat? Well, God looked puzzled for a moment and began to scratch her head in thought. I think I remember walking through the village many years ago, said God. And on that day I believe I was wearing my hat that is blue on one side and red on the other. What? What? What? What? And saying nothing more, God continued walking down the wall until she disappeared off into the distance. So it was very quiet for a moment. Then suddenly there was the sound of one child laughing. And then another child started laughing. And another, as soon the whole village, was roaring with laughter. Everyone was laughing because they realized how foolish they had been. As the sound of the laughter grew louder and louder, the wall began to shake and crumble until finally it came tumbling down to the ground. For many, many years after that day, the people told the story of God's hat and how laughter had torn down the wall that divided the foolish people. So what do you think? Was there something else they could have done instead all those years ago? Yeah, what do you think? They could have made a tinier wall, maybe one that you could just step right over, right? Cleo? Right? Right? Sometimes we do get really stuck in our position of red hat, blue hat, whatever that may be. And we're not really willing to listen to the other side. Yeah, what do you want to say? Who decided to wear red and blue today? It really wasn't us, but we did this for the Saturday service and someone came up to Kelly after and said, I liked how you coordinated your red and blue. So honestly, we just had to do it again. All right, thank you so much for, we're gonna stay right here because our children's choir is gonna sing. So if you want to turn this way, I invite you into the giving and receiving of today's offering. We give freely and generously to this offering, which supports the ongoing work of this community and the work of our outreach offering recipient, who this week is mentoring positives, a nonprofit leadership development organization here in Madison. Mentoring positives offers a comprehensive suite of community-based mentoring and social entrepreneurship opportunities designed to bolster social skills, self-confidence, emotional learning and well-being for many of Madison's youth. You'll see on the screen that you can donate directly from our website, fussMadison.org. You'll find our text to give information there as well. And baskets are being passed here in the room. We thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life we create together. Congregation is a free association. A gathering of people who have chosen and continue to choose over and over again to make common cause with each other and build a common religious life together. We make our most important decisions together through a practice of direct democracy at our parish meetings, including whether and whom to call or dismiss as our ministers, whom to elect to positions of high trust as officers empowered to make certain decisions on behalf of the community in between parish meetings, what our bylaws as an organization will and will not be and whether or not to approve an annual budget to cover the expenses of this congregation and its work in the world. In addition, our ministers, our ministry teams and our individual members and staff are free and encouraged to speak their conscience in the public square, but we take public positions on matters of social importance as the first Unitarian Society of Madison, again, only by vote of our membership. In these practices, we are the same as the roughly 1,000 other Unitarian Universalist congregations across the United States. And our community has chosen to join with them as a member of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. That organization, the UUA, is in some ways a congregation of congregations and similarly makes its most important decisions through a broad based democratic practice. Each year in June, a number of delegates, roughly proportional to the adult membership of each member congregation and chosen by those congregations, are invited to attend the General Assembly, held in different cities around the country. Ministers and more recently, professional religious educators, if they are serving member congregations, are also automatic delegates, although they are heavily outnumbered by the lay delegates. This is where elections of officers are held, changes to our bylaws are debated and approved or not, and formal positions on behalf of our entire association are taken. It is also the occasion for a number of annual celebrations and observances that have an impact on the broad world of Unitarian Universalism each year. This past June, our General Assembly was held in Pittsburgh. As a matter of UU civics, I believe it is important for us to know, as a congregation, at least the broad strokes of events at that meeting. That would be true in any year. This past year and the coming one also have a particular importance as topics right at the heart of who we are as Unitarian Universalists were and will be on the agenda. Finally, I think you need to hear about all this because the General Assembly is a time each year for our self-reflection and re-inspiration as a religious movement. And there are some themes and messages from the event this year that seem important enough to me to share with you. So here is my report to you from Pittsburgh. Now I wanna begin technically before the beginning of the meeting itself. Each year for a few days before the formal opening of the General Assembly, the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association has its own meeting. The UUMA is a separate organization from the UUA with a separate membership, separate finances, separate bylaws, and separately elected trustees. But it does work in complement with the UUA in some ways. One of the small but meaningful points of coordination is that the final event of the minister's