 You guys signed me, not in the front. You've got a main bank. You guys are main bank. I'm listening to the back. I'm listening to the back. You guys are main bank. I'm listening to the back. You could say, why? I said, I can't. We teach you. I don't know. I'm listening to the back. We meant to tell you fake news, right? We don't know. We don't need you. It's one of those two categories. People are going to do this. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. OK. Hello? It's fine. Great. It's really fine. It's fine. Check, check. Let us join together in centering silence for a moment. And now we'll join in our in-gathering hymn. It's numbers 379, but it's also written in the bulletin. Good afternoon 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 Rosalind Woodward, and on behalf of the congregation, I'd like to extend a special welcome to visitors. We're a welcoming congregation, so whoever 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 in the commons area of the Atrium Edition. Members of our staff and lay ministry will be on hand to welcome you. Just follow everybody, they'll lead you there. It's down there and down the hallway. If you're accompanied by a young child, please remember that if they need to talk or move around to the loger area, to the right, to my right, to your left, there's a good place to retire with them. And at this time, we ask you to turn off all beepers, cell phones and other electronic equipment that might cause a disturbance during the hour. I'd like now to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly. The sound operators, Steve is doing that, and we desperately need sound operators for the Saturday services, so if anybody, it's not that difficult, really. So if anybody is interested, please step up because there's been nobody the last few weeks. The lay minister is Bob Radford. Tammy Hofmeister was your greeter. The ushers are Carol Rohn and Paula Apfelbach. Susan Nicholl is down in the kitchen making coffee. And that's it. Please note the announcements in the red floors in your bulletin which describe upcoming events at the society and provide more information about today's activities. Again, welcome. We hope that today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart and stir your spirit. Thanks, Joe. These words are from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness and a deep love of life and a deep loving concern. Such people do not just happen. And now please rise as you are able as Roz lights our chalice. The chalice lighting reading is responsive, but it's a bit difficult to see the difference between the parts. The lighter ones I'll read and the darker ones you all read together. And if no one's responding, I'll give you a cue. I'll say go. Okay. Let us not wish away the winter. It is a season to itself, not simply the way to spring. The clarity and brilliance of the winter sky delight. The loom of fog softens edges, lulls the eyes and ears of the quiet, awakens by risk the unquiet, a low dark sky can snow, emblem of the individuality of liberality and aggregate power. Snow invites to contemplation and to sport. Winter dark tends to warm light, fire and candle. Winter cold to hugs and huddles. Winter want to gifts and sharing. Winter danger to visions, plans and common endeavoring and the zest of narrow escapes. Winter tedium to marrymaking. Thank you. And now if you'll turn to your neighbor and give a friendly winter afternoon greeting. And I don't know whether you want to say thank you to Joe at the beginning of the reflections that Michael usually does. Please come down to the front. There are cushions right over there. Grab some, sit down, and we're going to double team you for this story. Ross is going to read it. Sharon Dennis Wyeth, the author of this story, says about her writing, it is based on remembrances of my own childhood, watching my own daughter grow up, my husband, the young people I meet in my travels. My desire to share what I have learned and to pass on something beautiful. The book is called Something Beautiful. When I look through my window, I see a brick wall. There's trash in the courtyard and a broken bottle that looks like fallen stars. There is writing on the halls of my building. On the front door, someone put the word die. Where I walk, I pass a lady whose home is a big cardboard carton. She sleeps on the sidewalk wrapped in plastic. I run past a dark alley where mommy told me I must never stop. Behind a fence, there is a garden without any flowers. Mommy said that everyone should have something beautiful in their life. Where is my something beautiful? The teacher taught me the word in school. I wrote it in my book. B-E-A-U-T-I. Beautiful. I think it means something that when you have it, your heart is happy. I go to Miss Delfine's diner. Hi there, sugar pie, says Miss Delfine. What you up to? I'm looking for something beautiful, I tell her. Sit down a minute, she says, as she goes to the grill. She puts on a fish. The fish sizzles. Miss Delfine makes it into a sandwich. There's nothing more beautiful tasting than my fried fish sandwiches, she tells me. My teeth sink in. Hmm, is that good? When I go back outside, I see some of my friends. Do you have something beautiful, I ask them. I have my jump rope, says Sybil. I have my beads, said Rebecca. Check out my new shoes, says Jamal. My fruit store is a beautiful store, says Mr. Lee. You do have