 Welcome to the First Unitarian Society. I'm Roz Woodward, one of the worst associates at FUS. I'm joined today by Drew Collins, Linda Warren, Heather Thorpe, Daniel Karnes, Stephen Gregorius, and the Lindbergh family who will lead our chalice lighting. Robin Chapman, Nancy Cross Dunham, Kathleen Ernst, Jeffrey Glover, Hannah Pinkleton, Claire Box, Patricia Stinger, Bobby Zaynor, Anne Schaffer, and Hannah Lee will share in today's reflection. We're so glad to have you join us this morning. Though not together here in our beloved meeting house, we remain tied together through bonds of community and affection. At FUS, we gather to grow our souls, connect with one another, and embody our UU values in our lives, our community, and our world. We have a special announcement this morning about our children's religious education program. Hi, I'm John Ryder. And I'm Terri Felton, and we've been teaching CRE classes at FUS for a number of years now. Yes, I taught mind, body, soul a few years ago and also exploring our origins. And then this year, I'm going to be teaching mind, body, soul again. And I've been basically following our daughter through starting with the kindergarten classes, kindergarten, first grade classes, second, third grade classes, and the fourth and fifth grade classes. And then this year, I'm going to be teaching Building Bridges, which is sixth grade class. So it's been really fun for me to teach for a number of reasons. One is it feels really good to know them, kind of giving back to our, to the First Unitarian Society and our faith community and helping volunteer and work with our kids. The kids are really fun because it's fun to watch them grow up during the year that we're working with them. And then also kind of following them later on and see what kind of really great people they're becoming. So I like being a part of that, helping grow our future leaders within our congregation. And basically same for me because I've really enjoyed watching the kids grow, especially since I've seen a lot of kids in the classes. Since I'm following my daughter, I've seen kids follow along with them. So I've watched a lot of these kids since they were, you know, six years old all the way now into going into sixth grade. So it's been fun to get to know these kids as they're growing up and learning with them and learning from them. And one of the things I love about teaching too is that I'm always learning something new. Every year I learn something new in the curriculum and some things that are just really fascinating that I never, ever knew about Unitarian Universalism or even just some history. There's a lot of history that you learn. And I know you learned a lot of science stuff when you did the- My high school class. Well, and also the- Oh, the exploring origins, which is, yeah. So it's great, you get to learn. Like while you're teaching, which is really cool. And Karen and Leslie make it really, really easy. The curriculum is right, is there for you. Like you don't have to really prepare anything other than read it and figure out what you're gonna do with it. But it's all there, all materials are there and you have co-teachers that you can work with. You're never doing it by yourself. And if you're in the team, so you've got basically four teachers for each class. So two teachers, you have basically two classes per month that you teach. And only one of them, you're really the lead teacher. The other one, you're basically the community lead, which means you're just kind of rounding up the kids and doing more of the community building stuff. And so you're really only in charge of like one lesson per month. So they make it really easy. Another part of that is it's a really good opportunity to get to know someone else in the congregation a lot better, make some new friends from being teachers in the class. And so I think that's another great part of it is being more involved in meeting new people. Yeah. And the volunteer dinner is super awesome. Like there's, it's catered. You get great food and there's beverages and you get to sign up for a massage. It's all free and it's awesome. Yeah. FUS really shows that they appreciate their teachers. So if you can join us to become teachers too, you can help out everybody in the congregation and you can get some good rewards from that, even if it's personal rewards, but also a really great dinner out of it, which is a really good time. And we're all cool people and you can be part of our club. Yeah. So hope you'll join us. That would be great, please do. We warmly invite you to join in the virtual coffee hour immediately after today's service. The information for that will be on your screen again after the postlude. I invite you now to take a few deep breaths to be present here together to bring ourselves fully into this time we share. In a remarkable nod to the future, Queen Elizabeth I of England assured access to the British countryside in perpetuity by ordering footpaths to be commonly held. Those same paths continue to snake through woods, fields, moors and bogs