 Good afternoon. Welcome to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a community where curious seekers gather who 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 Lorna Aronson and on behalf of the congregation I'd like to extend a special welcome to visitors. We're a welcoming congregation, so whatever you do and wherever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life journey, you celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers are encouraged to stay for a fellowship hour after the service in the commons area of the Atrium Edition. Numbers of our staff and way of the ministry will be on hand to welcome you. If you're accompanied by a young child, please remember that if they need to talk or move around, the larger area is a good place to retire with them. And at this time, we'd like to ask you to turn off all V-PERS cell phones and other electronic equipment that might cause a disturbance during the hour. I'd like to also acknowledge those individuals who helped our services around school. Your preacher today was Carol Rowan, religious education greener, who's Stephanie Lent, ushers, our Shirley Chosey, and Paola Othelbach, lay ministers are Bob Radford and Shirley Chosey. Please note the announcements on the red floor's insert in your order of service, which describe upcoming events at the society and provide more information about today's activities. Here are a couple of items that deserve special mention. Our annual partner church dinner is coming Friday, May 15, and tickets are available today. You can stop by the partner church table in the commons to see the delicious menu, which highlights our Hungarian and Filipino connections. And there you can sign up to attend also. There's more information in your red floor's insert. Between and after all the services this weekend, peace polls will be decorated along University Bay Drive. You may have noticed them as you came into the parking lot. Some religious education classes, families, and FUS members have signed up to do it, and there are posts for them, but there are also some open spaces if you'd like to take one yourself. If you'd like to participate, choose an uncleaned post, meet at the craft tables, and let peaceful creativity materialize. I want to be around to see that. One last special announcement. Sasha Ostrom, our ministerial intern for this year, is going to be with us through the end of this month. We would like to send her on to the next adventure with messages of thanks and farewell. In your order of service, you'll find a half sheet of paper on which you can write Sasha a message. There's a special box in the atrium commons where you can leave your message and also a box in the back of this auditorium, along with pens, colored markers, crayons, and so forth. These will be put into a notebook for Sasha to take to add to her memory over time with us. If you don't have time today to write your message, please feel free to take the page home and return it next weekend. You can leave your message in either of the mailboxes in the commons or in the auditorium or in mailbox number 16 in the landmark lobby. Again, welcome. We hope today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart, and stir your spirit. It works at service. Today, we are privileged to hear from an impressive group of teens who have spent the past eight months in our Coming of Age program. As many of you know, Coming of Age is the culmination class in our Children's Relief Education program, and it's our right of passage marking the transition from childhood to adolescence. The Coming of Age program offers experiences that help our teens to better understand who they are, who they hope to be, and what beliefs ground and guide them on their way. They've explored beliefs about God, death, and misfortune. They've spent hours in the wilderness without electronics and with no one to talk to about themselves. They've talked with their elders about their own spiritual evolution, and they've looked more closely at our Unitarian Universalist principles and how they relate to their own lives and the choices that they make. This, I believe, is an international program that engages people in writing and sharing essays that describe the core values that guide their daily lives. Our Coming of Age teens have heard and discussed many of these essays during these past months, and after hours of conversation and contemplation, they set themselves down to writing their own essays, which they will bravely share with you today. You may notice these bamboo poles up here. These are walking staffs that were created by the Coming of Age elders and gifted to each of the teens at their wilderness retreat. The staffs were given to remind them that as they walk this journey of life, our FUS community is always here to support them along the way. We have them here today to remind them of that support and to share with you how awesome they are. Feel free to come take a look after today's service. And now, let's welcome our Coming of Age teens, facilitators, and elders. Injustice. You shall know peace and joy. These rise in bodily spirit are like the joy of being a seed. The darkness of being planted. The struggle towards the light. The pain of growth into the light. The joy of bearing fruit. The scattering of seeds. The decay of the seasons. The mystery of the death and the miracle of birth. Before we join together in a song please turn and reach your neighbor. Or forensics. Where I attempted to explain how people really need to be speaking out but they're cowards and don't do it. So today, I want to reiterate my point and explain my belief in speaking out. When I was eight, my parents divorced and my brother and I began switching houses each week. When I grew older, I began to realize what a terrible person my mom's ex-husband was and saw all