 me in a few moments of centering silence. And now please remain seated as we sing our in-gathering hymn, number 389, 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 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 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 stoneware coffee mugs. These are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community who would love to visit with you. Experience guides are generally available to give building tours after each service, so if you would like to learn more about this sustainably designed addition to our National Landmark Meeting House, please meet near the large glass window on what is your left side of the auditorium immediately after the service. We do 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 our commons outside the back of the auditorium are excellent places to see and hear the service as well. This would also be an excellent time to turn off all electronic devices that might cause a disturbance during the hour, especially cell phone ringers, please. And now I'd like to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly. This morning, operating our sound system, we have David Briles, Tom Boykoff is our lay minister, our greeters, our Rick DeVita and Patty Witty, and our ushers, our Gail Bliss and Ann Ostra. As well we have Bess Nitschke, assisted by Jean Sears, back in the kitchen making, let's see, there's coffee back there and also lemonade, I believe. Please note the announcements in the Red Floor's Order of Service insert, which describe upcoming events at the society and provide more information about today's activities. I'd like to call your attention specifically to a couple of announcements. Today through next Sunday, and you can hardly miss this if you've been out there at all, we will have, we are hosting a replica solitary confinement cell out in the commons. Please take an opportunity after today's service to view it and perhaps step inside. We recommend that children, tan and under, skip this part of going inside. Also on display are written testimonials and paintings from current inmates in Wisconsin prisons, a petition from the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, and an opportunity to reserve 30 to 60 minutes of individual reflection time in the cell during the upcoming week. So think about whether you might want to do that. The second announcement is a bit more upbeat. You are invited to a celebration of marriage and equality this Friday. On Friday, May 29th, we'll have a short program during which we'll recognize the recent law changes for gay marriage. We'll acknowledge our members who recently were married, and then we'll have a party complete with a wedding cake, DJ dancing and a photo booth. Festivities start at 6.30 p.m. in the atrium auditorium right here, and everybody is welcome. We see the poster in the commons for more information. Again, welcome. We hope that today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart, and stir your spirit. Our opening words this morning are from the farmer poet Wendell Berry. We can no longer afford to confuse peaceability with passivity. Peace is no more passive than war. Like war, it calls for discipline, intelligence, and strength of character, although it also calls for higher principles and aims. If we are serious about peace, then we must work for it as arguably, as seriously, as continuously, as carefully, and as bravely as we now prepare for war. I invite you to rise and body your in spirit for the lighting of our chalice. Please join me now in our words of affirmation. Let there be peace in the name of the father and the son, the mother and the daughter. Let the skies be clear. Let the streets be safe. Let there be goodwill and gratitude here and abroad. Let there be peace in the name of the father and the son, in the name of the mother and the daughter. Now, on this fine late May morning, I invite you to turn to your neighbor in exchange with Emma Warmbreeding, typically set aside a few minutes during the hour for the sharing of joys and sorrows, a time for members, friends, and even visitors to our congregation to relate to the entire gathered community, some special event or circumstance that has affected your life or the life of someone close to you in recent weeks or months. More general announcements, news items, partisan appeals are discouraged during this time of joys and sorrows. And so for the next few minutes, anyone who wishes is invited to step to the front of the auditorium, light a candle in either of the candelabras to my left or my right, and then using the microphone provided by Tom Boykoff, our lay minister, share your name if that feels comfortable, as well as your brief message. Please note that our services are webcast, livecast, to a larger audience, so listeners are not restricted to those who are sitting in this room. You may also come forward and silently, wordlessly light a candle of commemoration and then simply return to your seat. And so now I would open the floor for the sharing of these important and personal matters of our lives. And I would begin by noting the death last Thursday of longtime FUS member Helen Ranney, who had been living in an assisted living situation at