by royal decree. When the passage is blocked by a hedge or wall, a landowner is required to provide a way through or over and so there are styles. I love them as a child growing up and still do. As well as access to the next leg of a journey, they provide breathing room, a place to gain height, consider where one's been and force a pause before embarking on the path ahead. FUS has grown and changed in the last few years. Under the wise tutelage and guidance of our two interim ministers and the steadfast leadership of our beloved Kelly, well supported by the faithful staff and board, we've weathered some pretty stormy seas and made it through to welcome team Kelly. I believe we're better for the journey. The fact that pandemic was thrown into the mix was an extra challenge to an already taxing transition. We need to pause, take stock, lift ourselves a little higher, give ourselves space to grieve, to think about what might be left behind, what changes and what to carry into the future. This service is intended to be a metaphoric style. We've come to a pause where the past and future meet at a turning point. Who better to capture the substance of this moment than some of our resident poets? They were asked and they've literally stepped up to the podium. Our reflection today is a composite of those responses. So put a foot on the style, lift yourself up and think with them about what to leave, grieve, adjust to and welcome as we move ahead. I invite you now to light a chalice or a candle at your home as the Lindbergh family shares words of affirmation. We light this chalice to find inner peace, love for each other and faith in ourselves. Also to be welcoming to whomever we meet and kind to all living creatures. So gather around this light of hope as we share this time together. Please rise and body and our spirit to sing with me hymn number 300 with heart and mind. Book is called The Magical Yet. I never really thought about yet as a magic word, but this book changed my mind. It's by Angela D. Turleys and the art is by Lorena Alvarez. There are days when your dreams haven't come true or you're upset by the things you can't do. If you've lost or failed or cried just a bit, you're tired of waiting, ready to quit. Like that shiny new bike you couldn't ride and it didn't matter how hard you tried. You couldn't pedal and you couldn't steer and you couldn't get that bike into gear. Then when you thought you were on the right track, you popped a wheelie and fell on your back and now you won't ride. No way, not never, no riding for you. You'll walk forever. Don't give up now. There's a major game changer, a most amazing thought rearranger. Someone to show you how good you can get. Now introducing the magical yet. With this yet's magic, you can begin to see that you're going beyond where you've been. There are so many things that you've learned to do when you didn't know that yet was with you. Like when you babbled before you could talk or how you crawled before you could walk. Yet's a dreamer, a schemer, a hopper, a trier, a maker, a doer, a gotta get flyer. This yet finds a way even when you don't and yet knows you will even when you think you won't. Like that shiny new bike that you couldn't ride, hop right back on with the yet by your side. Yet doesn't mind warm ups, fixes and flops, do-overs, redo, stumbles and stops. Yet knows there's mistakes, some big and some small, with yet you're sure to get over them all, pay the kazoo or play the bassoon, jam with the yet and you'll soon be in tune. Try skateboarding tricks like the Ollie heel flip. This yet can get you to the championship. Tongue twisters twisted your tongue in a knot, yet says keep trying and practice a lot. Be patient, yet can't do all overnight. Some things take months or years to get right. But if you keep leaping, dreaming, wishing, waiting, learning, trying, missing, with the yet as your guide along the way, you'll do all the things you can't do today. Now you're bold or brave or starting to see with yet, you can get where you want to be. You finally did it, yet knew you could. You're not just riding, you're getting quite good. But don't stop now, you've got so much to do. The good news is that yet grows with you. So no matter how big or old you may get, you'll never outgrow, you'll never forget. You can always believe in the magic of yet, the end. I invite you into this time of giving and receiving where we give freely and generously. Your offering sustains and strengthens first unitarian society and our work in the world. You'll see on your screen that you can donate directly from our website, fussmedicine.org. You'll also see our text to give information there as well. We thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life we create together. I'm going to Chapman, happy to be among the poet's welcoming team Kelly to the first unitarian society. Reading my poem about Betty Graham, wife of the Unitarian minister in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where I grew up, the blue hat. Now, while so many of our daughters are dying