the bad things that he had done. Now, any normal person may have voiced their dissent to their mom maybe tried to get a lawyer but ultimately given up after a few weeks of trying to stand up for themselves. I, on the other hand, took a slightly different path that resulted in three years of my standing up for myself in a very nasty battle of will. Had I not continued to stand up for myself I would still be living in a home that endangered my well-being. This situation and knowing of similar situations in my friend's lives has hardened my belief in speaking out. On a happier note, my fellow paraphernalia, Quincy Izzy brought something to my attention the other day. While we sat outside writing our belief statements she saw some bird in a tree and, being Izzy, she immediately started fangirling over this bird. Now, many people have discussions but birds isn't a very common one but that doesn't stop Izzy. She proceeded to tell me everything she knew about this type of bird. It actually got me interested in something that I previously didn't care about. Her speaking out resulted in my learning and further connected me with my twins. Now, not everyone deals with situations such as these. However, something that almost everyone has to go through at some point in their lives is the ever-present teenage problem of a breakup. Most people, some time in their lives, have to suffer through a breakup and a lot of time it's them who's telling someone who loves you that you no longer love them is a terrible feeling to have to do and takes a lot of courage. I have seen my friends and relationships in which neither person truly loves each other anymore but neither of them has the courage to tell each other. Now, as I said before I am not one of these people who stays quiet when making something to say. So, when I found myself in one of these failed relationships I took action to spoke out like them anymore. Once again, speaking out safely from a very uncomfortable lifestyle and let me move on to better times. The power of speaking out is not one to be taken judgment for it is the power to change lives. When used wisely, speaking out can help anyone achieve anything so it is always important to believe in the power of speaking out. In my mind, I believe nothing. It would stay this way. As teachers would never be able to show me what it would be like to be an end-to-end Z on the Lisa and I each watch another flicker, callipatist or broadest have been branched to branch. At one point, the bird was completely upside down. My best description of a flicker is a tangled feather black and effective crest homicide and it splits as a bright red patch of feathers. I turned around and saw that is what I believe then. The flicker was now speaking his little head in a hole looking for bumps. She rose an eye respectively I replied, she looked at me. What about the birds? Then I knew right away that we lived in all alone. I believe in their beautiful song. They may be small, but they are a very powerful message to us. I walk home from school every day. I know some people who live near me, and we always have a great time together. But lately, I've asked them to wait a second for me to grab my stuff. And when they say they will, except when I go back to the usual waiting spot, they've already left me. Then I walk home, and I'm there, all alone. It's the birds that assure me that I'm not. Even on the coldest days of winter, they still sing to me. Even the gravity claw from Common Crow is still reassuring. Each bird has a different song, but when they sing all at once, they are one powerful voice. I realize how much preventive people are alike. There are hundreds of different species that all look, sound, and act differently, just like people. I think, in the spirit, I'm a Filipino. A rare, meaning bird is a cofrega, Jeff Raine, one of the most largest raptors, is very, very new. My friend, Annalisa, is a red-winged blackbird. Aprilia is fenocious. These birds, about the size of this small, long-tongued American robin, are loud. These birds like to be heard when another animal is present. Annalisa loves to bring herself into discussions and raises her opinion the whole way into a conversation. I went on my spring retreat last month. I was forced to sit in the woods for six long hours. I was separated from people. I didn't think I could survive. When Jim left me out there, I almost begged him to take me back, except he was gone. I kind of completely missed my chance. After what fell into eternity, in reality, probably only a minute and a half, I was already bored. I ended up looking around my site. I walked out large rocks and dead trees and jumped at every sound. After a while, I came across a skeleton. Well, that kind of freaked me out. After an extra hour, I spent my time collecting the bones. And then I went on a walk. I was at the end of the site, so I went by the hang one if I went to the right. So I did, and took a few turns here and then I kind of ended up lost. After two hours, I found my way back. A very important lesson learned. Just because you're in the woods for six hours doesn't mean that the rules you learn in preschool about not wandering off don't apply. Only thing, that is not like that. They do. It was a great experience, and the bones were excellent surprise from other when I bought them home. There were a lot of people who were conspiring. My friend Jessie is one of them. She has taught me that no matter what, friendship is one of the most important things in life. Jessie and I was in the same school last year, a progressive school called Lingra. I live in Southbury, and Jessie lives in Nysen, and they're pretty far apart. Jessie goes to Memorial High School, and I go to Southbury High School. Even though we live far apart, we still keep our friendship alive. This is something that I find important in my