Capitol Lakes for the past several years. Helen had suffered from dementia for quite a number of years, and her family was with her when she died. There will be a memorial service for Helen at Capitol Lakes on the 11th of June at 11 o'clock in the morning. And then I would ask that we keep Gabor Chemene in our thoughts and prayers. His wife, Kathy Speck, noted that he has been at Meritor in the ICU since Friday battling an infection. He's on an IV with antibiotics, but he is still running a fever. This was complications from a diagnostic procedure that he underwent, but he's hoping to be better in a few days and back home, but we keep Gabor in our thoughts this morning as well. And now I invite you to share any joys or sorrows that are present in your lives. Yeah, I'm Rosalyn Woodward, and this is a joy. This afternoon, and I hope the rain holds off, there's a party for my son, Justin, and daughter-in-law, Katie, their 10th wedding anniversary. And I'm having a sleepover with my grandson, Max. This is for my dad, James, whose burial service was last week. When my dad was 18, he fought in the Pacific Theater, where he earned the Silver Star in the Purple Heart and lost his leg. At age 18, he came back to the States and raised a family of 10 children, of which I'm the second oldest, and he died at the age of 92. This is for you, dad. My name is Rod Groves, and this is my wife, Judy. We come from Albuquerque, New Mexico. But more importantly, we were married in this church 53 years ago, together with my brother's and sister, amongst the crew that hauled the stone for the old church. And so it's a nice homecoming. Judy is my wife, my daughter, and her spouse over here sharing, and we're delighted to be a member of the congregation today. Good morning. I'm Kurt Stegi, and the last comment made me think of how fortunate we are that there are so many people who have contributed time, effort, experience to this institution over many, many generations, and I, for one, appreciate that very much. Tim Harrington, this is a great joy for me, and it's a great day to be Irish. I just met another Irishman here, and I celebrate the Irish passage of gay marriage, particularly on behalf of my sister, Eileen and her partner, and hopefully we can follow suit in the United States. I'm Diane Smith. This is sort of a bittersweet joy. My daughter, Katie, and her family who live in Denver are moving to China where she will be a teacher for two years in a bilingual school, and we have three darling little granddaughters who we're going to miss quite a bit, but I think it'll be a great adventure for them, and we're pretty happy for them for all. My name is Nancy, and this is my husband, Jerry, and even though we only have 45 years together, we thought we could come up, and we're celebrating having some of our best friends here for the celebration. That's 45 years of marriage. My name is Susan Spahn, and my Irish partner and I, Frank, are visiting here today, and I just welcome this opportunity. I was trying to think, tomorrow's my mother's birthday, and it'll be her first birthday that she's not with us, and I was trying to think of how to mark that day, and this just seemed like the perfect time to remember her, and thank you for the opportunity. And Tom, if you would now light another candle to commemorate those who have served our country and the armed forces losing their lives, and sometimes, as in Dan's father's case, their limbs, we hold them in our hearts as well today, and then one final candle for all those unexpressed joys and sorrows that may have occurred to you as others were speaking. And now, if there are any children among us who would like to go to summer fun, this would be the time as we join our voices in song once more. Please be seated. We continue now with a reading from the 5th century BCE Chinese philosopher Mozi. Suppose a man enters another man's stable and appropriates the other's horses and oxen. We would say that he was acting inhumanely. Why? Because others are caused to suffer, and when one causes others to suffer, the act is inhumane and criminal. And if one murders the innocent, stripping him of his clothing, dispossessing him of his sword and his spear, is that not even more unrighteous than to enter another's stable and appropriate his livestock? Of course it is, because it causes others to suffer even more. All of the gentlemen of the world know that they should condemn these things, calling them unrighteous. But when it comes to the great attack of states, they do not know that they should condemn it. On the contrary, they applaud it, calling it righteous. Can this be said to be knowing the difference between righteousness and unrighteousness? The murder of one person is called unrighteous. It incurs the death penalty. Following this argument, the death of ten persons will be ten times as unrighteous and the murder of a hundred persons even more unrighteous, calling for a hundred death penalties. But when it comes to the great unrighteousness of attacking another state, these same gentlemen are really ignorant of it being unrighteous. Hence they have recorded their judgment and bequeathed it to posterity. Now if there were a man who, upon tasting a little bitterness, should