nice apples, I say. Thank you, says Mr. Lee, take one. Watch my move, says Mark, playing ball in the playground. Hear my sound, says Georgina, dancing on the sidewalk. Touch this smooth stone, says old Mr. Sims, sitting on his front steps. All these years, I've carried it in my pocket. Through the big window in the laundromat, I see Aunt Carolyn holding baby Carl. And where are you off to, little Miss, she asks me. I'm looking for something beautiful, I say. She hands me Carl and folds up the clothes. I tickle Carl and he giggles. He makes me giggle, too. My baby's laugh is something beautiful, says Aunt Carolyn. I go back home and sit down on my stoop. I look at the trash in my courtyard and I see the word die on my door. I go upstairs and get a broom and a sponge and some water. I pick up the trash, I sweep up the glass. I scrub the door very hard. And when the word disappears, I feel powerful. Someday, I'll plant flowers in my courtyard. I'll invite all my friends to see. I will give a real home and a real bed to the lady who sleeps in a cardboard carton. She will sing and I will hear her song. Mommy comes home from work. She gives me a great big hug. Do you have something beautiful, I ask her? Of course, she said. I have you. And now if you will have him number 57 as the children go out for classes. Aesthetics are, by their very nature, subjective. One can set eyes upon a piece of art and decide it is pleasing or not. One can listen to music and either share the CD or burn it. The inexperienced martial artists may look at a technique and decide it is beautiful. The way the body moves, the precision and the speed can all be variables in creating something that is pleasing to the eye. The same is true of the veteran martial artist whose experience ensures they witness technique in their own way. They see the movement, the precision, the speed and they also understand the context of what they are seeing and that creates an entirely different set of expectations for what determines beauty. The subjectivity, I think, is important because your own experience determines your own enjoyment. Learning to enjoy the paradox of martial arts is, I think, paramount. The study of martial arts is inherently paradoxical. You're putting yourself through hardship, pain, violence and defeat so that in general you become stronger, more calm and more able to deal with threat. Most people who understand a bit about martial arts, I think, recognize this on an intellectual level. Few, however, have experience with actually appreciating beauty of graceful brutality in the same way that one can only really appreciate the virtue of great music after learning how difficult it can be to play an instrument. One can only appreciate what goes into responding to threat and the nature of that response when they've actually been threatened. So it is that martial arts have the capability to be beautiful because of their benefit despite their combative nature. So it is that when you see a martial artist respond to a horrific situation with grace, efficiency and speed and you understand just how difficult it is to do that you begin to appreciate the paradox of martial arts. Now from Mary Oliver, a poem called And Bob Dylan Too. Anything worth thinking about is worth singing about. That's Bob Dylan Par. Which is why we have songs of praise, songs of love, songs of sorrow, songs to the gods who have so many names, songs the shepherds sing on the lonely mountains while the sheep are honoring the grass by eating it. The dance song of the bees to tell where the flowers suddenly in the morning light have opened. A chorus of many shouting to heaven or at it or pleading or that greatest love affair, a violin and a human body and a composer may be hundreds of years dead. I think of Schubert scribbling on a cafe napkin. Thank you. Thank you. Our FUS theme for the month of December is beauty. Winter offers a grand symphony for all our senses and December marks the beginning with its celebratory holidays and changing landscapes. Scenes of families in holiday spirit and snow-covered landscapes with fir trees and cute baby animals are everywhere and we appreciate a new familiar artist's renderings of iconic secular pictures as well as sacred paintings and iconography. Festive decor is everywhere, sometimes tastefully rendered in garlands and flowering plants but often in pure holiday glitz and flashing lights including the lawns of those folks appearing to vie for the title of most gaudy display. All are beautiful in their own way. During December, music fills the air with jolly seasonal favorites and familiar Christmas carols and beloved ancient music and chants from chapel, temple and mosque. This December alone, and it does change through the years, this December alone, Americans will celebrate Advent, St. Nicholas Day, St. Lucia Day, Bode Day, Solstice, Ewell, Posadas Navidinas, Kwanzaa, Malid Adnabi, Christmas, Epiphany and that's not even an exhaustive list. Everyone who celebrates sees beauty in their own traditions yet juxtaposed with the scenes of celebration and holiday glitz can be the debt associated with maxed out credit cards. The charity drives for families who fundamentally need much more than a free meal and a few gifts and the glut of food and sweets that most of us regret having eaten soon afterward. This is certainly a contradictory season and it surely speaks to the nature of beauty. Now