meeting is open to the public and often attended by lay delegates to the General Assembly who are already in town for that event, which opens just a few hours afterward. What is formally the last event of the minister's meeting and informally the first event of the General Assembly is actually considerably older than and separate from both of those institutions. The ministerial conference at Berry Street dates all the way back to 1820 and it's named for the specific address of a specific church building in Boston which no longer exists. It was in the vestry of the old Federal Street Church whose entrance was on Berry Street that the tradition among Unitarian and eventually Unitarian Universalist ministers of inviting one of their number to deliver an essay to their body on a topic of the essayist's choosing began. Having continued every year since then with the sole exception of 1945 on account of the war, the Berry Street essay is said to be the oldest continuous lecture series in North America. I cannot verify that with certainty but I can say that being invited to be a Berry Street essayist is the highest honor in our learned ministry and that because it is delivered just at the beginning of the General Assembly, its subject and arguments often serve as fodder in the countless informal conversations that happen among delegates to that meeting. This year's essayist was the Reverend Cecilia Kingman and her title was My Little Pony Was Right, Fascisms Without and Within. Now Reverend Kingman is currently pursuing a Doctor of Ministry degree and the focus of her study is on the response of religious communities to totalitarian movements and regimes. So the fascism part of that title may be pretty obvious. The My Little Pony part, perhaps less so if you're not used to the idea that children's cartoon shows can be poignant and politically insightful. In her remarks, Reverend Kingman drew on a specific episode of the My Little Pony program with a clear and concise anti-fascist message. While she did not make this connection in what she said directly, to me this was a reminder about something important we often lose sight of in our liberal religious tradition. Joy and solace are at the heart both of why we come together as Unitarian Universalists and of what people come to us seeking for. Sometimes we think that we need to keep things positive and light and avoid topics which seem too frightening or too controversial in the larger world in order to fulfill our purpose as a religious community. But if My Little Pony can do it, then the fact is that engaging in open-hearted joy in the face of rising fascist forces globally and in this country is itself a radical act and that bringing real solace to those harmed and threatened by the ultimate political expression of an ethos of hierarchy and the worship of power, of a necessity means confrontation with that ethos. Because in the final analysis, a fascist ethos searches relentlessly for enemies to hunt out and destroy so that whatever comforts or privileges any of us might enjoy, none of us remain permanently safe from movements which thirst for human beings to dehumanize. Reverend Kingman's full essay, as well as video of her remarks are available online and I commend them to you. For this moment, I want to particularly lift up just one line from her text. When people have been taught that they have a rightful place at the top of the hierarchy, equality feels like a threat. I agree with Reverend Kingman's assessment that we are living in an era in which political movements that can rightly be labeled as fascist or fascism adjacent are on the rise. Movements which claim they will restore a mythic past, defend traditional hierarchies of power, eradicate dehumanized enemies presented as simultaneously monstrous in their power and grotesque for their weakness, and do all of this while validating electoral processes if and only if they win, while promoting violence as a noble means to achieve their aims. But with just that one sentence, Reverend Kingman identifies a rude idea which is not sufficient for fascism on its own. Not everyone who feels a loss of privilege as an act of victimization is automatically a fascist, but which is necessary for fascism's emergence and growth. My little pony's vision of a right and just world is one in which every person gets to become fully and beautifully themselves. This is antithetical to fascism and to other forms of totalitarianism, and right in line with our traditions deep value of holding sacred the constantly unfurling potential and infinite value of every human being. Reverend Kingman's essay challenged us both to recognize our own faith message as fundamentally anti-fascist and at the same time, to engage in a fearless and searching moral inventory of our own hearts, to be mindful of our all-to-human tendencies, to mistake the liberation of others with a loss for ourselves. Now, as I said near the beginning though, the General Assembly is first and foremost a business meeting of a democratically-organized free association, and there were at least three major items of business on this year's agenda. The election of a new president of the UUA, a business resolution regarding full divestment of the association's holdings from the fossil fuel industry, and the first stage of a two-year process in considering a major revision to Article II of the UUA's bylaws. I'm gonna start with that revision because I believe that of those three very important items, it is most important, it is most important. It's going to require repeating some information that I've shared with you before, so I apologize if you already know some of this stuff, but it's important that as many of us as possible have a baseline understanding of this process. Article II is the section of the Unitarian Universalist Association's bylaws that holds crucial statements about what we are for and about as a religious movement