 I invite you to join me for a moment or two of silence centering. And now please join your voices as we sing our opening hymn number 224. Good morning and welcome to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. It's beginning to look a lot not like Christmas, but we're going to celebrate the season in any case. This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical, and social issues in an accepting and nurturing environment. 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 Schuler. I'm the senior minister of the society. And on behalf of the congregation, I'd like to extend a special welcome to any visitors in our midst today. We are in fact a welcoming congregation, so whoever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life's journey, we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library directly across from the center doors of the auditorium. Bring your drinks, your cookies, and your questions. Members of our staff and lay ministry team will be on hand to welcome you. You may also look in the commons area for persons that are holding teal stoneware coffee mugs because these are members of the society who are knowledgeable about our community and would love to acquaint you with its features. In addition to that, experienced guides are generally available to give a building tour after the service, and I know that there is one who's signed up for today. So if you'd like to learn more about our sustainably designed atrium addition or our national landmark meeting house across the parking lot, please meet over here near the large glass window immediately after the service. We do welcome children to stay for the duration of our services, but because it is difficult for some in attendance to hear in this very lively acoustical environment, the child haven over there to my right or the commons are excellent places to retire if the child needs to move around or to talk. The service can still be seen and heard from those locations. And speaking of noise, this would be the appropriate time to turn off all those cell phones and laptops and whatever else you happen to bring with you that might disturb our hour together. I'd now like to acknowledge those individuals, those volunteers who help our service to run smoothly. Anne Smiley and Judy Troy are our lay ministers this morning. We were greeted at the upstairs door by Anne Hecht. Usher's are Vivian Littlefield, Dorrit Bergen, and artist Kaufman. Jeannie Hills is serving hospitality, coffee, and hot chocolate and the like today. Please note the announcements that are in the red floors insert of your program this morning, and they describe upcoming events at the society and provide more information about whatever might be happening after this service here at the meeting house. We'd also like to note that next Saturday on December the 12th, in the auditorium courtyard rooms A and B over here, we will be hosting an opportunity for people to be in conversation if the winter holidays are not necessarily the happiest time in your yearly calendar. There are people for whom the holidays are painful, may have sustained a loss, may have other issues going on in your life, and so we call this our blue Christmas gathering, and if in fact you would like to be in conversation with others who kind of struggle through the holidays, then next Saturday at 2 o'clock in A, B, atrium courtyard rooms, we'll be having that conversation. And then finally, as many of you know, each holiday season members of our congregation adopt families in the larger community who may not have the resources to be able to provide their families with a Christmas celebration, and normally we have about 125 families that we serve, and this year there were more than that, and we're pleased to say that as of the first service, every family that was given to us by Dane County Social Services has been adopted by one of our members. So thanks to all of you. So again, welcome. We hope that today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart, and stir your spirit. 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 of tenderness, a season for friendship and for fellowship. Let it be with music that we celebrate the holidays, and let it be in harmony that we dwell 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 and body your spirit for the lighting of our chalice. Our affirmation is responsive if you would join your voices in reading the bolded sections. May the spirit of this season help us to find our way through the noise and turmoil of the days ahead into the very heart of Christmas itself. May we know how close we are to what we seek and realize that the real treasures of life are ours for the taking and the giving. May the holiday season help us to recover what we once knew so well. And in the spirit of that goodness, please turn to your neighbor in exchange with them a warm greeting. Please be seated. As the wise men of old brought gifts guided by a star to the humble birthplace of the god of love, the devils, as an old print shows, retreated in confusion. What could a baby know of gold ornaments and frankincense and myrrh, of priestly robes and devout genuflections? But the imagination knows all stories before they are told and knows the truth of this one past all defection. The rich gift so unsuitable for a child, though devoutly preferred, stood for all that love doth bring. But these men were old. How could they know of a mother's need or a baby's appetite? But as they kneeled, the child was fed and they saw it and gave praise. A miracle had taken place. Hard gold to love a mother's milk before their wondering eyes. The ass braid, the cattle load, it was in their nature and all men by their nature give praise. It's all they can do. The very devils by their flight give praise. What is death beside this? Nothing. The wise men came with gifts and bowed down to worship this perfection. Before climate change, after a still winter night, I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me which I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep. But now there was dawning nature in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad windows with a sincere and satisfied face and no question on her lips. I awoke to an answered question, to nature and to daylight. The snow lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines and the very slope of the hill on which my house is placed seemed to say forward. Nature put snow questions and answers none which we mortals ask. And so to my morning work, first I take an axe and a pail and I go in search of water if that be not a dream. After a cold and snowy night, it needed a divining rod to find it. Every winter, the liquid and trembling surface of walled and pond which was so sensitive to every breath which reflected