I ask you to just take a brief moment and close your eyes. What comes to you when I say beautiful? Francis Bacon wrote, the best part of beauty is that which no picture can express. Yet most of us saw something in our mind's eye when our physical eyes were closed. If Bacon was correct, beauty is both elusive and illusive meaning beauty can be both difficult to define and achieve and perhaps more to our point this afternoon, a bit deceptive, misleading or even unreal. The latter brings to mind, to me, yet another Mary Oliver poem. The poet visits the Museum of Fine Arts. For a long time I was not even in this world yet every summer every rose opened in perfect sweetness and lived in gracious repose in its own exotic fragrance. In its huge willingness to give something from its small self to the entirety of the world. I think of them, thousands upon thousands in many lands whenever summer came to them rising out of the patience of patients to leaf and bud and look up into the blue sky or with thanks into the rain that would feed their thirsty roots latched into the earth sandy or hard, Vermont or Arabia, what did it matter? The answer was simply to rise in joyfulness all their days. Have I found any better teaching? Not ever, not yet. Last week I saw my first Botticelli and almost fainted and if I could I would paint like that but I am shelved somewhere below with a few songs about roses teachers also of ways toward thanks and praise. In a recent workshop called mindfulness, healing and transformation John Kabat-Zinn said, sometimes we use poetry because the poets are doing the same work as the yogis. This feeling of breathlessness in the presence of the arts can indeed seem unreal, even transcendent. My daughter and I felt it more than 20 years ago when we looked up at the newly renovated ceiling of the Sistine Chapel we simultaneously grasped hands and one of us said let's remember this moment forever, so far we have and yet this chapel is in the Vatican which has been a source of many questionable and some say immoral pursuits including the crusades, the inquisition and countless missions to convert indigenous peoples to Catholicism effectively destroying their own cultures. Rutgers David Ehrenfeld said, dichotomies are most mischievous when they arbitrarily separate parts of a highly interrelated and complex system. Such is beauty. The first thing I do when I undertake this sort of assignment is to head for the dictionary. The succinct definitions pulled together by some patiently obsessive editor are a wonder to behold and I never fail to be grateful for such precision. Webster's dictionary defines beauty as the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit. An alternate suggestion was loveliness which in itself connotes something worthy of love. I liked that. When I was little we often picnicked on the Berkshire Downs in England. My mother would remark on the gorgeous view. I rolled my eyes at her enthusiasm. However, now when I hear Vaughan Williams' lark ascending I melt back into that landscape with an enjoyment she must have felt. So what is it that turns an incident into a moment of pleasure? And why might it be important? With the advent of recent brain scanning technology there's a new field of study called neuroesthetics. Researchers at NYU scanned the brains of volunteers while they looked at a variety of paintings. They were asked to rate the paintings on a scale from one to five. The findings revealed that even though the rating was on a linear scale at the most extreme ranges of approval part of the brain that is usually engaged when people turn inward in a mind wandering, self-referential or daydreaming state surprisingly became active. The contradictory network that normally engages during a focused task or action similar to that required by this assignment became deactivated. This suggests there may be a point at which an external stimulus triggers an inward focus and produces an awe-inspiring experience. But why? A huge metal tree now stands at the start of Willy Street. Serendipitously I was at the artist Erika's workshop soon after she received the city contract. Her workshop is piled high with bits of scrap metal salvaged from all sources. She and her husband, both welders, visit scrap yards and scour them for suitable pieces. They see potential beauty or use in discarded metal. Nature is her inspiration. Birds, animals and plants grow from cogwheels and bumpers. Prehistoric jewellery speaks of the splendor of gold, a gift from the gods to the earthbound. Initially panned from the surface of the earth and chipped from superficial rocks. Over centuries it became necessary to dig deeper. Slave labor entered the picture to fulfill an increasing demand for this precious metal. Sweat and toil is the currency. World markets still use gold as a monetary standard. The African elephant has been poached to near extinction for ivory. A courageous and imaginative PBS investigative journalist recently commissioned an electronics filled imitation husk. Some of you might have seen the program. And smuggled it through war-torn Rwanda toward a valuable Chinese market. The market, however, is now suppressed by international pressure and this particular tusk remains buried in a jungle until there is a demand or until it's forgotten. One has to wonder how many others are buried nearby. Monday I was in New York and I did something I'd wanted to