life. We became the greatest friends last year, and why would we let something so amazing die? We never will. This is a fact. My friend Jessie is a painted bunting, has Serena's cirrhosis. It represents her artistic talents and colorful creativity. This bird destroys Jessie more than any other bird. Another influence is my other cousin Lucy. She shared it with me and taught me Chinese dancers. Since my body isn't flexible, I'm definitely not going to be dancing at the start of the exam soon. This taught me something. I knew that I wasn't dancing because I was good at it. I was dancing because I was being me. I danced with my cousin as myself, no matter what dancing skills I have. Though Lucy is five years younger than I am, she's taught me a lot. This brings me to another bird. Lucy is a whoopie crane. The rest of me are proud. A few years ago, there were only about 500 of these birds left. Lucy's dancing mirrors the gracefulness of these beautiful cranes. The bird's rarity reflects how unique Lucy is. We're all unique, but Lucy is one of a kind to me. There is only one Lucy that. This past taught me a lot more than I originally thought. I learned so deeper in real depression I didn't think I ever would. I learned it by myself and found out what I... As David started, I believe in pianos. It may look complicated, but it may be arguably the simplest from the players point of view. You press a key and the sound comes out, which will always be at that sound. The piano only has 88 keys. But when you put all these notes together in a certain order, you can change somebody's mood or how they feel. But some notes sound great together and make you happy. Some notes clash and sound bad, just like you thought. Because the piano has 88 different thoughts and the song is how they interact. If you had this many people with one person having one idea and the next having a slightly alteration of that idea and the next and the next, you would eventually would get something completely different. So in that line, there would be ideas that would go great together. Or groups of people that if they worked together, the plans that they would have would be more than the sum of their parts. So how does this relate to a piano? Well, a piano is always, except when you're a beginner, a duet. You have two hands. And with these hands, you bounce ideas, thoughts, melodies, and harmonies around. Just like two people with ideas, which is how in my opinion, things should work. Even if everyone had their own idea, all would never change. It does not mean that things cannot be amazing. You should work together with other people. Because like a piano, two hands can do more than one could ever hope to achieve. So what I'm getting in here is you should work with other people, whether that be a friend, a sibling, or a complete stranger. Now, some parents may be slightly minor or slightly diminishing on you. But overall, people are just individual notes on one big piano with seven billion keys. And how that means you probably won't get along with the person half a step away from you. But you should always try to work together. Because your goal, who are peace, should not just be you. You should bring others along with you. This, I believe. 10th, please possess just as they bloom in April, Congress, and issues. And taking the risk to chop it all off. I believe in the oboe and the way it's changed my life. It's the first of every weekend. And symphonies and the soon solos. I believe in stargazing and taking the time to sit under the night sky with a few of your closest friends. I believe in theater and forensics and the confidence both of them have brought me these past few years. I believe in ashy skin and sunny skies. I believe that although the sky might not look to me, its perspectives change. And it's entirely possible for it to look bright purple to you. I believe in giant backpacks and headphones and loving around textbooks. I believe in English class, even if I don't love my teacher. And I believe in the painful process known as writing a melancholy paragraph. I believe in not only focusing on the pills of a rose, but also seeing the Florence because they are just as beautiful and important. I believe in my family, in my beautiful mother, and everything she has ever done for me to make my life amazing. And I believe in my father, for pushing me to be my absolute best. And the fact that when he blows his nose, the whole house shakes. I believe in my incredibly talented older sister, who just made one of the most important decisions of her entire life. And I believe that I am insanely proud of her. I believe in my younger brothers and the intelligent caring young men they're both slowly becoming. I believe in Indian food and really weird volleyball movies. I believe in people and the potential everyone possesses. But more importantly, I believe in a community. I believe that in 10 short months, complete strangers can become some of the most important people in your life. I like King Dota. I believe in singing at the top of your lungs, even if it doesn't sound very good. My little puppy truly is a little monster. I believe in bad movies and laughter and just spending time with the nerds to have the honor of calling your friends. I believe in feminism and equality and the fact that we all deserve the best fly as humanly possible. I believe in the compassion of the human race. I believe in myself, which is something I may not have been able to say three years ago. I believe in snacking and pebbles and falling leaves and split ends, expectations. I believe in trying your best to do what is asked of you and absolutely failing along the way. And I believe in having an insane amount of beliefs. Because life is insane and you have to be open-minded. And finally, I believe that although my list of beliefs will change as I do, that