 I now invite you into a moment of centering silence. A moment to turn our hearts and minds to the people of Paris. A moment to turn our hearts toward love and compassion for all those impacted by hatred and violence toward all those who are grieving this day and toward our dream of becoming a world of justice and peace. And now, if you will remain seated and join in singing our in-gathering hymn, number 1009, that's in the Teal Book, I believe, we will sing it through twice. And it is printed also in your order service. Good morning. Welcome to the first Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore 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 any visitors who are with us this morning. We are welcoming congregations, 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-colored stoneware coffee mugs. These are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community who would love to visit with you. Experienced guides are generally available to give a building tour after each service, so if you would like to learn more about this sustainably designed addition or 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. And I did see John Powell, who will be your tour guide. He'll stand over there after the service. We welcome children to stay for the duration of our 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 along the back of the auditorium are excellent places to retire if a child needs to talk or move around. The service can still be seen and heard from those areas. 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. I'd now like to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly. On sound, we have Pete Daly. As our lay minister, we have Tom Boykoff. Our greeter is Patty Witty. Our ushers are Bob Alt, Paula Alt, and Nancy Daly. And back in the kitchen, being hospitable, making coffee and probably hot chocolate, other things, we have Tim Potter and Chip Cuade. Please note the announcements in the red floors' order, in the red floors brochure which accompanies your order of service this morning. This describes additional events at the society and more information about today. Speaking of which, I want to highlight a couple of things for you. One is that between services today, there will be an event. FUS volunteers of all ages are important to the Road Home, a family shelter program. There will be a Road Home information session today at 10.15 in the Landmark Auditorium for just 45 minutes. If you are curious or if you'd like to have your first training to volunteer, please go over there right after service. Don't even stop for coffee, and this is important because there will be some waiting for you over there. So straight over to the training and the coffee. Also, please join us for the annual Thanksgiving potluck dinner at FUS on Thanksgiving, Thursday, November 26 at 2.30 p.m. Plan to spend the afternoon with FUS members, their families, and friends. We will eat a full Thanksgiving dinner at 2.30. Please contact our organizer for this year's event, Donna Kangliosi, to talk about what you can bring and offer to the service. Her information is also available at the welcome information table in the Commons, which is just to the left of the doors as you exit the auditorium. Speaking of Thanksgiving, next Sunday is our annual Thanksgiving food drive. Sometimes known as the turkey drive, which brings to mind lots of turkeys running by the building. Okay, you can find more about that in the red floors under the big turkey, wherever that is. Oh, how could you miss it? There's a big turkey in here. Okay, one more thing. Attention young adults for relationship and community. The FUS 20s and 30s group is looking to foster new leadership and new forms of connection. As a beginning step on this journey, the 20s and 30s group will be hosting the authenticity games on Thursday, November 19. It will be just like the Hunger Games, except the goal is to get to know one another and have fun. So actually nothing like the Hunger Games. No one will be sacrificed, nothing like that. But arbitrary points will be awarded, silly prizes will be given out, and snacks and drinks will be provided. Hope to see you there in the Gables on November 19 at 7pm. I think that's it for the announcements. So again, welcome. We certainly hope that today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart, and stir your spirit. Welcome to this place of possibility. This is Love's hearth, the home of hope, a shelter for questioning minds and compassionate hearts. When we gather here, we stop. We pause. We center ourselves. We free ourselves from the compulsion of projects to finish, work to be done, things to accomplish. We leave ourselves alone for a time. When we gather here, we journey deep down into that quiet center where no voice is heard. We live for a brief time on an island of peace. We apprehend the world from a quiet center. Here is the center of the world. In this fragile moment is the culmination of all that has been and the promise of all that will be. Here in our grasp in this moment is the center of the world. And if you will rise now in body or spirit to join together in our affirmation which is printed in your order of service. As the kindling