 Let's go. Please let us join together in a few moments of centering silence. Please remain seated as we sing our in-gathering hymn number 349 and the words appear in your order of service. Welcome to the first Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical and social issues in an accepting and nurturing environment. Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. My name is Karen Rose Gredler and on behalf of the entire congregation, I would like to extend a special welcome to visitors. We are a welcoming congregation, so whomever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life's journey, we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers 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-colored stoneware coffee mugs. These are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community who would welcome visiting with you. Experienced guides are generally available to give building tours after each service. If you would like to learn more about this sustainably designed addition or our national landmark meeting house across the parking lot, please meet near the large glass doors on what's your left side of the auditorium after the service. I do know that we have a guide for following this service, so please meet John over there. We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service. However, because it is difficult for some in attendance to hear in this lively acoustical environment, our child haven back in that corner and the commons along outside the auditorium are excellent places to go if your child wants to talk, sing, dance, run around, any normal childhood thing. The service can still be seen and heard from these areas. This would also be an excellent time to turn off all devices that might cause a disturbance during the service, especially cell phone ringers, even though we enjoy those cute little sounds. Turn them off. I'd now like to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly. Your greeter this morning was Dorrit Bergen. David Bryles is on sound. Tom Boykoff is your lay minister. Volunteers serving as ushers are Brian Channis, Nancy and Pete Dailey. They would have given you this stuff when you walked in. Betty Evenson took care of our plants for us this weekend. We have an anonymous donation from a very active member who wanted to thank Allison for the beautiful new website. So if you haven't seen it yet, go to your FUSMadison.org and take a look. She did a wonderful job. Oh, I'm sorry. Please take a look at your Red Floor's insert in your order of service. That's this thing. And there you will find announcements about things going on at the society today and in the near future. I also have a couple of special announcements. Actually just one since I already read about the flowers. The 2017 cab array, a long-standing and highly regarded event, is set for Friday, May 12. So mark your calendars. To maintain its high standards, we need a team of volunteers to assist with the many elements of a project of this huge scale. Volunteers will help plan, organize and implement this festive evening. The key areas include the auction itself, silent and live, logistics, equipment rental, set up and clean up, data entry, food and bar oversight, along with volunteer management. We need and count on energetic volunteers to make cab array a success. Please join the team to make this year's cab array another fun, enjoyable and memorable experience for all at FUS. You can sign up in a table that will be out in the commons right after the services. Events coordinator Molly Kelly is available to assist with sign up or to answer your questions. Thank you for your consideration of this important challenge. Again, welcome. We trust today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart and stir your spirit. Perfect song for the day before the equinox. Thank you, Heather. Let this hour be for us a time of celebration, a time of renewal. In celebration let our minds be awake to the common miracle of the earth, the flowing grace of the river and to the answering spirit within us. In renewal, let our minds be aware of the deep down freshness of this new day of holiness. Let loose in creation and of the responding yes within us. Let this hour be an hour of celebration when we feel at one with the mystery in which we move and have our being. Let this hour be a time of renewal when we let go of past disappointments and present anxieties to embrace the healing power of this communion. I invite you to rise and body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice. And as Karen kindles the flame, I invite you to read with me the words of affirmation printed in your program. We come into this world with empty hands and we will lead with empty hands. Since nothing is really ours to keep, let us take time to help others and make it our human obligation. May we be tolerant, compassionate and forgiving for that is truly the road to happiness. May we take time to consider the deeper issues of life for that is the highway to reverence. And now I invite you to turn to your neighbor on this fine morning and exchange with them warm and friendly greeting. Please be seated. And if we have some children that would like