say it was bitter, but upon tasting much bitterness would say that it was sweet, then we would think that that person could not tell the difference between the bitter and the sweet. Now when a little wrong is committed, people know that they should condemn it. But when a great wrong, like attacking another state is committed, people do not know that they should condemn it. On the contrary, it is applauded and it is called righteous. Hence we know the gentlemen of the world are confused about the difference between what is righteous and what is unrighteous. And then of more recent derivation from William James' essay of 1910 entitled The Moral Equivalent of War, our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace will not breed it out of us. The popular imagination fairly fattens on the thought of wars. In 1898 our people had read the word war in letters three inches high for three months in every newspaper, and that pliant politician McKinley was swept away by the public's eagerness, and the squalid war with Spain became a necessity. If war had ever stopped, we should have to reinvent it to redeem life from flat degeneration. Reflective apologists for war at the present day all take it religiously. It is a sort of sacrament and quite apart from any profit motive. It is an absolute good we are told for. It is human nature at its highest dynamic. Its horrors are a cheap price to pay for rescue from the only alternative supposed, the alternative of a world of clerks and teachers of consumer leagues and associated charities of industrialism unlimited and feminism unabashed. No scorn, no hardness, no valor anymore. Fie upon such a cattle yard of a planet. Militarism is the great preserver of the ideals of hardyhood, and human life with no use for hardyhood would be contemptible. Without risks or prizes for the terror, history would be insipid indeed. So pacifists, pacifists ought to enter more deeply into the aesthetic and the ethical point of view of their opponents. So long as the anti-militarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous one might say to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long will they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation. And as a rule, they do fail. The duties, penalties, sanctions pictured in the utopias that they all paint, they are weak and tame. They fail to touch the military-minded. I do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be permanent on this globe unless the states pacifically organized preserve some of the old elements of army discipline. A permanently successful peace economy cannot be a simple pleasure economy. We must make new energies and hardyhoods continuing the manliness to which the military mind faithfully clings. Martial virtues must be the enduring cement, intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interests, obedience to command. These must still remain the rock upon which the state is built. But although the war function has grasped us so far, constructive interests may someday see no less imperative and impose on the individual a hardly lighter burden. So far war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community. And until an equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war will have its way. I don't know how you do that. I can't even type a text message on my iPhone. Fantastic. Well, more than a century has passed since William James's noteworthy essay, The Moral Equivalent of War, was first published. And the author at that time, 12 years later, was still chafing at our country's decision to enter into that opportunistic war with Spain, the conflict that ultimately resulted in our acquisition of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, among other territories. But James was deeply troubled by the role that the print media dominated by powerful newspaper magnets Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, the role that the media played. It fanned the fires of popular sentiment in 1898. And as both a declared pacifist and as a psychologist, James wanted to understand war's appeal, to identify the proclivities and the values that had made it such a permanent fixture in human relations. War is ultimately and inevitably destructive inhumane. And as Jonathan Schell writes, every page of history shows that violence only incites more violence, all forms of terror, from a bomb in a pizza parlor to the globe spanning balance of terror, all of them foster and give encouragement to new forms of violence. And yet the field of battle satisfies certain deeply embedded individual and communal cravings, and for many that has justified the steep price paid in terms of loss of life and social disruption. War kindles a fire in the human imagination, and so even an organization as brutal as ISIS can draw into its ranks young, reasonably affluent Westerners who are hungering for deeper meaning in the higher sense of purpose. The eruption of conflict instantly reduces the headaches and the trivia of daily life, Chris Hedges observes. And he continues, the communal march against an enemy generates this warm, unfamiliar bond with our neighbors, our community, our nation, wiping out all those unsettling undercurrents of alienation