of this chalice calls us to community, let there be light. As the flame of this chalice reminds us of our dreams, let there be light. As the glow of this chalice encourages us to hope, let there be light. And before we join together in song, if you'll take a moment to turn and greet your neighbor. And if there's anyone for our story, come on up. Scoot closer. Scoot closer. Look at all the people coming. You have a comfy seat there, don't you? Have you ever been camping? You have. What did you like about it? You like the s'mores? Mm-hmm. You went camping with grandma. Well, our story today is about a guy that I really like. His name's Poppleton. Have any of you ever read the Poppleton books? You know this one? Do you know when Poppleton goes camping? Okay, then you can help me out. Ben, do you know this one? Do you know Poppleton? All right. There's a lot of Poppleton stories out there. Well, it was spring and Poppleton decided that he was going to sleep outside in his yard in a tent. Now, his friends thought that this was quite silly. Poppleton walked by and watched him set up his tent and they would come over and they would say things like, why would you want to sleep outside when you have a house and a bed? Or his neighbor, Cherry Sue, came over and she said, Poppleton, I'm just worried you're going to be chilly. And Gus, the mail carrier, said, you're going to catch pneumonia. That's right. You know what's coming. But Poppleton didn't listen to any of them. He kept putting up his tent even as his friends walked by shaking their heads. Everybody shake your head. Roll your eyes. Yeah, some of you are really good at that. They just couldn't imagine why Poppleton would want to sleep outside when he had a warm cozy bed. Now that night, he brought out all of his quilts and a whole bunch of pillows. He had a flashlight and a journal and a pen and some really good books. And long after everyone else was asleep and the world was dark, Poppleton was still up. That's right. Sometimes he was reading. Sometimes he was thinking. And sometimes he was just paying attention. Poppleton loved the world at night. Now in the morning, he went back into his house. He had a cup of cocoa and buttered toast, Poppleton's favorite breakfast. And then he went to find his next door neighbor, Cherry Sue. Poppleton brought Cherry Sue outside to the tent and he showed her a beautiful yellow flower that had opened up while she was sleeping and while he was paying attention. He sang her the songs of the insects that he heard singing in the night while she was sleeping and he was paying attention. He even made funny faces to show her the faces in the moon that changed as it traveled in the sky. And then he drew her pictures that were made by the shining, sparkling stars. He never quite noticed them so much before and he was excited to share with her everything that he had learned. Then Poppleton went back inside, closed his blinds, pulled his covers up to his chin and he slept in his bed all day. That is silly, Poppleton. That's right. Now that night, everybody was shaking their head as Poppleton went back out to his tent. Everyone except Cherry Sue. That next night, she was in the tent with Poppleton so they could pay attention together. Have you ever paid attention to something so much that you saw it change or when did you really pay attention to something? Yeah, Carolyn. Did you hear that? Carolyn had butterflies, monarch butterflies and she watched them go through metamorphosis. That is really paying attention. Yeah, do you have a time when you paid attention? You watched the bees? Nice. We were remembering last night when we paid attention during the lunar eclipse. Did any of you see the lunar eclipse and it came slowly, slowly and then it turned bright red? You had to really pay attention for that one. The red blood moon? That's right, Finn. That's right. You saw it, Gregory? Awesome. Well, you know what? We're going to pay attention right now because the team choir is going to sing to us. So we're all going to turn and pay attention to them and then we'll go to class. And teachers may leave for classes. It is called a walking meditation in the woods. Kind was too full of worries and plans and things to do. My head ached as did my back to say nothing of my soul. My mouth was closed. I could not hold the abundance of life. My ears could not hear the sounds of spring. My mouth was too full of words to speak. My hands too full of words to do. I took myself away for a walk in the woods which surrounded my cathedral and my shrine. My prison and my workhouse. The air was cool but not cold, rare and refreshing. The birds had found voice and the sky was blue. Interrupted by clouds adding depth to my view. The ground was now firm underfoot. Green was forcing its way everywhere. Colors, gold and blue and rose competed for attention. It was too beautiful to bear. Life was too intense, too good, too beautiful to be believed. Yet there I was on a walking meditation in the woods. And this story from Victoria Safford. One morning on my way to a monthly professional meeting, I was companioned on the southbound highway by a man in a pickup truck who was brushing his teeth as he drove. He was in the fast