and as an association of congregations. This includes the text familiar to most of us as the seven principles. Our bylaws require us to consider revising this text periodically. They do not require change, only that we consider change. Following those bylaws, in 2020, the Board of Trustees of the UUA charged a commission of Unitarian Universalists to create a proposal to revise Article II. They spent years gathering input from other UUs throughout the association and then writing language, taking feedback on that language and ultimately submitting their proposal in January of this year. I preached about this shortly after the proposal was made, trying to walk folks through the most major changes and recording of that message can be found on our YouTube page if you want to review it for some reason. The changes are indeed major. The headline for most of us is that the seven principles would be replaced in this new version with a section titled Values and Covenant, articulating seven shared values, love, interdependence, pluralism, justice, transformation, generosity, and equity. It is very hard to change Article II by design. Changes to Article II must be preliminarily approved at one general assembly with a year taken for further consideration by member congregations and a second vote for final approval at the next year's GA. The proposal to change Article II was the central item on the agenda at the General Assembly in Pittsburgh. Amendments to the proposal were offered, discussed, and voted on. Some of these passed and some of them failed. It's notable to me that the five amendments which passed mostly involved restoring specific phrases and ideas from the current Article II so that they would be preserved in the new version if the revision ultimately passes. The proposal as a whole was then discussed and voted on. It passed with 86.3% of those voting voting in favor. This was just the first vote, however, and required only a simple majority to pass. It will now automatically be discussed again at General Assembly in June of 2024 and voted on for a final time, requiring a two-thirds majority to pass. It also now becomes much harder to amend the proposal so that its language is more stable for congregations and individual Unitarian Universalists to consider whether or not they will choose to support it next year. This is, by my count, only about the fifth time since we formed our association in 1961 that we have considered revising Article II and only the third time that we have considered what I would describe as a major revision to it. And only one of those previous two major revisions was ultimately approved. I hope that you will give this process and these changes some of your time and attention if you haven't already. Reverend Kelly and I are organizing open discussion sessions about this each month this fall. The dates and times are publicized in the usual places and I'd be happy to help you find them if you're having trouble. Please RSVP to Kelly Crocker if you're planning to attend one. Journey circles and other existing small groups may also wish to organize their own discussions as may informal groups of FUS folks and we'll be making resources available for that just as we did in the lead up to General Assembly this past spring. If you find yourself particularly energized on this topic you may be interested to know that GA 2024 will have no physical location. It will be entirely virtual. This should pose the absolute lowest possible barrier to attendance and full participation for delegates although access to and facility with technology is obviously still a limiting factor. The next point of business was a resolution entitled complete divestment from the fossil fuel industry and subsequent reparations. It is hard for me to summarize the spirited and emotionally charged debate around this one. Video of all of the debate and decision making at General Assembly can be found online. If you are interested and need help finding this particular section please let me know so I can help. The simplest thing that I can say is that this resolution was put forward by a large group of UU activists whose core leadership included people who have been on the front lines at places like Standing Rock and other locations where protests against pipelines on the basis of indigenous rights, clean water needs and the health and livability of the earth itself have been met with criminalization and violence by corporations and civil authorities. The opposition to it was led by basically the entire elected leadership of our association. Our hired staff I should say are not permitted to comment on items before the General Assembly whether for or against. Their argument against the resolution was if I can attempt to summarize that abiding by it would likely be illegal given that it potentially would mean giving away money that is held in trust by what's called our common endowment fund but which rightly belongs to member congregations and not to the UUA itself. And that whether illegal or not it would be financially ruinous. Our common endowment fund already does not do business with a list of fossil fuel companies deemed the worst offenders per a resolution passed some years ago. We do invest in the fossil fuel industry under the philosophy of shareholder activism pooling the votes our holdings and entitle us to with others with similar values to push for change within these industries. I believe and this is only my perspective that the root issue here was a question of whether one holds that, that shareholder activism approach to be a valid and potentially ethical approach to investing or not. As I said it was a spirited debate. I read anguish on the faces of several of the speakers from both sides of the argument. When the time for discussion had closed, voting now takes place electronically during a several hours long window each evening so that who gets to vote isn't limited to