is really better. This, I believe. It's like you let an idea of a friend sit. Just sit, until you can look at it again and make the whole sense of the situation. In the end of the year, I didn't even know that it was. I had my whole police statement set up. I talked about the heavy stuff and the blood stuff. That change was when I started to write my police statement about the ones with the space, the quality, and justice. I think it's been better just right. Writing a police statement is hard work. And it's hard to express my feelings. It's not something I'm used to talking about to other people. So how do I connect to the congregation when it feels like a lot of ideas are just running around my head? My mom said, just like her colleague. I was like, mom, are you talking to a person or what? Because I've never heard that word before. At that day, I started to do the one so often and realized it's the process that many people use to produce finished ideas. They percolate. Writing police statements, my peers started to figure out what it was they were going to say. I didn't know, but I was nowhere near happy to find inspiration or support. But nothing was happening. Zilch was your nada, nothing. Time. Time is what I needed to come around to what I wanted to say. And time is a critical factor in having people come around to my beliefs of space, science, the quality, and justice. All my beliefs, people have had to stop and think about what medicine is based on science. As Joe, it didn't take me a while to realize I believed in science and facts. For back to the 16 points, Galileo and his telescope, I'm not worried I'm not going to do future spinals. Three of the planets revolving in the sun is what Galileo believed. Yet not everyone in this time saw that thing. Astronomers and scientists had proposed ideas to let percolate people's minds. It took some time for people to realize that Earth can be a planet revolving in the sun and it's still taking time, people's time, to realize other beliefs of our time. Like global warming and the quality and justice. It shouldn't matter if someone was to live in sexual orientation, gender or no gender, race or ability. Everyone has a heart, everyone has a brain. So why would someone think they're less equal to them? You're all human, you're all fearless. Some of us make mistakes, but that doesn't mean we are people. In reality, we're just a small part of this huge universe, so why is this such a big problem? For some time to realize we're all equal. I think we should be done for good when we have issues like equal global warming and gay marriage. The time is time. People and everyone's minds, but for now, we're both from human hopping. There should be no boundaries to human indebtedness. We're all different. However bad life I've seen, there's always something you can do and succeed at. Well, there's life, there's hope. I'm not a Rochester and this is my produce day. Looking back, I feel lucky that my parents chose East Madison as a place to live. We have friends and neighbors we know we can trust and will be there for us. I don't have friendships with people from all walks of life. A quality for everyone is taught in that school with the same undeniability as math or science. At least for me, things like social equality seem like they should be one side because I've never known anything else. But then, very gradually, I started to learn that unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Not everyone thought the same way I did. Ideas that I thought were branded as crazy or wrong decades ago were still being taught and fought over to this day. I think that week in elementary school, where they had to close the school down because the teachers were all protesting, really finalized an idea that was already growing ahead. Those moral battles that people fought decades ago, the ones you hear about in textbooks, those never truly ended. The naming might be different, but the ideas people are fighting for remain the same. Even in the community I grew up in, I started to notice fights or behavior revolving around beliefs I thought shouldn't be around anymore. Lucky for me, one thing stayed the same. The principles I learned through the Unitarian Church. Maybe it's because they weren't what I was raised to believe in, but the principles really reflected how I thought and continued to think the world should be. Treating people equally, respecting people's ideals and beliefs, caring for the environment and the community. I once again found a group of people in my community who I knew shared my beliefs about how stuff should work. But I think this next thing was the hardest part on my moral journey. It was also the simplest, learning what to do with my beliefs. It took me longer than it should have to learn the solution was to act on them. I already had a system of beliefs on my core, something I could fall back on if I needed guidance. But there's no point to this belief system if all it is, it starts in my head. Admittedly, this is something I'm still working on. But I do think that even the smallest actions that reflect my beliefs, being respectful to someone who I disagree with, treating everyone equally, even actions like these are a far better way to reflect on my beliefs than keeping them in my head or even talking about them with others. It wouldn't be a morally acceptable thing for me if I just went through life and kept these ideas in my head. Especially with what I believe in, I don't think I have that luxury. For me and my community, I need to act. My name is Henry Little-Borman, and this is my belief statement. The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber describes the sacred relationship we share between one person and another in his writing of Dickeydo, which translates to IU. He describes our inability to have sacredness or