lane, I was in the other one and we were both traveling at about 65 miles an hour. During sharing time with my colleagues, I confessed that this metaphor is an apt one for me in the fall. Compared with the real or imagined lethargy of summer, September is the fast lane. Suddenly there are deadlines again, lots of them, and appointments and events. School starts, everyone leaves for college and for some reason every major road and artery downtown is being repaved at once. It's a time of year when if you want your teeth brushed at all, you'd better do it while doing something else of equal import. It's a time of year when the sound of typing fills the background of telephone calls because the person on the other end is writing letters or answering email while we talk. I understand the impulse and I deeply sympathize. After all I was finishing a muffin in my lap when my hygienic fellow traveler passed me on the highway. But I know that brushing while you drive is bad religion. Doing almost any two things at once in the same moment is bad religion. Rushing is bad religion. And so as the leaves turn and the apples ripen, I resolve again to notice and I bid you to notice too. I resolve again to go more slowly, to do one thing and then another, to watch the sky and hear the geese and greet them. As I do every one I meet, one by one by one. There are hawks to see now on the southbound side and sumac flaming red. There are skunks, porcupines, the shadows of deer and a tender fog that hugs the mountain. All of this just off the exit heading west. I'll brush my teeth some other time. And if you will rise now to join in our next hymn number 352. It tells the story of two Buddhist monks who were on a journey to a distant monastery when they came across a river. There on the bank sat a young woman. I beg you, she asked. Could you carry me across? The current is strong today and I'm afraid I might be swept away. The first monk remembered his vows never to look at or touch a woman. And so without so much as a nod, he crossed through the heavily flooded currents and he soon reached the other side. The other monk showed compassion and bent down so that the woman could climb upon his back to cross the river. Although she was slight, the current was strong and the rocky bottom made it a difficult crossing. Reaching the other side, he let the woman down and went on his way. After some hours journeying down the dusty road in silence, the first monk could no longer contain his anger. How could you look at that woman? He blurted out. How could you touch her? Let alone carry her across the river. Do you not remember our vows? You have put our reputation at stake. The second monk looked at his companion and smiled. I put that woman down way back there at the riverbank, but I see that you're still carrying her. This tale is ancient and timeless because it points to a very real struggle in our lives. Learning how to live in the here and the now, when most of our time, our minds and our attention are fully rooted in the past. They can also be firmly rooted in the worries of the future. We live in these spaces without the realization of all that we are carrying with us. Like that first monk, there is much that we carry way past the time when we needed to have set it down or let it go. It seems like everywhere you look these days, you are being asked to come into the present to pay attention. Be here now. Be here now. Ram Dass, beloved spiritual teacher, wrote the famous book with that title in 1971. In it, we find the story of his journey of transformation from Dr. Richard Alpert to Ram Dass. And we hear his exhortations to learn how to live in this moment, how to be truly present for our lives. This moment, this precious now, he tells us, isn't something you can put off to some hoped for future. It isn't allowing yourself to get stuck in the past. It's an acknowledgement that you don't want to live your life as a flashback and that you can't fast forward through the difficult or the painful or the boring moments to get to the good parts. It is the realization that this is the only moment we have and the place to be if we are to be fully and authentically human. Now, educator and author Matt Dewar shared in a recent TED Talk the story of a time in his life when he was 17 years old and he was spending time with his grandfather who was in the final days of his life. He recalls watching his grandfather struggle with his mortality and confronting the reality that he had an infinite amount of time left to him. He remembers the day when he walked into his grandfather's room and they found the elderly man sitting in his favorite chair staring out the window weeping. He asked his grandfather if he was okay and when the answer was no, he quickly asked if he needed to call a doctor or someone else for help. No, said his grandfather, I don't need medical help. What I've realized is that I have lived 84 years and I don't know what this life is about and I don't have time enough left to fix it. After his grandfather's death, Matt found this old black and white photograph of his grandfather fishing in Florida when he was probably in his early 20s. In the picture, he stands tall and proud at the end of a pier