and dislocation. Tragically, war is sometimes the most powerful way in which human society achieves meaning. Tragically, indeed. Four years after William James penned the moral equivalent of war, the war to end all wars erupted in Europe. Nothing before had approached the widespread destruction, the death and the injury caused by four years of all out conflict. This was the first war to feature weapons of mass destruction, including machine guns, tanks, airplanes, and mustard gas. And yet at the beginning of that conflict, young men surged to enlist in the fight. And those who conscientiously opposed World War I were maligned, ostracized, hooted at in the streets, and if they were too outspoken, they were often imprisoned. Ultimately, however, the carnage of World War I was so extreme that after the armistice was signed, cries of never again, never again arose from many quarters. And so in 1928, 28 countries, including the United States, Britain, Japan, Germany, France, they all signed on to the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which outlawed international war. 1928. Those critics who scoff at this pact, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Simpson declared, have not accurately appraised the evolution of opinion since the Great War. Henry Stimpson and his fellow diplomats were overly optimistic, it seems. By 1940, 12 years later, the Kellogg-Briand Act was in tatters as once again war became the rule of the day. 3,000 years have not changed the human condition, the classicist Bernard Knox lamented, we are still lovers and victims of the will to violence. But is that true? Is it really bloodlust? Is it the will to violence that drives the war machine forward? Or are there other psychological and social factors at work that render it so perennially attractive? American sniper aside, most people find the thought of deliberately killing another human being to be deeply repellent, abhorrent. Numerous studies have shown that if they are confronted with an exposed enemy, as many as 80% of soldiers refuse to pull the trigger. We are not, the extensive research suggests, natural born killers. And yet, we continually find merit in war. Speaking mainly of the male temperament, William James proposes that men, we men, have this inherent need to test our metal, to demonstrate our resourcefulness under the most difficult, if not extreme conditions. To be a real man, one must endure physical hardship, compete against and ultimately overcome a worthy adversary, surrender ourselves to a cause greater than ourselves. In his book, Fire in the Belly, a more recent examination of male psychology, Sam Keane agrees with William James' premise. The dispassionate, postmodern cool man, he writes, is the antithesis of the heroic male. No passion, no standing forth, no drive to survive and to enrich history. Like William James, Keane sees value in the martial virtues. But then he also finds the costs of war to be unacceptable. The historic challenge to men is clear, he said. The challenge is to discover a peaceful form of virility and to create an ecological commonwealth so that these men may become fierce gentlemen. Now, one could argue that it's equally important for that commonwealth to support development of fierce, gentle women. Women possessing the same strength of character and fortitude as their male counterparts. This would not have made any sense whatsoever to William James, for in his time, the weaker sex was believed to be constitutionally unfit for military training and action, which are the traits most readily acquired at wartime. From a moral standpoint, war was thought to benefit our society, our nation in at least one other important way. Beyond the personal virtues just alluded to, there was also the generation of social solidarity, those powerful feelings of camaraderie that war provokes. Few enterprises motivate people to pull together willingly to sacrifice and to submit to a higher authority as a fight against a common foe. And even a war based on dubious evidence, a war initially greeted with skepticism, can produce the desired social results. Now, unless the United Nations sanctioned it, Americans were generally unenthusiastic about the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Fewer than half who were polled thought that that was a good idea. But once the die had been cast, the public quickly jumped on the bandwagon, approval of the mission spiked in the polls, reaching 73% of all Americans. In wartime, people generally think it is important to lay aside whatever qualms, whatever doubts they may have harbored, and to stand together. Now, ultimately, the Iraq war turned into a fiasco and has led to an increase of unrest in the Middle East. And that outcome was hardly unforeseen, for as Jonathan Schell wrote in the same month and year that that invasion took place, the days when humanity can hope to save itself from force with force, those days are over. Clearly, whatever social and psychological benefits the Iraq war conferred were easily outweighed, we know today, by the tremendous costs and the ongoing costs of that particular misadventure. Now, according to the 19th century Prussian political theorist, Klaus von Klauswitz, war is the