 So, please join me for a moment or two of silence centering now Please join your voices with those of our choir in our in gathering him number 224 Please be seated and so good snowy morning and 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 Michael Shuler I'm the senior minister of first Unitarian and on behalf of the congregation I would like to extend a warm welcome to all and in particular to any visitors in our midst We are a welcoming congregation So whoever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life's journey We celebrate your presence among us if you are a newcomer We do invite you to stay for our fellowship hour after the service to visit the library directly across from the middle doors of the auditorium There will be lay ministers and staff there to answer any questions that you might have You may also look for people carrying teal stoneware coffee mugs in the commons area because they are members who are knowledgeable about FUS and its programs and they would love to visit with you We also by the way have some wonderful cookies for your enjoyment afterwards for the very ridiculously low price of 75 cents prepared for by our youth group here at FUS Experience guides are generally available for building tours after each service And if you would like to learn more about our sustainably designed addition or our national landmark meeting house You can meet near the large glass windows to my right immediately after the service I am not sure actually whether there is a guide that signed up for the 11 o'clock service But if not, there's probably someone who would step forward and at least describe for you a little bit about our fine facility We do welcome all children to stay for the duration of the service But if you do have a child who needs to talk a little bit or to move around Then the child haven over to my right or the commons is a great place to stay and see and be able to hear the service as Well, and then speaking of any kind of ambient noise if you brought any Electronic devices with you cell phones tablets would be a good time to put them on mute or to turn them off so that they do not Disturb your enjoyment of today's program I'd like to acknowledge those individuals who are helping this service at 11 o'clock to run smoothly Our good volunteers include lay minister and smiley our greeter upstairs was Becky Dick and our ushers Katie Bielfuss rich Bielfuss Pat Becker and Christy Menehan Jean Hills and Chris to Bruggan are serving our coffee and our hot chocolate out of the kitchen today We thank all of them for their service and these are very simple jobs to do and if any of you Have a mind to make a small contribution during the holiday season. This is one way in which you can be of service to F us Please note the announcements that are in your red floors insert There are quite a few announcements in there including the schedule for upcoming holiday services, and I do have a couple of special announcements actually one announcement and an introduction out in the Commons in addition to those lovely cookies we also are selling a new supply of black lives matter Yard signs and we probably have distributed over the course of the last couple of years a couple of hundred of these To our members and friends of F us for display in your yards And so if you would like to pick one of these up today for your own yard They're available for five dollars in the comments And then you will note in your program that we do have a special Surprise today or maybe not a surprise, but you know certainly something that we all appreciate Which is the premiere of a new piece of music Beware the winter settlin in and that was composed by Elizabeth Alexander and This is one of many compositions from Elizabeth who lived here in Madison for a number of years and Was a frequent attender here at First Unitarian Society before moving away one of the first choral pieces that she created was actually premiered by our choir way back in 1991 I had completely forgotten that under Ellsworth Snyder and since then Elizabeth Has composed many other pieces for a Unitarian Universalists and for liberal religious worship more generally She is today an active member of the Unity Church Unitarian in St. Paul, Minnesota And it's very pleased to be back with us once again today Elizabeth if you might want to stand up so we know who you are So again welcome to everyone. We hope that today's service will stimulate your mind Touch your heart Stir your spirit if you're feeling the winter blues. That was the antidote joyful Anticipation fills our hearts as we enter upon the festivities of this glad season a Season of expectancy and of wonder a season of giving and forgiving a Season of thoughtfulness and tenderness a season for a friendship and for fellowship Let it be with music that we celebrate the holidays Let it be in harmony that we dwell together in these gladsome days May love enter our hearts and rule our lives as we seek to support and to serve one another and To forge a stronger bond with all that is I Invite you to rise in body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice And I would invite you to join your voices with mine in the chalice lighting words the words of affirmation Although it says that they are responsive. There are no bolded sections, which makes it a little confusing So we will read it in unison May the light of joy we kindle this morning brighten our lives and The light of truth lead us to new insight May the light of morality teach us the right and the light of courage Enable us to do the right May the light of freedom burn more purely in our hearts and the light of faith increase our strength May the light of hope give us high vision and the light of love fill our days with meaning and Purpose may the light of Hanukkah and the holiday season Never be extinguished from