to come forward for the message for all ages, fast or slow, either way, you're safe. Yeah, the pictures go up on that screen, but you know, with that sun coming in like this, I'm not sure how well you're going to be able to see the pictures on the screen. So just in case, I've got the book so you can see the pictures on the book. It may just be a little bit light what you see up on the screen. So have any of you ever been afraid of anything? Batteries? You mean like lithium batteries that kind of explode? I'd be afraid of those too. That's why I will never buy a hoverboard. Have you been afraid of something? Afraid of cars? Yeah, that's why you have to use the crosswalk. Afraid of lightning and thunder and storms. You know, I know some puppy dogs that are afraid of lightning and thunder and storms too. Yeah. Yeah. So when you're afraid of something, what do you want to do? You want to do what? Okay. Or sometimes you run away from it, right? But sometimes, and this is what this story is about, sometimes when you're really afraid of something, it's a better idea not to run away from it, but actually to run towards it, to run towards what you're afraid of. So this is a story called The Forest. I had always been afraid of The Forest, that dark and unknown place at the farthest edge of my little world. At night, I often dreamed of The Forest and I woke up chilled with fear. The fear was there that day too, it didn't inside me no matter what I did or where I went. One night, the fear pressed so heavily that I could bear it no longer. In the morning, standing in the doorway of my little house, I saw the cozy chair by the fire, my warm bed and the objects that I loved. I turned and closed the door behind me. I walked through the village that I knew like the back of my hand. I passed the shops and the houses laid out in their familiar order and I followed the long curve of the street. Now where are those pictures looking up there? So the mouse is leaving his village. On the high road, my heart began to race. I no longer felt like myself, but small and alone in the big world, walking away from his village on the high road. I walked on and on past unknown farms and fields until the paved road ended. Uneasy, I looked back at my village. It was just a dot in the distance. It was a long way from his home. Looming before me and shaking its many heads slowly in the wind stood the forest. Should I turn back? Should I run back, heart racing to the safety of my home? Should he go back? No. Anybody ever been on a scary forest? No, no, he said, I have gone too far. But would I lose myself? Would I be devoured by some wild creature or would I die of fear? Oh yes, I stepped inside the forest between two pillar trees that stood like a gateway. See those big trees, just like a gate going into the forest. My heart was pounding. A sharp bird call from behind made me jump. Something cracked nearby. A dark shadow turned swiftly toward me, coming closer and closer. Leaping for cover, I tripped and I fell headlong to the ground. Why still, I thought, if you cry out or move, you will be found. Could my thundering heart be heard outside of my head? Your heart ever beat that hard? Not me. Not you? Ooh, mine has sometimes. When I opened my eyes, my nose was deep in moss, a forest of tiny trees as soft as feathers. And the sunlight was raining down through the leaves and warming my back. A sweet breeze stirred my fur. How long had I been here like this? A butterfly opened and closed its wings nearby, just like a guardian angel. You think it's a moth and not a butterfly? Either way. And so I listened. I listened at all around me. A million leaves whispered and rustled gently. I rolled over and for the first time, I looked up and I saw the sky. High above the sky, it was bigger than the forest, bigger than all of my fear had been, bigger than everything. So he's looking up at the sky, on his back. I lay there a speck in this enormous beauty until the light began to fade, getting dark. That's right. Which means it's getting dark. Yes, there's a stream, too. He didn't go swimming, though. And then, with the sweet murmuring world of the forest filling me, I walked my long way back home. It's getting darker and darker. And there he is, getting close to his village again. So this mouse was really, really afraid, wasn't he? Yeah. But he kind of figured out that he needed to do something about that bad feeling he had inside him. And the only way to do it was to walk right toward what he was afraid of. So thank you for listening to my story today, and we're going to have you stay right here because our choir is going to sing us another song. Our children can leave for their classes and to play us a little traveling music for us. You will note in your program that this week we are sharing our offering, our outreach, with the UW-Madison Odyssey Project, which offers opportunity for low-income or disadvantaged individuals, adult individuals, to begin college studies with the hope that they will then be able to matriculate at a four-year university like the UW-Madison. And Emily Auerbach is the director and the founder of this particular program. She is here with us. And in the past, we have welcomed some of