continuation of politics by other means. War is the continuation of politics by other means. Which is to say that national and factional leaders are want to pursue their perceived interests with force of arms if diplomatic and economic strategies have proven unsuccessful. But in the vast majority of cases, war does not produce the desired results. It does not make the world safe for democracy. It does not dissuade potential terrorists. It does not produce a lasting peace. Now, some of us are old enough to remember those ubiquitous 60s era bumper stickers that asked, what if they gave a war and nobody came? Recognizing the lunacy that most wars represent, what if people, what if the public just refused to comply? And that was the hope that William James entertained. But he did not want the individual or society to sacrifice those important assets, solidarity, courage, self-transcendence, hardy-hood discipline, sacrifice all of those in the process of eliminating war. And so James suggested an alternative. He was a very early proponent of mandatory national service, a core whose members would repair the nation's infrastructure, plant trees, perform other socially useful tasks while living simply and communally very much like soldiers. Our gilded youth would be drafted off, he wrote, to get the childishness knocked out of them, to come back into society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas. We should get toughness without callousness, authority with as little criminal cruelty as possible, and painful work done cheerily because the duty is temporary and threatens not as now to degrade the whole remainder of one's life. Although voluntary rather than mandatory, such programs as James envisioned exist today. And the men and women who have served in AmeriCorps or in the Peace Corps, they often come back describing their experience in terms that William James would have appreciated. The work was difficult, they say, but it was transformative. It was purposeful to a degree that anything else they had encountered before or since could not possibly match. But unfortunately, such opportunities are available today only to the select few. They were received far from adequate support, even as more and more of our tax dollars flow into the coffers of the military. And so what are the alternatives? In today's culture, many people probably look to sports rather than to the service corps to acquire the attributes associated with military experience. The Duke of Wellington recognized a close connection between the ethos of the sportsman and the soldier when he famously stated that the battle of Waterloo was one on the playing fields of Eaton. And indeed, participating in competitive sports as part of a disciplined team that can be considered a sublimated form of warfare, especially true of contact sports like football and ice hockey, where the ever-present threat of serious injury strengthens the analogy between sports and war. But while sports may instill some of the martial virtues that were so important to William James, they do not really serve a valid moral purpose. These sports were created and they exist as a form of recreation for our entertainment, whereas wars are often believed rightly or wrongly to serve a much higher purpose. Writing in Friday's New York Times, the columnist Timothy Egan memorialized one such sportsman, a guy named Dean Potter, who with a companion was recently killed while pursuing his particular passion, which was jumping off cliffs, wearing this wingsuit in imitation of a flying squirrel. Potter's stated objective in doing this kind of thing was, as he put it, to overcome the fear that keeps most of us grounded. And he reported that when I do this, when I fly like this, a whole new world opens up. A commenting on that particular story by Timothy Egan, one writer sagely observed that fighter pilots and Navy SEALs are wired in the same way as Potter. They could not do their jobs if it was otherwise. Young people engage in these dangerous activities because they find a safe, comfortable life unworthy of their spirit. So yes, the line between combat and so-called extreme sports like base jumping and free climbing, the line can be pretty darn thin. And for some it is true, the two deliver similar sublime satisfactions and they can be equally cathartic. But again, what about the moral dimension that for William James was the primary concern? If war is generally the wrong thing to do, sapping the country's energy, its resources, making the world less rather than more safe, what is the alternative? What sort of peaceful and beneficent employments would bring out those redeeming qualities that James extolled, the passion, the sacrificial spirit, the persistence, the indomitability, the collegiality that are so visible, so much present in our military counterparts? Well, here are a few suggestions that I think are relevant to our contemporary world, possible antidotes to the hollow consumerism, the self-absorption that plagues our culture and that leaves so many of us, particularly the young, feeling insignificant, superfluous, and depressed. Goodness knows our society has more than enough problems to solve. And the only way those problems are going to be