connection to a higher power ourselves. But instead, the sacredness or ability to connect to a higher power is that in which we're able to connect to our fellow human. The physical space between two peoples was sacrednesses. Our human connection is the higher power. His idea of the human connection is central to my beliefs and what I'm trying to convey to you today. When I was younger, I would hide behind my mother whenever I met someone new. I struggled with sharing my special toys, which was all of them, and I had a lot of siblings, but not many friends. I absolutely think it was necessary for me to have friends when I was younger. Now, I can't say my family wasn't there for me when I was younger, and if you ask me, they might have been there for me a little too much. But I didn't have much outside of that. I wasn't able to really experience the human connection outside of my family. I think my time with that helped create more of an appreciation for it. When I was nine, I started to develop some more concrete friendships. These friendships usually involved playing Mario Kart and fishing on the lake, but it was the first time in my life where I was actually spending time with people who considered me a friend. This helped reinforce the idea of the importance of the human connection, though I was not totally able to grasp the meaning of it at the time. In May of 2008, my mother signed me up for the Renona Recreational Soccer Team in hopes of helping me meet new people, get a little more coordinated, and stop falling down all the time. This is where I met most of my first friends. Soccer was a great place for me to meet people, and I still continue to play to this day, and still frequently fall over. Most importantly, I find an ability to act on my first home weeks through soccer. Now, I know what most of you were thinking when it comes to teenage sports. Who cares? What's the big deal? It's just sports. But for me, it's more than a game or a hobby. It's a way of life, and there's some total of a million tiny decisions that are, I believe, a reflection of who I am. Through soccer, I learned mental toughness, how to take risks, how to handle both constructive and destructive criticism, how to cope with pressure, and probably most importantly, I learned to find a deep appreciation for doing hard things with perseverance and dedication. Not surprisingly, competitive sports are not a gentle, easy way to spend time, and my love for the game has not always remained a constant. Despite this, the life lessons have never stopped. One of the most fundamental things I've learned through soccer is how to deal with failure. As a goalkeeper, it's pretty clear when you make a mistake, and trust me, I made a lot of mistakes. But I can always take some solid soccer works because I know I can use the experience to improve my play. In May of last year, I was kicked off on my team. I have not performed well the past season. At 10.48 p.m., the day after I was supposed to hear if I made the team, I finally received a text from my coach. It contained 12 words, none of them condolences, and informed me that I would not be offered a spot on the team. Now this put me in an awkward position. I had been pretty loyal to the team and had not tried out for any other team. Sorry nothing to fall back on is all the other teams in the area have already been formed. So, at 11.00 p.m., I was forced to try and find a new team to play on. By 3.00 a.m., I emailed several clubs, a coach on the other side of the country, and some coaches who hardly knew my name. At first, I felt a combination of panic, frustration, embarrassment, disappointment, the pain of rejection, and the fear of being left stranded without a team. To sum the emotion up in one word, I was devastated. But I was also determined to take this step back and try to make it an opportunity to get to a new, better place. I was worried by nothing to lose, so I threw myself into the process of asking a lot of people for help and guidance for the first time in my life. Wouldn't it make a great story if the player of the team just turned around and joined an even better team? That night, this felt like a long shot, a very long shot. But it was the secret hope that kept me going. This was the first time that my ability to react to failure was really tested. We, as humans, constantly experience failure, but I believe failure is not what defines us. I believe that how we react to failure is what really defines us. I was not born a natural athlete, and I've always had to work extra hard just to keep up with the other kids on our team. I've often moved up in soccer by just barely making each team I've been on and then working hard to improve as much as possible till I'm ready for the next jump. It's never easy, but I thrive on being part of something larger than myself. I thrive on being part of the team. Soccer is still where I meet many of my friends. My friendships through soccer tend to be stronger, too, because of one simple reason. In soccer, everyone is focused on the game and working together. We're not distracted by social constraints or media. We're only concerned about the game. Too many of us today are too distracted by any kind of things, like the clothes we wear and the music we listen to. We constantly have our noses pressed through screens and electronics, and we become so enveloped in this that we tend to forget about what's important. We tend to decide on each other. Soccer is one of the places where I'm able to experience a human connection without these distractions. That's one of the reasons I care so much about it. The coming-of-age program does a good job of realizing this problem that our generation is facing. We're losing our ability to connect, and COA constantly tries to reinforce the concept of the undistracted human connection. And as a result, I feel