every light and shadow, the pond becomes solid to a depth of a foot or a foot and a half so that it will support even the heaviest teams of horses. And perhaps the snow will cover it to an equal depth so that it could not be distinguished from any level field. Like the marmots in the surrounding hills, it closes its eyelids and becomes dormant for three months or more. And standing on the snow-covered plain as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through a foot of snow and then through a foot of ice and I open this window under my feet. And then kneeling to drink, I look down into that quiet parlor of fishes pervaded by a soft light as through a window of ground glass with its bright sanded floor, the same as it was in summer. And there, a perennial wabless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky corresponding to the cool and even temperament of its inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. William Cooper was an 18th century Boston minister. This is an excerpt from his winter sermon. The changes and the extremities of the weather are a matter of our daily observation and the subject of our common talk and serve perhaps oftener than any one thing to open our conversations when we meet together. But how seldom do we think and speak of these things in a religious manner? Now, the psalmist was not so inobservant and irreligious as this. He adores the God of Israel as the God of nature, that God from whom all the powers of nature are derived and on whom they depend and who produce the changes of the seasons, particularly of the winter season. He sendeth forth his commandment upon earth, his word runneth very swiftly. He gives snow like wool. He scatters the whorefrost like ashes. He sends forth his ice like morsel. Who can stand before his cold? And then he sendeth forth his word and melts them and causes the wind to blow and the waters to flow. This is a lively and beautiful description of the winter season which succeeds the summer. How is the face of the earth then changed? The gay and pleasant flowers? They are withered. The fruits for delight and necessity. They are gathered in. The creatures that used to feed and play in the verdant pastures and meadows, they are now housed. Nothing is now seen abroad except snow and frost and ice which are engendered by the cold which we now feel. And we should be patient under the cold since it is God's cold. When our bodies are pinched by it at any time, when our hands are sealed up, in its disabling us for work or for business, or when we are put to extraordinary expense to guard ourselves against it, let us bear these and such inconveniences arising from cold without murmuring, without fretting. Let us learn our obligation of thankfulness. Thankfulness for warm houses and clothes and beds, for comfortable food and fuel to relieve us against the rigors of this cold. And it deserves a particular thankful notice that God has spared our habitations to us in this extreme season that is passing over. That fire has not broken out in this large town in which there are such a vast number of fires being kept every day. And at a time when the water in the docks and in many of our pumps is frozen and men could not stand long before the cold to put out the fire. This, I say, is a wonder of undeserved mercy for which we are indebted to a kind and watchful Providence. Let us now enter a time of meditation. And so we pause for a few moments to give thanks, to give thanks for the symphony of this community. We give thanks for the basic melodies, for straightforward arrangement of notes, sometimes obvious and sometimes woven into deep complexity, but always returning, always trustworthy, always leading in the direction that we need to go. We give thanks for creative soloists, for sequences that soar beyond the heights that most of us could dream, transforming imagination into vision, and helping the possible to become real. We give thanks for counterpoint, those tones that speak with independent voice, tempting us out of our complacency, challenging us into perplexity, and demanding that we consider the possibility that everything, everything could be different after all. We give thanks for the pastoral passages, for quiet voices drawing us to reflection beneath the branches of the tree of life, measures calling for peaceful introspection, luring us to the wisdom that dwells in the depths of every soul. We give thanks for the voices of requiem, which bring to our community the true tones of remembrance for what has gone before, voices which come here bearing the pain of loss or of promises that went unfulfilled. We pause to give thanks for the complex gift that is this community. We give thanks too for the voices that weave harmony and those which always and inevitably sing just a bit off-key. We give thanks for the voices restricted by age and the unformed sweetness of the notes of youth. We give thanks for this community and we give thanks for a work of music. We feel uplifted by its particular note, which is your note, perhaps your special gift, a distinct joy which flowers and makes bloom the longest silence in the silent room. We give thanks for this community. We give thanks for the rich blend of voices that is gathered here, the music that would have far less meaning and magic if even one of you were absent. And now, for just a moment more, I would ask you to hold those members and friends in your thoughts, those dwelling either near or far, whose voices cannot join in our choruses and our carols today, those whose ears are deprived of the beautiful music that the rest of us have been privileged to sing and to hear. Blessed be and amen. And it is now the time for the giving and receiving of our offering, and as your program indicates, your offerings, your gifts in their entirety will be dedicated to First Unitarian Society's Outstanding Music Program. Please be generous. In 2016, Wisconsin Poets Calendar, this from Madison native Jody Curley. The fire in the corner stove burns the hours like dry wood. The fading afternoon, late in the year, sizzles and crackles and falls away to ash. Snow sifts past windows and outside, willing evergreens, bear the growing weight of white with grace. And here inside, the coffee smells good. We sip together, you and I, after all the endings of seasons and years and of who we've been before, and we try not to burn our lips. To the fire, the snow, the hot cup we drink and the cold trees that endure, we share a cup of gratitude. Throw another log on the dying fire. Let our cheeks reflect the flame. Let our eyes shine with the light. Let our hands be warm in one another's and let what is to come come. Blessed be and Amen. We invite you now to stand for our closing hymn and then afterwards to be seated again for the postlude.