behind him. The Atlantic Ocean stretches on and on into the horizon. The Florida sun is beating down on him and the look on his face makes it clear that he is right there in that moment, living life nowhere else he would rather be. As Matt stared at the photograph, he became disoriented by the contrast between the youthful man in the picture and the image he held in his mind of the weeping elderly grandfather. The more he looked at that photo, the more he couldn't reconcile how one reality became the other. What happened in between? Where was the disconnect? Now any of us could have one of those moments with a child photograph. I have one of my own, this image of me when I was about five. My dad was taking a photography course for fun and he needed to do a portrait. So what he did was he had me lie down on this bright red and pink zigzagged afghan that screams, It's the 70s. And he told me funny jokes and funny stories. In the image, I have the biggest smile on my face. All is right in my world. And that moment is the only one that matters. This is a gift of childhood. I noticed the disconnect with my own kids. They're in the present, fully aware, fully alive with their attention on one thing. I'm a million miles away remembering something that I believe went wrong, trying to figure out how to fix it or planning for the week or the month ahead. They notice this disconnect. When Sam was really small and he was trying to tell me something, he would often say, Mom, you need to listen. And I would throw out a, I am honey, I'm listening. And he would come over to me and put his little chubby kid hands on either side of my face and look right into my eyes and he would say, No, no, me. You need to listen to me. My small child could easily tell that my body was present, but my mind was somewhere else. And this happens to us all the time. Right now, you might be thinking about an interaction you had with another driver on your way here. You might be thinking about a child or a friend in crisis. You might be very anxious what will happen in the unknown future. You might be thinking about how much you have to get accomplished today after the service is over and you're hoping it's not going to be a long one. You're wondering if anyone notices this about us and we are judging this or that about someone else. Gloria Steinem once said, I've always had two or more tracks running in my head. The pleasurable one was thinking forward to some future scene, imagining what should be planning on the edge of fantasy. The other played underneath with all two realistic fragments of what I should have done. There it was in perfect microcosm. The past and the future coming together to squeeze out the present, which is the only time in which we fully are alive. These past and future tracks are gradually dimmed until they are rarely heard. More and more and more, there is only the full, glorious, alive in the moment, caring for everything sense of right now. I wish that I could stand here and tell you that I have found the secret of mastering this skill of staying in the present, yet most of the time I live in the land of debating the past and attempting to predict the future. This means, as Mark Twain said so well, I have lived through many terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened. So we live in the past, we live in the future, and we wish time away. We say things like, I can't wait until this week is over. I'll be so much happier next month, next year, when school is done, when this project is complete, when the house is clean, when the kids are grown on and on, until the day comes when all we wish is to have those hours, days, years that we wished away back and available to us. We are distinguished from other living beings by our ability to remember the past and our ability to project into the future. Over millennia we have developed this incredible thinking brain, but this way of thinking can be a double-edged sword. Consider, for example, that a zebra runs for its life when it is chased by a lion, but once the chase is over, it shivers and it quickly returns to grazing on the savanna. But this is seldom the case for humans because we constantly think, analyze, fantasize, predict, anticipate. These new brain capacities cause us to spend half of our day dwelling on how terrible it would have been if the lion had caught us. We might run all kinds of images and fantasies through our minds which are terrifying. And then we worry about whether something similar might happen tomorrow. What if we don't spot the danger next time? What if our loved ones are out there? What if this is the downside of this thinking brain? Indeed, we might be so caught up in these terrifying stories we tell ourselves be so distracted that the lion might return and find an easy dinner. So here's what we need to remember. We are more than that which has happened in our past and our interpretations of it. We are so much more than our anxieties and plans about the future. Learning just how much more requires that we experience ourselves in the present. Now one of the reasons we distract ourselves from this moment is that life is at times painful. Suffering exists and some days we just can't face it. It's