do for some time. During a visit in 2002, I witnessed the gigantic scar left in the ground by the fall of the Twin Towers and I wanted to see the transformation. When the Parkham Museum was ready to launch my daughter, a film editor, was hired by the architects to make a video commenting on the design. The two fountain pools rest on the footprints of the original towers. In the museum, walls have been preserved and views created to record, demonstrate and provide healing space for those who visit to wonder at the enormity of the event. These men thought very carefully and deeply about the significance of what they had been asked to do. As I stepped out of the metro, the historic st. Paul's was to my left. It has survived the revolution and the great New York fire in 1776 and is an historic record of old New York. An ancient sycamore tree in the churchyard was destroyed in the blast, but the church survived unscathed and became a place of memorials and refuge for the workers and grievers for months. It is now dwarfed by reflective skyscrapers. New construction is everywhere. A skeleton of the unfinished transportation centre looked like huge beached whale ribs bleaching in the sun. Two giant ground-level waterfalls plunge into the ground. They are surrounded by chess-level black granite walls in which the names of those who have lost their lives are memorialised. Water flows into a deep square central cavern like endless tears shed for those who died there. Oak trees flank both fountains, rooted sentinels they bear witness to the tragedy. Benches are arrayed in protected spaces inviting contemplation and even the inevitable commemoration and even the inevitable commercial kiosks are relatively unobtrusive. What surprised me, however, was the way the surrounding buildings appear to accept and wrap around the park, seeming to make comment. They mirror the past and comment on the ongoing changes through their reflective glass. The new transport centre is no longer visible as dead bones but as a bird about to take flight. Brain areas involved in aesthetic response to artwork overlap those of the desirability of foods or attractiveness of a potential mate. Research suggests that as evolution has progressed this part of the brain has been co-opted for this task. The brain's response to a piece of cake and a piece of music are in fact quite similar. Why would the part of the brain known to be important for processing pain and disgust turn out to be the most important area for the appreciation of art? Does it have to do with transcendent beauty? The ability to transform pain and horror, destruction and waste into something life-promoting? In the 2010 winter issue of Parabola magazine Richard Whitaker wrote of what he calls distant beauty. Describing his drive through an area near the Bonneville flats where the distant vistas promise majestic hills and mountains so beautiful he wondered if they might be mirages he had a bit of an epiphany. It dawned on me he wrote that the closer I got to the snowy range the less connection I would have with the magic of this vision. Let me read that one more time. It occurred to me that the closer I got to the snowy range the less connection I would have with the magic of this vision. Eventually I realized the road would thread itself up and through the range itself. I would find the familiar trees and snow. It would be a familiar passage not lacking in beauty but by comparison nothing at all. I was left to ponder whether there's a kind of beauty that by its very nature cannot be grasped. A condition of beauty that dwells at some irreducible distance perhaps even part of our ontological condition. Personally I can't help but think that we see much of what we recognize as beauty within our world, our society. Human beauty is a great example. Compared to iconic beauties from Aphrodite, Adonis, and Nefertiti to Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn and even George Clooney who are close and personal they are all human or human like. And share with us, with the rest of us the familiar characteristics of joy sadness and even questioning of our personal worthiness. This does not even touch it doesn't go near the tremendous damage that is caused by seemingly immovable concepts of ideal beauty. Everything from ethnic cleansing to job discrimination can be based in these ideals of beauty. Beauty can be very, very cruel according to Joseph B. Worthlin The more often we see things around us even the beautiful and wonderful things the more they become invisible to us. That is why we often take for granted the beauty of this world the flowers, the trees, the birds the clouds, even those we love. Because we see these things so often we see them less and less. Let us all be more aware of our surroundings in a way which allows us to truly see the beautiful in our world, in others and in ourselves. And now please see all the need and give generously as we enter into our offering. Thank you so much. And now please rise as you are able for our closing hymn number 326 let all the beauty we have known. We seated our last words and made a postlude. Spiritually the more we see beauty in all things. The higher we ascend on the spiritual path the more divine our vision and we see beauty in all things. Why? God is in all. We start to see the light of God in all beings when we see God in everyone and everything all becomes beautiful. Thank you.