because they are not thin or young or beautiful enough, it is the blue hat I want to explain, a royal blue fedora that I bought because I knew Betty, fashion coordinator of the town's largest department store who dressed in vogue magazine styles and feather boas in the middle of Tennessee Hills and denim-dressed Unitarian wives. Betty wept at the beauty of her husband Arthur Sermons and decorated her Christmas tree with red velvet ribbons and came to mom's funeral in a black humberg with chantilly lace drape and silk pajamas and a choker of crystals. Betty, who was the first to have watermelon placemats and real candles and a rod iron chandelier who looked me over as I swung my legs on the turquoise love suite and said to mother, what are we going to do with her? Betty told me I would be beautiful with the right clothes and a little older and gave me a cashmere sweater for college and false eyelashes for graduate school and said, sex was wonderful. And when a stroke shut Arthur down, except for a little roar he could make sometimes when he heard her voice on the phone, Betty believed that behind his immobile face and arms and legs, his mind raced on, got 24 hour a day care and a hospital bed, played McNeil Lair news and his favorite videos every evening, wearing her best red negligee to climb in bed with him for an hour or two. Tell him about her day, the way she'd chat with her friends at work about what Arthur had thought of the last foreign film or the latest political news. For seven years before he died, this blue hat honors Betty. What I'm learning about grief, Nancy Cross Dunham. What I'm learning about grief is that it need not be a heavy gray shawl to wrap myself in, clutching my arms tightly across my chest, nor need it be a granite rock that I should try to push away. Neither is it at least no longer a vast dark ocean ready to pick me up and slam me down without warning. What I'm learning about grief is that it is not me but that it offers to become a friend. A friend who will lightly lay a hand on my shoulder when tears come in the dark. A friend who will laugh out loud with me at remembered silly moments. A friend who can still hear the music of our life. What I'm learning about grief is that this friend doesn't intend to leave me, but promises to hold my hand to carry my memories. A friend who will bear witness to my love as I venture toward the next day and the following night. Good morning, my name is Kathleen Ernst and I'd like to share with you a poem from my collection Balancing, which is about 19th century immigrant women. Facing forward, in the old world, Amal muttered prayers over trenches of Ludovisk peered at the sky and sniffed the air to decide when to plant potatoes, counted coins before Birgit shopped. She tended her hearth as she'd been raised to do, an endless chain of chores and worn-fingered women doing them. In the old world, when the hungry time came, rye crop blackened with rust, children whimpering, Amal said, we will go. Birgit wept to leave her mother and sisters, lefts and cod, smoke-stained village, mossy gravestones, all she knew. In the new world, walking west, Birgit bore weight, an unborn child in front, toddler on her hip, worry. When the oxen foundered, she nodded her mother's kale seeds and candlesticks into the shawl tied over one shoulder and hefted the rifle, too. But in the new world, Birgit walked with a step lighter than heels rubbed raw, feet on fire, muscles ache, sunburned skin. She walked toward the prairie, the unexpected promise of possibility, new grace in her heart, a life not defined before her wedding day. While Amal trudged behind, dragging an anvil of gnawing doubt and fear, missing his father, looking over his shoulder, but looking forward, too, toward the woman he once knew, wondering what he'd lost and how she came to find it. Feeling change, surprising in spring to see winter aconite trade places with snowdrops. How plants change without my knowing, without help or thought from me. The sun rises over the lake, north of Pine on Mid Isle. Arcing south to Birch, near Eagle Point, as day, light moves long to short. Chubby newborn fingers reach out, touch, feel, explore. Years later, sinewy hands create poetry, music, memoir. As an octogenarian, time changes. Fashionable footwear becomes functional. Bike trips gear down to walks. Ahead it seems nearer, sooner, closer, still there is time. Plant a sapling oak that will grow, change for someone without my knowing, without any thought of me. Claire Box, who wrote this next poem, is recovering from a recent move into a new apartment and a broken ankle. She asked me to read it for her. I don't know by Claire Box. A short trip from Boston to Provincetown, so often made in those twin engine, to solo piloted planes. So often I thought I knew when we would arrive what the weather would be like. So often a 20 minute flight. And today I asked to sit next to the pilot. He says it's so boring to be a passenger, much better to fly. Years of wanting to sit next to him where I could grab control. At minute 11, we