her students to read original compositions on the theme of the service that we're presenting. And so we have three of her students today. Jelisa Edwards, Marisol Gonzalez, and Char Braxton, who are going to be sharing with us their compositions as well as the composition of one person who could not be with us today. So Jelisa. Morning. My name is Jelisa. Please bear with me. My voice went out two days ago. I'm going to read you a poem that I wrote called Lost American Dream. I am at home, yet for the first time in a long time, this house does not feel like a home, but more like a cold place with no heat. Prejudices and racial disparities have become the driving force within my house's living room. False generalizations and forced policies have caused the foundation of my house to weaken and split directly down the middle. Distant friends who once felt safe and sought refuge within the protection of these walls are targeted and stripped of their safe havens, jobs, stabilities, families, and all. In this house, those that speak of democracy confuse us with so many dialects of hypocrisy. Privacy, suicide, opioid abuse, murder, unemployment, and the dwindling economy are the tears, are the reason for the tears in my eyes. For so many hope is lost, lives are lost, and freedom is lost. I am paralyzed within this house, suffering from broken spirit inferiority and misguided direction. How could this house crumble after just one election? Thank you. Hi, my name is Marisol Gonzalez, and I'm going to read my poem. Name is I Lost My Freedom. When I was in my country, I remember running in the dusty streets. I remember getting in the bus, metro, car, or taxi with my friends or family all around the big city. I remember going places with just a little money and feeling that the world was mine. I lost my freedom when I took the first step in U.S. land. I lost my voice. They told me to be quiet. I lost my country. They told me to not look back. I lost my body. They told me to become invisible for la migra. I lost my family. I can go back to visit them. I lost my language. They told me to only speak English. I lost my friends. They don't have the technology to stay in contact. I lost my culture. They told me to act like North American. I lost my identity, because in this country, they don't accept you if you are different. I gained some dollars, but I lost my freedom. Hello, everyone. This sonnet was written in by a student in last year's class. Her name is Mai Ning Tao, who was out of town this weekend. She asked me to share it with you. She explains that the Hmong tradition, her father had several wives and abandoned his children on both sides of the ocean. Here is her sonnet, fatherless, 15. In a neglected house, he has been crowned. 15 decayed heartbeats to sending down, and not one invited to his embrace. His love is cheap and a shameful disgrace. Across the sea, he ships his finest love, leaving 15 souls sadly empty of softly they wait and yearn to rid the burn, for one they know has long shifted and turned. The caress of his voice is high prestige. 15 pairs of bleak eyes will never see. 15 lonely minds staring, wondering why. They can't get close enough to feel the tie of a bond so powerful from their serer who deprives them of the love they most desire. My name is Shire, and here's my poem. It's called My Lost Innocence. The heat of the sun transparent and hot through the patio glass smells of strong, rich, well-bodied coffee swirled in the air. Conversation was alluring and exciting for a girl trapped in the past. Numbness and speechlessness consumed her innocent, caramel virgin skin. Frightened, shocked, invisible, and hurt with frozen tears. My stepdad, the cries for help went unheard and faded into the cracks of the great, great moist basement walls. Life is not what it appears to be. The percolating of coffee and disbursement of cream. Her lost of innocence and shattered dreams. But she looked to God for guidance, wisdom, and forgiveness, tackling dignity, shame, and survival, and shouting, take these chains off of me. Now she's consuming a price of cup of coffee, living guilt-free. Thank you, my friends, and thank you, Emily, for those powerful presentations this morning. I invite you to rise in body or in spirit now as we sing together our next hymn, number 128. The Wisconsin State Journal and Capitol Times out of their protective plastic sleeve a couple of Wednesdays ago, I was immediately struck by the story featured on the cover of the latter, the Capitol Times. It was about nuns, for goodness' sake. And not about those outspoken sisters who toured the country by bus, promoting progressive ideas and policy initiatives. Those saucy nuns have made two appearances here at FUS in the past couple of years. But the nuns showcased in this particular article are contemplatives. They are members of the Cistercian Order whose beginnings date back to the 11th century. The most recognizable Cistercian of the modern era is probably Thomas Merton who belonged to a strict branch of that order known as the Trappists. And as it happens, there is a Cistercian monastery, Valley of Our Lady, near Prairie du Sac. And what piqued the interest of the Cap Times writer, Caitlin