like I've been able to connect to everybody in the program on a deeper level, from classmates to the facilitators and others. We have all benefited from the opportunity to show the power of the human connection in an undistracted environment. I recently read a story that I think will help exemplify my point. The story was written anonymously between two people. It goes, the two people are sitting together, and one of them asks the other, whenever we walk down the street, you always smile and wave to the strangers that walk by. I know you don't know all of them. Why do you do that? To which the other person replies, well, I had a story a few years ago that really changed my life. It was written by a woman who recently tried to commit suicide. In the stories she described her feeling of invisibility and unimpositing world, that no one cared about her, that no one saw her, that just one person, any person, and reached out to her in any way, maybe with a smile, but just a casual wave, that that would have made all the difference, that that would have somehow grounded her, reassured her that she isn't invisible. If that had happened, that would have likely saved her from feeling the need to end her own life because no one cared about her. That's why I always smile and wave for the people like that woman. I try to always see everyone for who they are, because so many of us struggle to find them ourselves today. The story reminds me of how reliant we are on each other, that even the things that don't take much effort at all can make all the difference in the end. We never know when someone is experiencing setback, failure, or their own isolation. I believe we must try and see past all the distractions of our everyday lives to realize we have an innate need to connect to people, to share on the other day. To me, this idea of the all human shares a sacred connection, that just being a person makes you some part of something greater than yourself, makes you part of this human connection. We all share a relation to one another, and we must further embrace that relation because we are our own higher power. I believe in this human connection. Chinua Chave does a good job of capturing the essence of this human connection and his writing of things fall apart. He writes, a man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather the moon and village around, it is not because of the moon. Every man gets to the moon from his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so. This I believe. Our issue is the giving and receiving of our offering, which helps support the coming-of-age program. Singing that song again, I got a lump in my throat because you're a single word song. Singing that song again, I got a lump in my throat because you're a single word song. I just wanna, I just wanna know I swear she doesn't promise grief. Down to the real time, take your way to the dark side, I'm a single word song. I love you when you're singing that song again, I got a lump in my throat because you're a single word song. You share with someone. There are good, a good relationship is when you and someone else can laugh at an inside joke where you can make a mistake and they'll forgive you. They are by your side when you need them. They know when you need to be picked up. You don't have to worry about your views or the other person's views because even though you may not have the same views, your friendship is strong. And the friendship means more than just being right. A strong friendship is when you can be authentic and be received with compassion, empathy, trust, altruism, and unselfishness. In desiring our own success in life, we also wanna see each other succeed in life as well. A bad relationship is a one-sided relationship. They want stuff from you and when you give them what they want, they never return the favor. They're dragging you down. Sometimes you won't even realize it. They don't care. They're just trying to get stuff from you. They make up their own rules and change them for their own benefit. These bad friendships try to make you conform to their rules and make you into what they want you to be. It's easy to lose yourself in these types of friendships. Bad friendships can teach us what we want but we do not want in a relationship. We can then focus and attract the qualities that create better friendships and relationships in the future. When bad friendships like this occur, the good friends are going to be there to assure you everything's going to be okay. To try their best to make you laugh and feel reconnected again. I think I can speak for all of us and say, we enjoy the good friendships more than the bad ones. When my parents got divorced, I was sad, confused, and didn't know what to do. I shut down. I was in a state of shock. My friends heard about what happened and they made sure I knew I could talk to them if I needed to. They helped me through the sadness. They helped me get back on my feet and it really helped me. I'm really happy and proud to have such good friends. I believe in striving for good and meaningful relationships. Relationships challenge us to grow and to live with integrity and responsibility. To walk your talk. Thank you. And this is my belief statement. I believe in warm fall days. I believe a bonfire is the best way to end a night. And I believe in long lasting friendship and long-lasting. On the other side, I also believe in pain, heartbreak, and death. If there were no bad times, the good times would be meaningless. Through the course of this class and the ones that came before it, I have made lifelong friends that will accompany me on this journey we call life. As many of you know, part of our spring retreat we willingly spent six hours alone in the woods. Though I sat there seemingly by myself, I felt a sense of comfort knowing my peers were out there too. We're