enter the fog. And I don't know what is one inch in front of me surrounded in that thick white. I don't know if there will be another plane ahead, although the radar indicates not. I don't know where this will end, or if it will end, or if we'll fall into nothingness. The thrill of not knowing or the tedium of thinking I know. I shout, I don't know. And it becomes even more thrilling. I don't know if we'll land. I don't know if I can finish this line. I don't know what is beyond this fog. I don't know if Alice will be waiting, smiling with hugs. I don't know. As the blinding white yields, and then the spit dunes and the tower of Provincetown become visible. But it's so important, so important that I want to climb back up into the pure white truth of I don't know. Patricia Stinger. This poem, Basho's Pond, draws inspiration from a famous haiku by the renowned 17th century Japanese poet, Basho. Here's the haiku. Old pond, a frog jumps in, the sound of water. Basho's pond. Beyond the abandoned prairie, old forest surrounds a glacier formed pond. Green darner dragonflies skim past a bed of reeds. On a half submerged log, a frog croaks, breaking the ancient stillness. Then jumps with a splash, sending ripples in widening circles. A tufted titmouse, the voice of spring, with insistent sound calls out. Then silence, the deep silence of all that lies hidden at the edge of the water. Together may we approach the mysteries, the sunlight, the shadow, listening, attentive to what may emerge. A poem for First Unitarian Society entitled New Beginnings by Jeff Glover. New beginnings come what may happen nearly every day. Opportunities appear, holding goodness, rarely fear, that encourage us to stay well refreshed and on the way to a future bright and near where we'll see and often hear new things coming to our lives that open us and may surprise for an ever better day that speaks with confidence to say, forward, enter times with grace, full of promise, many ways. The open door from the summer of 2018. May I go inside with you or must I stay in the car? Stay in the car comes the teenager's quick retort. Darn, why did I even give him a choice? Oh, sorry, I'm going in, it's too hot out here. I'll sit in the corner, no one will even know I'm there. His eyeballs roll, I leg behind him into the shop. No corner, only a row of folding chairs behind four skilled barbers. Snipping, sponging, spritzing, my curiosity percolates in this hallowed space. Male clients of varied ages sit before a mirrored wall. I slept down, leaving two empty seats between us. Next barber up beckons him. Be cool, look away. Toddler with a fade stud sparkling in one ear slides off a leather throne, gambles over and climbs up into my lap. Much like my distant teenager did not so very long ago. Barber finishes way too soon, nods and smiles at me. Does he sense my pleasure? I didn't stay in the car. The door opens, we walk through it. The driving range, thunk, thwap, colump, whirly gig of clubs, arcing, circling. Hope is the mantra of the swingers. Hope for a solid hit, for a straight shot, for a long distance. Hope that when the little ball lost through the air, it will take the soul with it. Soaring into the clean air, soul and ball. Kabam, whoosh, thwump, whirly gig of clubs, arcing and wheeling. Hope's for a low score, few putts, no lost balls. Hope's for a cleansing, a releasing, a studying, a gathering of hopers, a Sunday afternoon in the sun, souls and balls. Kabam, thunk, swingers seeking focus, a moment of perfect connection, a mantra of hope. All the experiences that heal and harm that impact us and those we love. We share them here, knowing this community holds all that is in our lives in love. This week, we light a candle for Alyssa Ryanjoy and her family. Her grandmother Rosemary died a few weeks ago. Grandma Rosemary married Alyssa's grandfather and her grandmother, after her grandmother passed away when Alyssa was four years old. She shared her generous heart with all seven of her grandfather's children and 17 grandchildren. We light a last candle, representing the cares of the congregation that remain unspoken. Amen and blessed be. At this turning, here now, we come to an end and a beginning, cycles, phases in our growth, markers of our being, deposited in us like the rings of a tree, to be read into the story of our life together around whatever hearth or campfire gathers us, reminding us of all the ways in which we belong to one another. We honor whatever was lost in our passage and celebrate joyfully what we have gained, how our long journey has ripened us. We recommit to our dreams and their work and greet what is being born with hearts opened by what has gone before. In praise that it is so. The benediction is by Eric Williams. Blessed is the path on which you travel. Blessed is the body that carries you upon it. Blessed is your heart that has heard the call. Blessed is your mind that discerns the way. Blessed is the gift that you will receive by going. Truly blessed is the gift that you will become on the journey. May you go forth in peace.