Farrell, was this monastery's recent success in attracting younger spiritual aspirants, millennials. And among the millennials that Farrell interviewed for this article was a woman who had studied aeronautical engineering, another who was an entomologist, a third who intended to become a professional concert violinist. These and others had said goodbye to rich and promising secular lives, lives defined by professional status, handsome salaries, community involvement, and the satisfactions of family life. Goodbye. Nuns residing at this monastery, Valley of Our Lady, are cloistered. Relatives can visit them once a year, but they cannot travel home to visit those same relatives. The nuns spend all but 15 minutes a day in silence. They make their own clothes. They subsist on a simple diet that varies little from day to day. Their parents often struggle to accept their daughter's decisions these women will admit. Why? Why would they opt for a lifestyle that makes Thoreau's at Walden Pond seem positively opulent? But the sisters harbor no regrets. The entomologist, sister Christina Marie, was performing fascinating research, and she was romantically involved with a good man. But she says, I just really didn't have any peace about it. There was still something not quite right. And so I knew that I had to give God a chance. Sister Mary Bede, the violinist, admits that the decision to forgo a career in music that wasn't at all easy. Now, she is still allowed to play, but it just doesn't seem all that important to her these days. Like others in the order, Mary believes that the price that she paid was well worth it. It's really a great game, just on another plane, but it requires a vision of faith to be able to understand this vocation because it is mystical. Not logical, but mystical. So these are young women who have given up a great deal. Family, career, even their given names. As Caitlyn Farrell observes, the convent reveals the core of the sister's personhood, then teaches her to let go of that personhood, which they are only able to do by completely relying on God. Etymologically, to lose. That shares the same root as our English word forlorn. And in the old English, it literally means to perish. The verb has its taproot sunk deeply in sorrow. Catherine Schultz writes. And perhaps you, like me, were struck by the emotional poverty, the sadness, the sense of betrayal, the anger that our odyssey guests conveyed with their writings on personal loss. Yes, we hear that word, or when goodbye crosses our lips, it's more than likely that something negative, sadness, will be the first feeling that stirs within us. We feel diminished when we lose. When it doesn't take a great deal of loss for us to feel that way. It's not the worry that we experience when we misplace our cell phone, our wallet, our keys. We lose objects such as those and immediately we imagine the words. So integral are they to our identity and to our daily routines. And sometimes, the value can be much less instrumental than this, but the pain of loss can still be there. In her 2015 memoir, the singer-songwriter Patty Smith reflected on an old black coat that a friend of hers had given her. It wasn't a handsome coat. It wasn't a particularly expensive coat. It had seen better days. It was optimized for losing things, she says, because of the gaping holes in all the pockets. But she cherished that coat nonetheless. Every time I put it on, she said, I felt like myself. But the coat wasn't all that warm. In one cold winter, she purchased a heavier coat. Milder weather returned, she went to retrieve her favorite black one, but it had mysteriously disappeared. She was crushed. No question about it. Most of us don't do well with goodbyes. And if there are lessons to be learned from loss, well, we're often reluctant to learn them. When FUS member Sparrow-Senty saw the blur of announcing today's surface, she remembered a piece that she had composed over a half a century ago for the hithing Minnesota junior college newspaper. Her sentiments are probably ones that many of us share. She said, I think the word goodbye should be eliminated from the English language. I abhor goodbyes. In the older I get, the more I avoid them, if at all possible. And Sparrow writes about the distress that goodbyes had caused her. And she mentions in particular terrifying goodbyes exchanged with her lover and future husband when he was shipped overseas in World War II. Upon his return, she says, I tucked my goodbyes away again in the dusty corner of that old battered Navy sea bag out of sight. But they are waiting to be unpacked, I know, and I hate every letter of it. So do we have to become cisterns to wrap the world and our former selves for a life in God to find something positive, something redeeming in our goodbyes? Well, I would hope not because a little over a year from now I'll be saying a big goodbye to a career that has spanned over 40 years. I'm not intending to join the cisterns. But I would really like to think that there would be some element of sweetness as well as sorrow in that particular goodbye. And if testimony from my older college this will certainly be the case. They assure me that the next chapter of life can be