all experiencing such different things alone, but together. I learned many things from this experience, including the fact that we are never truly alone. Our little community here makes me really appreciate the importance of good friends and how much they can impact you in the long run. We need those people in our lives to share the high points with us and to help us shoulder our burdens. As many of you know, I am a distance runner. The past year I ran cross-country and track from my high school. In cross-country, you would think it is a very individual focus sport, but I do not believe this is the case. You do place individually, but your team is scored together. I had to race the best that I could relying on my teammates to do the same. I wanted them to do well because even if I ran the best race in my life, there was no guarantee we would win. I find it a kind of metaphorical philosophy for life. We need to support each other to help others reach their goals and for us to reach our own. My team will always be there for me during races and off the course. The way I was raised, I had never believed in a higher power. I received no comfort by praying to something called God that I did not fully understand. This forced me to create my own path spiritually. I have always relied on scientific evidence to back up my fears on this world. I have always held back on telling people my views because I was certain none of my friends or extended families shared them. For a long time, I just considered myself an atheist, but there is so much more to my beliefs than just not believing in a God. I have always thought religion was a funny thing. Some people may go through their whole lives without questioning the things their parent taught them about going to church, and I find it concerning because I believe everyone deserves a chance to explore their spiritual beliefs indefinitely. I do believe in connectivity and being together. That is what I discovered in my 15 years on this earth, that people need to meet each other to live whole lives and achieve true happiness. Whether it is your family, friends, church community, or sports team, there was always someone willing to share your memories with, and that, I believe, is what really creates happiness. Thank you. I believe in change. I believe in the knowledge that not only will everything be different someday, but that everything is different now from what it was before. I believe in redecorating my room. I believe in the fluctuation in the stock market. I believe in rough drafts. And I believe in constantly rediscovering myself. When I was younger, I went through a phase where I changed my outfits multiple times every day to the point where all of the clothes that I had nearly folded in my drawers a few hours ago were soon lying across my bedroom floor, rumbled, and turned inside out. The reason for this was because I switched between activities so frequently. One minute, I was playing a brand new game. The next, I was eating a new food. And soon after that, I was trying something else that I had never done before. I felt the need to have my clothes reflect who I was and what I was doing, something that was always evolving. In this sense, I am very much the same today. Though I no longer feel the urge to put on a new outfit every few minutes, I haven't stopped discovering new facets of my personality. And with these niches and crevices of who I am, come a different set of music or clothing or any other external feature to represent the newfound part of myself. My closet not only contains a wide array of black TG's and man t-shirts, but also an equally large collection of flowy blouses, skirts, and cardigans. Having such a spectrum of items gives me a sense of security. I feel confident when I remember that who I am today just have to be who I am tomorrow. Nothing about me will stay the same. Not my music taste, not my shoe size, not even my beliefs. And I think that's great. And I also feel that it's important that I appreciate this change. In other words, I think it's great that I think change is great. It took me a while to learn to accept the plot twists and canceled plans that life breaks. Change has always been a part of me, but it took me a while to find the hope within it, so to speak. There was a point in my life when I stubbornly resisted the currents around me, determined to remain the same person. And gradually, I began to realize that it was okay to be temporary. I realized that there was possibility in the temporary, and this applied especially to my beliefs. I've attended Peace Lutheran Church in addition to FUS for almost all of my life. I know the people there. I know the classrooms and the sanctuary and hallways there just like I did here. But a couple of years ago, I began to question whether I believe all that is taught there. And for a while, Peace and FUS, these two churches that are equally large parts of my life and teach me equally important things were at opposite ends of this mental seesaw that I had. I felt that I had to adhere to only one set of beliefs, and they had to be either the Lutheran ones or the Unitarian ones. It took me a while to realize the similarities between the two, as well as figure out that my mental seesaw wasn't necessary. Instead of having these two religions push against each other, they could swing and go down slides together. It was when I accepted this that I realized it was perfectly all right to have my spirituality change as my life went on. Sometimes, for example, I think I see something beyond human, something godlike, in a dandelion, or in the colors of my cat's eyes, or in a line of one of my favorite songs. Other times, all I can see in those same objects is the mundane, but I always see hope. Indecisive, maybe, hopeful, definitely, and for right now, that's enough. And that's the thing