easier to distract ourselves with screens or long to-do lists or retail therapy, anything that will keep ourselves from feeling the pain, the discomfort, the negative feelings. But as the psychologist Carl Rogers wisely said, the curious paradox is that when I accept myself and my life exactly as it is, then I and it can change. When we resist or push away or try to ignore this moment, whether full of joy or full of pain, it will only return time and again and movement or growth isn't possible. The key is to learn how to hold ourselves and our very experience, all that we are, all that we have done, all the choices we have made, everything that has brought us to who and what we are in this moment. Hold all of this in a cradle of compassion and kindness. The call to presence is a call to recognize that the only moment we have is now and that we must make the most of whatever it is. Matt Dewar tells us that we need to learn how to harness the passing of time instead of hiding from it. This is the lesson he says he learned from his grandfather. We need to learn how to use the passing of time as an opening into ourselves as a means of finding well-being and depth. We do this by becoming aware of the moments when we are truly here, those moments when we are paying attention. He calls them focal moments. These are the moments that bring in to focus the meaning of our lives, moments in which the distance between who we are and who we want to become shrinks. Notice these focal moments and create the openness, the space, create empty time in your days to give more room to these moments to happen. What is worth your precious time? What is central and what is peripheral? What is your life about? And how can you spend more of your time truly being in it? When we open ourselves to this moment, we open our ability to be responsive, to be creative, to live with less grasping, less judgment, and less fear. We learn how to look at our own lives and the lives of others through the lens of kindness. And we recognize that change really is the only constant. And we can become at peace with growth and with change. Then we can tap into the well that is inside each of us. Then our ability to enjoy and appreciate this exceptional life that we have been given can truly happen. So I'll leave you today with this poem from Roger Keys. It was a poem he wrote when he was inspired by paintings of an 18th century Japanese artist whose name was Hokusai. Hokusai says, look carefully. He says, pay attention. Notice. He says, keep looking. Stay curious. He says, there is no end to seeing. He says, look forward to getting old. He says, keep changing. You just get more who you really are. He says, get stuck. Accept it. Repeat yourself as long as it's interesting. He says, keep doing what you love. He says, every one of us is a child. Every one of us is ancient. Every one of us has a body. Every one of us is frightened. Every one of us has to find a way to live with fear. He says, everything is alive. Shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees. Everything has its own life and everything lives inside you. He says, live with the world inside you. It doesn't matter if you draw or write books. It doesn't matter if you saw wood or sit at home and stare at the shadows of the trees in your garden. It matters that you care. It matters that you feel. It matters that you notice. It matters that life lives through you. Contentment is life living through you. Joy is life living through you. Peace is life living through you. He says, don't be afraid. Turn and face the life before you. Look, feel, let life take you by the hand. Let life live through you. And I now invite you into the giving and receiving of the morning's offering, which you will see as an outreach offering shared with Dry Hooch Madison. You can find out more about them in your order of service. And we thank you for your generosity. From our separate joys and struggles we gather here to find the peace and the strength and the hope that comes with sharing our celebrations and our sorrows with other. This week we hold in our hearts our bruised and hurting world and our hearts, which have been broken again by senseless violence. Today we send our prayers to Baghdad, Beirut, Lebanon, Paris, every nation in which terror threatens and hearts grow numb. May we choose to see the goodness in a world fraught also by evil. May we refuse to allow anger and fear to barricade themselves within us. May we make time and space in our lives and in our hearts to count our blessings and give thanks. May we each be led into lives of deeper gratitude, deeper compassion, deeper mercy and deeper peace. May we be together for a moment now in silence and acknowledge and lift up all that lives in the sacred quiet of our hearts. And if you will rise now and body your spirit to join in our closing hymn, number 350. Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Look for the answers which could not be given to you now because you would not be able to live them and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then someday in the future you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Blessed be, go in peace and please be seated for the postlude.