in its own way just as fulfilling as this one. But the extent to which this is true, I believe, may depend on how completely our vocational work has defined us. I've known physicians, I've known academics as well as other clergy who wanted nothing less than to die with their boots on. And one is tempted to ask do you really love your work that much? Or is it just that you cannot envision any other way of being? Now there are those who can never afford financially to retire. And that is a misfortune for which governmental policies and priorities are directly responsible. But for those of us who do have that luxury there is still the temptation to stay the course, to linger, to hold on to those defining professional patterns and the rewards we've receded with them. And we might even say to ourselves, hey, it's not about me, it's about the work itself. That's what's so important, the work must go on. This is what's called projection. Assigning our own psychological need to something or someone else. The American essayist E.B. White understood how we use projection to escape the necessity of saying goodbye. He was describing in an essay the process of leaving a residence in New York City that he had occupied for many, many years. And he says, for some weeks now I have been engaged in dispersing the contents of this apartment, trying to persuade hundreds of inanimate objects to scatter and leave me alone. This is not a simple matter. I am impressed, he says, by the reluctance of one's worldly goods to go outside and into the world again. A home is like a reservoir equipped with a check valve. The valve permits influx, but it prevents outflow. Acquisition goes on day and night smoothly, subtly, imperceptibly. And so under ordinary circumstances the only stuff that ever leaves a home is paper trash and garbage. Everything else stays and digs in. In this sense, we're all a little bit like that mouse in the message for all ages. There is comfort to be found in what is commonplace in the security of sameness. And so it does require an act of will, an act of courage to turn our back on familiar surroundings and sally forth on to the high road, where we've never been before. What motivated Mr. Mouse? He left home because he was frightened of the unknown. But he didn't like feeling that way. He was pressing down on his chest. And he realized that the only way to find relief was to confront his fear directly. The temptation to turn back was strong. But he knew that if the pilgrimage did not free him, it might devour him. In the end, of course, he learned that his fears were misplaced. They were unfounded. And that forbidding forest was itself a source of peace and delight. We embark on a similar journey by letting go of a career clearing out a house full of stubbornly resistant clutter. It can feel very discomfiting at first, but it liberates us. It frees us in the end. But a home, a home, that's a particularly difficult possession for any of us to say goodbye to. Home is where the heart is, an old adage tells us. And if you've lived anywhere for an extended period of time, you would probably agree, home is where my heart is. We're living up one's home, selling a special piece of property. That can never be easy, and it can feel very much like a debt when we do so. And any profit we may realize from the sale hardly compensates from the heartache associated with leave-taking. Now, when Carolyn Morris Waxler purchased today's sermon subject at last spring's Cabaret Service Auction, they had recently sold a lovely home on 16 acres of undeveloped land on the quiet side of Door County. And over the years that they'd had this particular house, they'd created something truly special. They had stayed in that house and on that property with them on several occasions, and I can personally attest to the special ambience of their country retreat. Now, ongoing health retreats necessitated the sale of that property, but they had grown up in Door County and because the two of them had put so much of themselves into their residence, it was an especially difficult step to take. This was truly for them a home. And as Scott Russell Sanders aptly observes real estate ads, they offer houses for sale, not homes. A house is a garment, easily put off or put on, casually bought or sold. A home is a skin. When you really change houses, you may be disoriented. Change homes and you bleed. When the shell you live in has taken on the savor of your love, when your dwelling has become a taproot, then your house has become a home. Now, Carolyn and Morris were wise enough to know that none of us really owns anything. We are born with empty hands and we will leave this spinning sphere with empty hands. So the best that we can say for ourselves is that we are merely leaseholders. The original inhabitants of this land, the Native Americans, they knew that very, very well. And that being the case, if we are merely leaseholders, we all have a choice. We have the choice to be faithful stewards to that which has temporarily been put in our care. Or we can be desecraters with no sense of obligation whatsoever because Morris and Carolyn, they chose stewardship. And when it did come time for them to hand on their