about change that makes me so drawn to it, I think. Things will always develop when change occurs, and there's always the possibility that I'll be happier with the development than I was before the change happened. Each time I withdraw something new, play something new, or remake myself a new, I tend to think there's a chance that this will crash and burn, but there's an equal chance that this will work out perfectly. That's what keeps me evolving and discovering the way I do. All the different possibilities that change provides. With change comes chances, and with chances, come hope. To be celebrating another coming-of-age ceremony and the culmination of another coming-of-age year. This is truly a moment to stop and give gratitude for our youth, the gift of their insights and their wisdom, and to recognize that their classroom learning at First Unitarian Society is over and their journey of lifelong learning on their own has begun. Throughout this year, they have begun in earnest to study themselves, to get to know themselves, examining their beliefs and values, ideals and aspirations. With their belief statements, our coming-of-age youth have given us just a glimpse of where this process has led them, and we would pause for a moment here to thank those who have walked with them on their journey. So we will begin with those who have served as the adult facilitators for coming-of-age and who have given these youth direction, insight, wisdom and guidance. They have brought patience, good humor and much love and compassion to this year. So if you'll please stand, Rebecca Bernstein, Michael Herriman, Jim Shuey, and unable to be with us physically today, but with us virtually over the web, Patricia Lianardi. To our coming-of-age elders, each coming-of-age youth is matched with an elder from our congregation. These people are carefully chosen to embody the thoughtfulness, kindness, commitment we hope to encourage in our youth. Their call is a challenging one, and throughout, our elders were steadfast and took the challenge cheerfully and joyfully. We owe much thanks to this group. Paula Walt, Suzanne Butchko, John Daly, Kirsten Sieber, and also with us virtually over the web, Tom Hymey. On this lovely May afternoon, we ask that you part the role in the spiritual and moral development of the youth you see here before you. Where they journey from this day is not entirely up to them. It is also up to us. And moreover, we must remember that the deepening of their experience as Unitarian Universalists is not the task of their parents, their advisors, and their elders of love. Helping them to blossom as loving and conscientious human beings, which is a primary objective of our faith, that is a responsibility that we all share. And now that they have completed their coming-of-age year, that responsibility, that becomes even more relevant and more immediate for each and every one of us. For these young men and women, you can serve both as an example and an inspiration of how people live out, not just on Sundays and Saturday evenings, but no more effective teaching than your good example. And so now I would ask, will you continue to encourage the spiritual growth of these youth that you see before you? Will you value their insights? And we've heard some wonderful insights this afternoon. They're emerging convictions. And will you recognize the gifts and the talents that they bring to this community and the enthusiasm and the hope that they bring to our world? And if so, please say we will. We will. And now to our youth, to all of you. We recognize today the work you have done during this past year, and we are grateful for the gifts and the talents that you have brought to us in your time here. Will you continue this journey you have begun? To grow as an individual, expressing your beliefs, growing in faith, and continuing to question and explore. If so, please say we will. And invite the parents of our youth to please rise. All of you, beyond anyone else in this room, you have been witnesses to the unfolding and the maturing of your child from birth to this very moment. In the beginning of this coming of age year, way back in September, we asked that you give permission for your child to come of age. And so we ask now, will you continue to open your hearts in order to receive your child into your family for all that they have become in this past year? Do you promise now to continue your journey together with respect, patience, guidance, and love? And if so, please say we will. We will. Please be seated. At the dedication of a child we give to each a rosebud, fragrant symbol of beauty, promise, and love. The rose we give then has no thorns, symbolizing the better world we would like to give to our children. We hope that these children whom we have dedicated will learn to recognize the beauty and the goodness which exist in our world, that they will grow in wisdom and compassion. Our hope is that as each rosebud unfolds, so may the life of each child. Today we give to each of these young people a rose in full bloom, symbolizing the beauty and the gifts and the cruelty of the world. But now we can no longer protect you from all that you encounter, both the beauty and the brutality. But no matter where you may go and how far you may travel, you will always be with us in spirit and we will always be sending blessings your way. So accept these roses, knowing that there are harsh realities in our world, but there is much beauty as well. May you choose to see the beauty. And now as we do when you are young children, we ask that you be granted clarity of thought, integrity of speech and a compassionate heart. May the blessings of an understanding heart, strength, integrity of purpose, love, received and given be yours today and remain with you into ever fuller life. If you will join us in congratulating our youth.