our lives and in the spirit of the holiday season Please turn to your neighbor in exchange with them a warm and friendly greeting. Please be seated the three selections that I will be sharing this morning We're all composed by unitarian universalist clergy colleagues of mine the first from Mitchell G. Howard now December is upon us with its usual breathless pace and Inside me. There is something that yearns passionately to Savor the season to take it with Sacramental slowness drinking in the flow of each day between Thanksgiving and New Year's as if it were the rarest transcendental wine But the world of commerce It has other plans for me and these intrusions of rhythm make me feel hecticly driven even before the advent season Now I never really paid any attention to Advent growing up as a secular Manhattan boy in the 1950s and 60s in The vicinity of Fifth Avenue the visible signs of the coming of the eschaton were threefold The toys in the FAO Schwartz window The Rockefeller Center Christmas trees illumination and the surging sales on the street of hot pretzels and chestnuts We carried on quite well with these things and I was genuinely ignorant of the Liturgical twist in the calendar going on inside New York City's churches a few weeks before Christmas Later my theological training gave me an intellectual fix on the season But no more reason to pay any a lively attention to it What Christianity I could buy into was of the ethical perhaps the prophetic type but Advent seemed to me to fit only the Virgin birth of the only begotten Sun variety Which I could know sooner adopt than I could sacrifice to Wotan or a start a It was in the home of a unitary Universalist religious educator in Rochester, New York in the late 1970s that I first got the excitement surrounding Advent She and her family kept a charming advent calendar in their home Which had become a crucial part of their pre-Christmas lifestyle even though they did not embrace the orthodox understanding of Advent And although I have not adopted Advent practices in my own home these days I do enjoy the exciting sense that at Advent Whatever we believe about the particularities of Jesus's biography at Advent We can feel something important and vast and wonderful coming down the pike And at this time I I find myself remembering a story about the 20th century Jewish sage Martin Boober It is said that Boober was once at an interfaith conference in Europe when a polite but bemused Christian clergyman engaged him in a dialogue Dr. Boober he asked Your people are waiting for the coming of the Messiah We Christians on the other hand believe that he came once and that he is coming again How do you resolve this difficulty? Boober thought silently on this puzzle and and then brightening he genially replied it is simple my friend We are both hopeful that the Messiah will come so when he does come let us be sure to ask him Have you been here before? This is the sort of genial uncertainty in which I must live and move via V the meaning of the Advent season And I suspect this is true too for the most honest among those who claim to identify as Christians in the more traditional sense than I can Because we all inherit the wonderfully affirmative eschatological hopes that were sketched out by Jesus by his prophetic predecessors and by his inheritors a world of peace and gentle harmony in tune with itself and with the source of all creation and We all need to confess the painful truth of how far we as a species have fallen short of living out these visions of Jesus and So Advent reminds us that the hope embodied in the Christmas story will not be fulfilled on December 26th And it will not simply evaporate in the party haze of December 31st Advent dares us to take seriously the prophetic hope that is at the core of the messianic tradition and to look within ourselves For the guts and the sinew of its eventual fulfillment this selection by the late Max Coots who served for many years as the minister of our church in Canton, New York Max was a colleague of mine And he was also an adjunct professor of literature at St. Lawrence University After so much color in our eyes After this we haven't much to say about autumn's last days It just is and we let it go a sort of dull bear waiting after so much doing Autumn tiredness settles on us. We who have seen these things so many times before spring summer autumn We retire to wait But then one night the waiting ends a white ending Sometimes it is in thick tangled blobs that melt on whatever little summer sun the ground has stored Sometimes it is sharp fast pieces hissing from the heavens Sometimes it is a slow dog at laying down of layer upon layer, but however it comes It always finds us unprepared The leaves are liars Bright gaudy things catching our eyes with their clown suits then falling down into the mire to make us think that this is the end The leaves are liars Snow is just as much beginning as it is end As much prologue as it is epilogue Now the farmer used to know things about the snow that we ought to know The farmer used to call snow with a poor man's fertilizer It's next year's water next year's grain Falls and Springs beginning So when was it that we learned that the earth would end in autumn? never When did we ever learn that life was always meant to be summertime and spring and harvest time? What sort of quaint mistaken almanac said that spring could come without December that may August could go on forever Even winter in ourselves may be the poor souls fertilizer and Spring can only come if we've had some winter first can come if something like a seed is kept alive through wintering to sprout and then to grow to sprout and to grow Because of winter and wintering because like the earth we have seasons too Now that we think of it We knew this even then back when in summer we grew complacent in the sun