home, they handed it on to a family whose values aligned closely with their own. This home was a spiritual presence in our lives, Carolyn writes, and we transferred it to others who were drawn by that very presence. It's so much easier to let something go, to say goodbye to a home, to a faith community, even to life itself when we know that what we have loved and what we have honored is in trustworthy hands. We preserve, we improve, and we gratefully pass it along. If we have developed a deep sense of gratitude for the enrichment that a home or a career has afforded us, we can pass it on to others for their future pleasure and fulfillment. And such generosity is this, need not feel like a sacrifice, but as the final fulfillment that we all experience in the process of creating a legacy. But what about saying goodbye to this marvelous world, saying goodbye to life itself? Apart from the prospect of a pleasant afterlife, or relief from unendurable pain and suffering, what could ease the bitterness of that irrevocable loss? Well, in her book, Necessary Losses, Judith Bjors tells of an encounter that she had with a fragile, retired psychoanalyst and teacher. And despite a severe respiratory disorder, Bjors describes this woman as vividly alive. I immediately fell under her spell, she says. Bjors looked forward to future visits. But a few days later, death intervened. But before her demise, this non-agenarian, this old woman shared with a mutual friend a meaningful dream that she had recently had. It seems that she was sitting on a table and she was dining with some good friends. The old woman is eating with relish. But before she's finished, a waiter comes up and begins to clear the table, taking her plate away. She raises her hand to stop him. And then she reconsideres. Slowly she drops her hand. She will let the waiter clear. Because the dreamer realizes that while the food still tastes good and while she would still love to have some more, she's had enough. And she's ready at that point to let the rest go. This, Judith Bjors' comments, is the dream of a woman wholly involved with life right up until the time she died. This is a dream that tells us that life can be gently set aside when it has been lived to the full. My own experience over 40-some years of ministry confirms the Bjors' rights. I've talked with numerous elders. I've prepared memorial services for those who have passed away and I hear far more stories of fulfillment and gratitude than I do of regret and greediness. These two, these people I have known have feasted at life's table and they are able to accept with equanimity when the waiter comes to clear. So let me end with a folk tale about letting go. A tale that perhaps can serve as a metaphor for the rewards that we may forfeit when we cling to that which is not ours to keep. Seems there was an old man and he had spent a lifetime on this beautiful island where his ancestors had settled many, many years ago. And he and they had tilled the soil. They had grown wheat for their bread and grapes for their wine. The man asked his sons to carry him outside one last time. And when they were outside he knelt and he gathered a handful of his native soil and he clutched it tightly in his old, gnarled fingers. And he died the next day and he came to the gates of heaven where the angels greeted him warmly. You have lived a great life. Please come into the kingdom. We've been waiting for you. The old man tried to cross the threshold. But as he did so one of the angels said to him you must let go of the soil that you are clutching in your hand. Nothing of the earth can pass in through the gates of heaven. Never do that. The old man said this is all I have left of my beloved island. It is far too precious to let go. And so the angels shut the gates. They left the old man alone wandering outside. At one time the angels would reemerge and they would try to tempt the old man with all manner of heavenly pleasures. But still he refused to relinquish his fist full of soil. In the meantime his children grew old and they died as did his grandchildren. And one day the angels brought forth his favorite granddaughter who stood just inside the gates begging her grandfather, grandfather I'm so happy to see you here. Please come in and join us and the old man was overjoyed to see his grandchild. And so he flung out his arms to embrace her and in the process the soil flew out of his fingertips. And with that gesture he was allowed to enter his eternal home. Blessed be. And as I mentioned earlier our offertory this weekend and next will be shared with the UW Odyssey project. And there was one other individual who participated in the Odyssey project who could not be here today by way of a little testimonial. Derek McCrae says I have lost so much in just a little time. In 2012 I lost my youngest son who was autistic three days before my birthday. It seemed like my whole world just collapsed around me. A few months later I lost my job my relationship, my home and the list just kept getting worse. I fell into a spiral of negativity. But September 2013 was the beginning of something amazing something special. I felt like I was coming into a new me. The Odyssey program showed me that