who can manage to be in person or online at exactly the right moment that the vote is taken. A group of folks supporting the resolution intentionally stopped the proceedings with chance and calls for change. This went on for a little bit and then dispersed. It's not the first time that a collision of deeply held values has led to an outpouring of emotion and a breakdown in the normal order at GA. So far as I'm concerned it's not a bad thing that that happens sometimes. Ultimately the motion to fully divest was not approved with 68.3% of those voting against. Now the third very important item, what would have been unambiguously the most important item on almost any other GA agenda was the election for the next president of the UUA. This office is somewhat unusual even compared to others of our siblings, sibling religious traditions in North America. It combines elements of a CEO with those of a pastor and a public activist. It is not a requirement that a person be a minister in order to serve as president of the UUA but significantly no lay person has ever run for that office and won. Up until six years ago no woman and no person presenting as other than a cisgender man had either. This was only our second election under a new set of rules passed into our bylaws as an association by the General Assembly. These new rules changed the office of president from a four year term with the opportunity to run for a second to a single six year term non-renewable. They also created a presidential search committee given the responsibility to find at least two candidates for the office whom they found to be qualified in both capability and vision. This cycle that search committee identified two candidates but one of them chose to withdraw from contention before their name was announced. So we began this electoral cycle with only one official candidate in the running. Now anyone can run for any office of the UUA or put any item of business on the agenda at General Assembly by petition, by garnering the support of a sufficient number of member congregations. No one did this. So our sole candidate was the Reverend Doctor Sophia Betancourt, a congregational minister, seminary professor, activist, and scholar. Because she was effectively running unopposed, the ballot for this election read, should the Reverend Doctor Sophia Betancourt be the next president of the UUA? Yes or no? Sophia was elected with 95.5% of those voting and 1.4% abstaining. The last night of General Assembly is the night of the where lecture, a public address given at the invitation of the UUA president each year, always by a figure of some prominence in the fields of the arts or social activism or sometimes both. They are usually, though not always, from outside Unitarian Universalism, but are chosen from the belief that they have something of value to say to us. Past where lecturers include the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr., Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and Mary Oliver. This year's lecturer was the author and scholar Imani Perry. I found her remarks rich and somewhat meditative, more a deep consideration than a simple exhortation. Though to be clear, I believe that there can be a time and a place for either or both. But here are two phrases that I immediately scribbled down while listening to her and which I will leave you with as I believe they very much do have something of value to say to us. The stratification of belonging leads the vulnerable to victimize the vulnerable. And the anti-intellectualism of the day is predicated on keeping people from being moved deeply. Each week we gather bringing with us the joys and the sorrows of our recent days. We bring them here knowing they are held in love and in support. This week we light a candle for the life of Ken Ragland who passed away one month ago. The flowers here are in honor of Ken, whose memorial service will be held today at 2 p.m. in the landmark auditorium. And we light a candle for one of our beloved oaks who lost a substantial limb this week. The silent giants have been a part of this land long before our landmark building was here. And we know that they hold a great emotional and spiritual significance for many. And one of us added a quote to our CARES book from Matchona de Wallo, an oak tree is a daily reminder that great things often have small beginnings. And we light a candle of love and sorrow for Mary Kessler and her family. As her brother-in-law, Andy Combs is moved to palliative care. We send our love to Mary and her sister Cindy as they walk these final days with Andy. And if you'll join us now in a moment of meditation with these words from Mark Bellatini. Let the difficulties of the week take their Sabbath now, their brief and simple rest. Let the worries of the week lay their heft gently onto the dark earth below these floors, which can bear them with greater ease than any one of us can by ourselves. Let the tangle of feelings, the pull and push of these last few days sit still for a minute. Stop writhing in our hearts and move no more. Let there be stillness in our hearts for a moment. The balance point between breathing in and breathing out, like the pause of a dancer between movements in the music. Let the breathing in this room be free and flowing. Let pulses beat a slower rhythm in the wrist. Let the coming silence be like hands pulling back a curtain, revealing the table set with the feast of life, which is present here and now and has been the whole while. Come now into the silence amid these people that we might be comforted and set free for but a moment. Blessed be. Rise in body or in spirit, and join in singing hymn number 1020, woe, yah, yah. Liberations bound by common faith and purpose and yet beginning with ourselves as we are. Let us take one more step together in our unending quest for dignity, justice and love. Blessed be, go in peace and please be seated for the postlude.