or when in fall We reap the earth as though all life was caught and wrapped and stuffed into a pumpkin shell We knew better even then But the snow makes for forgetting So it seems Dennis at Hamilton is a UU minister who has served a Church of ours in Texas for quite a number of years And he says it seems to happen overnight One day I give a final Thanksgiving. I Say goodbye to the turkey carcass and set it out on the curb to feed the nether world. I Changed the guest room bed sheets and recall fondly the guests family gone back to wherever I Put away the harvest platter Go for a walk in the autumn streets surprised at how early the dusk comes to silhouette the skyline of trees and The hungry night eats away at the deep autumn day and I walk quickly back to my unlit home in the hushed shadows And the vortex of darkness swirls around and swallows the last of the holiday past Night rains And I'm filled with emptiness Then it happens The very next night. I turn the corner for home and the neighbors have strong lights in the trees and the once Dark and lonely street is transformed into this winter fairyland It's like the way the swallows know when to go back to Capistrano Or the whooping cranes to Paris Island It's like we have been waiting all year for this excuse The dark barrenness the apprehension of emptiness to give permission for this display of winter Gaiety and as suddenly as it is dark now, it's light as Empty as it once was now it's filled And it fills and fills through the drifting nights that fall toward the solstice And then familiar things begin to come out of closets find their accustomed place on mantles and window ledges Hanukkah candles Christmas wreaths porcelain villages Open-mouthed corasters pine cones holly red lacquered apples favorite angels and five different renderings of old father Christmas The smells of the season Cider cinnamon bayberry ginger and that wonderful pine scent from the sacred tree that we improbably invite into our home Then come the ornaments the generations of ornaments each bearing a story and the remembered joys and heartaches of each Christmas past the tinsel the garlands the colored glass balls the crooked star that the children made Could it be? 25 years ago. Oh, it is filled Overflowing with all that has been All the December's come out of the tabernacle of their bags and their boxes that have hibernated all year long in the dark just waiting and waiting for this day and The wind carries the sounds of Christmas the songs of the season the carols the old standard Silver bells jolly old st. Nicholas songs of herald angels and shepherds at watch Melodies woven into all the aromas and vibrating with all the twinkling lights And on the buffet under the tree The crash with its cow its shepherd its gift-bearing wise men and its Eurocentric holy family pale skinned and blonde haired It is this season of gathered traditions colors fragrances music brought to fill the void Brought to lay before the child who waits as always every year for hearts to soften and nights to glow Come let us begin our watch Let us chase the darkness to the corners of the room and light our own chalice for the days to come Invite you at this time to join me in the spirit of meditation Whatever its attractions and there are many And whatever benefits it bestows winter is indisputably a difficult time The ground turns hard as do the placid lakes and ponds Be raft of leaves and blossoms the trees themselves look hard Their naked branches swaying stiffly in the knife cold breeze Hard to is the dry winter light glancing off surfaces aching for warmth The winter world is hard on the eyes the lungs And any skin that lacks protection and for many the season suggests hard ship as well as hard nests Higher heating bills hard to start cars the hard task of clearing snow and ice from slippery surfaces And because light is less Winter is hard on the psyche And cabin fever is often accompanied by bodily chills and the fevers of cold and flu Hard heartedness affects the luckless souls languishing in homeless shelters in warming huts Trying to cope with a culture that blames the poor for their poverty And ignores the disgrace of hunger and homelessness Yes winter is indisputably the hardest of seasons The time when the Sun belt beckons to migrating snowbirds while the rest of us make do with hot toddies and heavy comforters And because it is often hard There's all the more reason to embrace winter Putting aside the indifference of summer and putting on a more compassionate countenance And as an antidote to the cold Seeking warmth in the midst of friends and family and the supportive faith community such as this one To make the holidays ahead truly meaningful Let us hope and strive for a softening of the human heart and a rejuvenation of the holy human spirit May it be so Let us continue on in just a moment or two more of silent meditation blessed be and amen This time I would invite you to participate in the giving and the receiving of today's offering and your gifts in their entirety Will be dedicated to F us's outstanding music program. Please be generous What's more for our closing Carol number 235? Please be seated for the benediction and the postlude if only for a season Let us banish cynicism and welcome wander if Only for a season let us Downplay our differences and discover the bonds of common origin and continuing cause If only for a season, let us set aside worry and smile and laugh and sing If only for a season, let us deny apathy and indifference and truly live by loving If only for a season, let us subvert covetousness and envy And be both good gift givers and getters If only for a season this brief season of light and life and love Let us be wise enough to be just a little more foolish About candlelight and children and matters of the heart if only for a season Blessed be and amen