the fight was not over. The word Odyssey it means a journey into the unknown as is life. And I learned that I had so many resources that helped me to cope. But most of all I gained 30 new family members that were there to help throughout the year. Even though I no longer live in Wisconsin Derek says we remain in contact and sisters with Emily as our mom. So just know if you ever need help there are resources and most of all there is a family to help you through. Please be generous. Reflections that the topic was purchased by Carolyn and Morris Waxer last year and particularly they were interested in this whole notion of loss and saying goodbye because of the sale of their special property up in Dork County and Carolyn had actually composed a little piece that gives you I think a richer feel for what it was that they gave up. So Carolyn? Thank you Michael. Actually this is another forest story and it has something in common with Michael's story that it's about a place to come alive and the forest is a source of peace and delight. I wrote it several years ago as part of a women writers group that formed at FUS and over the years I've shared it with others including the UU fellowship in Dork County where we were also members and where I did services occasionally and this was part of the service and meant as a way to entice people to come and enjoy the property with us and it's titled Dead Limbs Dancing amidst decay the forest teams with life dead birch branches filled with rotted wood open to the touch rich fragrant mulch spills to the ground waiting to mark a perimeter path 16 acres of forest marsh and meadows have stories to tell for years this wisdom goes unknown its people stay within the narrow confines of the house lawn and garden content with cultivated space tall cedars with long skirted branches hide the rest from view slowly the forest opens as the man trims dead branches and lifts the lady's skirts others come to fell trees bringing in more air in light the woman cuts through the jumble of branches to create trails the cuttings join other downed trees to line the pathways look listen and merge with the landscape for here the dead limbs find new life see the tall praying mantis once the base of a living tree other wood remnants morph into dinosaurs fish birds and more to illuminate the forest floor dance with them and celebrate the cycles of their lives celebrate your own while you're here ever expanding trails lead to more distant meadows dotted with juniper bushes native plants and wildflowers so leave cedar birch and pine for now and enter the meadow wander these open areas that invite stone creations a medicine wheel perhaps a mandala or a goddess nearby cairns and scattered rocks offer up the raw materials bones of beasts that lived and died here also mark the grounds it is sacred space the spirit of the land sends a universal message of hope open to all who wish to enter the man and the woman and the land for now but ownership is a human invention and land is best shared with others at the forest edge near upon the woman builds a rock lined meditation labyrinth seven connecting paths wind forth and back and forth again the journey leads to a centered circle a place of refuge for the soul stately trees shade a nearby counseling perch on one of the boulders or stone walls that encircle an open fire pit is a place to tell stories to chant and drum and sing then the follow the trail to another part of the woods where two rows of long needle pines form an outdoor cathedral a new section of land emerges a wasteland a swamp it is the forest primordial at first the people deem this wilderness ugly and ignore it later they savor its primitive beauty even as they crawl through fallen trees, water and mud to better know this rugged wilderness giant trees felled by storms in time expose room length root systems still filled with soil dig some out to see more clearly the gnarled intricacy of the winding roots the trees create walls and rooms to protect the forest animals so venture forth into the forest meadow and wetlands create your own pathways clear your mind and heart here in this moment for a time years pass it is time to sell the property a young couple with a little boy come to see it she kneels at a primitive stone structure near a pond and thinks I will do my yoga here he places a sacred object on an outdoor altar an arrow head given to him by his grandmother the couples become friends the land is passed to a new generation and on and on it goes thank you carolin now I invite you to turn and to rise as you are able in body or spirit number 86 be seated for the benediction and the postlude the closing words come from william martin the sages dow to change each day that passes the sage discards another useless weight finally all the accumulated burden of a life spent seeking everything is gone in its place is a lightness of being a clarity of seeing that makes a heaven of each moment so make it your daily discipline to lay aside one little thing a tiny fear a simple preconception a useless book a piece of household clutter a habit of avoidance a bit of shame or guilt a desire that distracts even a good intention and what will be left is life itself