solved is if enough people enlist in the struggle and we all swing into collective action. So for starters, we have global climate change with the wide assortment of woes and dire predictions of worse to come. This is a moral as well as an environmental issue because in the near term, those who are likely to be the most affected are people of color and the world's poor as they cope with rising oceans, powerful storms, virulent diseases, and stifling droughts. Fighting climate change is today the moral equivalent of war. And in response to this growing threat, 350.org and global power shift, the latter primarily a youth led movement have been formed. Today, national and regional chapters throughout the world are working to create a mass movement that can serve as a counterweight to the power of the fossil fuel industry and as an alternative to business as usual. As Rebecca Solnit recently observed in Harper's magazine, we are still in a wartime economy, only now the war is against nature. This is not the old false binary, she says, of culture versus nature. It's the great majority of us against a small minority who have chosen their own short term economic benefit over long term global survival. A second issue plaguing our society today is income and wealth inequality, the huge and still widening gap between rich and poor. Left unaddressed, such inequity is very likely to produce increased social instability and the breakdown of our democratic institutions. We can already see this process at work. Income inequality is as much a consequence of public policy decisions favoring corporations and the wealthy. It is as much, that is as much responsible for it as anything having to do with advances in technology or the globalization of the economy. Now the Occupy Wall Street movement arose as an expression of people's distress over this situation, an expression of their growing anger. And many who participated in Occupy Wall Street saw themselves as foot soldiers in the fight for economic justice. But in the absence of effective leadership, in the absence of a clear sense of mission, Occupy Wall Street rapidly petered out. But now we have the fight for 15 and growing legions of supporters who are tightly focused on securing for all Americans a living wage. That is a moral equivalent to war. And then more recently, we have witnessed the rise of the Black Lives Matter campaign spearheaded here locally by the Young Gifted in Black Coalition. YGB has been working noisily, passionately, peacefully, but with a level of commitment seldom seen in our Madison community. These folks are imbued with the warrior spirit. This multi-hewed contingent is determined to expose and to rectify the racial inequalities in our economic and educational and criminal justice systems. And all of these movements that I have mentioned follow in the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, and others who believed in the efficacy of soul force and who saw it as a moral alternative to violent war. But like these distinguished forebears, it is important for us to understand that we have to be in this struggle for the long haul and that we have to, to some extent, at least, be prepared to sacrifice accordingly. America, the late Mary and Wright Edelman wrote, America is in urgent need of a band of moral guerrillas who simply decide to do what appears to be right heedless of the immediate consequences. I love that, moral guerrillas. Joining hands, let us embrace the cause of justice, equity, global security, meeting our opponents with fortitude, even as soldiers and with the patience of saints. May it be so. Amen. I invite you to join me now in the spirit of meditation. These are the words of the poet Judith Hill. Wage peace with your breath. Breathe in firemen and rubble and breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds. Breathe in terrorists. Breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields. Breathe in confusion. Breathe out maple trees. Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships still intact. Wage peace with your listening. Hearing sirens, pray out loud and remember your tools, the flower seeds, the clothes pins, the clean rivers. Make soup. Play music. Learn the word for thank you in three languages. Learn to knit. Make someone a hat. Think of chaos as dancing raspberries. Imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish. Swim for the other side. Wage peace. Never has the world seemed so fresh, so precious. So have a cup of tea and rejoice. Act as if the armistice has already arrived. Don't wait another minute. Celebrate peace today. I invite you now to participate in the giving and the receiving of today's offering. You will note that the recipient is the One City Early Learning Center and there is wonderful information and people to tell you about their programs out in the Atrium Commons after the service today. Our closing words come from the late Archbishop Oscar Romero, who as we know was recently beatified by Pope Francis, so they're particularly appropriate today. Peace is not the product of terror or war. Peace is not the hush of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. Peace is a right and peace is a duty. Please be seated for the post.