 Good morning. Welcome to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. We are a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical, and social issues in an accepting and nurturing environment. UU supports the freedom of choice 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 entire congregation, I offer a special welcome to visitors and newcomers among us, as well as all the rest of us. We are a welcoming congregation, and we celebrate the presence of all among us. We sincerely hope our service will spark your mind, touch your heart, and stir and enrich your spirit. This is a great time to silence your cell phones as we take a few moments of quiet together, to become fully present with ourselves and one another during this time together. Good morning. Let's rise and body your spirit and sing hymn number 162, going to lay down my sword and shield. Going to lay down my sword and shield, down by the riverside, down by the riverside, down by the riverside. Going to lay down my sword and shield, down by the riverside, study, going to study more no more. Going to shake hands around the world, going to shake hands around the world, and going to shake hands around the world. Words and our lighting of the chalice, spirit of life, come to us to break down barriers, to widen horizons, to make us less judgmental. Help us see the larger picture and the kinder conclusion. To love and let live, to embrace and forgive, to sustain and care. And as we spark our chalice flame, we join our voices together in the chalice lighting and our order of service as we say. We light our flaming chalice to illuminate the world we seek. In search for truth, may we be just. In search for justice, may we be loving. And in loving, may we find peace. I invite you to turn towards each other and offer a warm greeting. We have a pretty special message for all of you. We have a special box, so you'll want to come up close, a box of goodies. Morning everybody. How's your morning? I'm so glad to see you all. Looks like a special magic wand has arrived. So we are talking about peace today. That's the theme of our month. And so Karin and I were thinking, how could we talk about peace? So we decided that we had some objects in our lives that meant peace for us, and we wanted to share those with you this morning. What is this? Candle. And why might a candle remind us of peace? Because it's bright and peace can be bright. It's peaceful. Because it's nice and quiet. And I think of candles when I think of my unitarian universalist faith. Unless it burns a string, then it might be loud. And so I love candles to remind me of lighting our chalice and lighting a candle. And I brought this. Does anybody know what this is, Minnie? A singing bowl. So let's see. Does she use it in your class? Nice. So let's see if I can get it to sing this morning. Are you ready? Let's see what it can do. Can you hear it? So why? I know, watch. What I'm really having fun with is singing bowl meets microphone. I'm kind of way too amused by that. Why might I have put the singing bowl in here? How is a singing bowl a symbol of peace? Henry, it's smooth, and it can be loud, and it can be quiet. How does that deep sound, that vibrating sound, how does that make you feel inside? It makes you feel peaceful. It often, sometimes I'll do this and it kind of calms me down. Yeah, what did you think? It's calming. The next thing I have are little origami cranes. Origami cranes. Yes, here. Does this one fly? They both fly. Why do you think we have origami cranes in our peace box? Yeah. Because cranes are calm. And there is a tradition in Japan where if you make 1,000 paper cranes, you can make a wish. And a lot of people wish for peace. And this one is made out of an order of service. This one is true. So if anybody, if you need ideas of what to do during service today, here you go. It might keep you peaceful. I have a thank you card. It says thank you very much, that bear on there. And I put a thank you card in here to remind me of gratitude and that there are so many things in our lives that we have to be grateful for. And a grateful heart is oftentimes a peaceful heart. What is this? A pine cone. And what's in here? This jar. And water. This water comes from our water communion where everyone brought their waters from their lives together. And this pine cone reminds me of walking in the woods. And both of those things remind, a nature collection has been mentioned. These remind me of nature. And nature is another way to help us be connected to the peace in ourselves. Karen, did you forget to have breakfast this morning? Never. Because somebody's breakfast is in my basket. Why are these in the basket? Any ideas? Why would we have food in the basket? Henry, maybe there's a country where they eat croissants for peace. I need to move there. You have, we need to find this because those are my people, Henry. So one of, I put these croissants in here because breaking bread together, eating with other people, sharing food is a great way to break down walls that might be between us. So sharing a meal is a good way to get to know one another and to create peace in our relationships. What's this? A scarf, a rainbow scarf. Reminds me of LGBTQI rights. And I have a little button here that says, it has to be red on top. Then this little button says fight racism. So these are my examples of symbols of justice making in our world. And my little button is connected to a piece of. So it reminds me that justice and equity and peace are all related. And the more fairness we have in our world, the more peace we will have. Well, there, oh my, there's one thing left in here. And I guess since it's my turn, I'll have to put it on. Karen, what is this doing in our peace box? I would, we want laughter for peace, huh? Just to be silly. This is just fun to be silly together. And it makes us have fun and makes us connected. And we love humor because that reminds us of the importance of peace. And that actually also reminds me of a joke I have, Kelly. Oh, you want to hear a joke? I do. Okay. Okay. Why are Christmas trees horrible knitters? Oh, I love knitting jokes. You know that. Okay. Why are Christmas trees horrible knitters? Any ideas? Any ideas out there? Too many needles? Oh, that could be it. Karen, why are Christmas trees horrible knitters? Because they keep dropping their needles. We are going to sing you out to your classes with go now in peace. Let's do that one more time. Let's stand. Go now in peace. And let's turn to him number 164, the peace not past our understanding, and song the theme of peace. And today we continue our exploration with readings that speak to each of our worship team members and our own reflections on finding peace in these days. So our first three things from Jan today. The storm outside echoes the storm raging within my soul. So many people in need. So much pain. So much grief. Too many causes and campaigns fill my mailboxes, sap my energy bag for my money. Three things I must do. Only three things you've got to be kidding. Which three do I choose? Books and letters, magnets and movies implore me to dance as if no one is watching. To learn seven habits and make four agreements. To give generously, vote often and express myself. Yet hundreds, thousands, millions live with hunger and thirst. In poverty, enduring violence and disease. Did Mother Teresa, Martin and Gandhi cry out with despair from the darkness of overwhelm? What three things did they choose? Three things. Three things we must do. Is it to act in kindness, serve justice, love God and your neighbor even as you love yourself? But where do I start? So much thoughtlessness, hatred and fear. Too little justice, too much selfishness. Where is God? Who is my neighbor? Three things, seven principles, ten commandments, twelve steps. All number of things speak to us and yet we must choose. We must choose to do something. So three things may be the right number. Not too few, not too many. But which three things shall I do? Will you do? Here's an adage I've always liked, don't just do something, stand there. Stand in the surf or sit on a rock or lay your body across the earthy loam and be quiet. Very quiet. Do you hear it? That still small voice, the echo of your soul reverberating with the call to your own true self to emerge. Then the calm within becomes the calm without. The storm blows over, the sun recovers its position of strength and that glorious symbol of hope and unity emerges across the sky at the end of this rainbow, a treasure. The three things you must do. Go outside yourself and know the needs of the world. Go within and discover your life given gifts. Then arch yourself like a rainbow bridge between the two and create a more beautiful world. These words from Jan deeply resonated with me this week, perhaps because I've been living in the land of overwhelm with no sense of peace in sight. School concerts, Cub Scout caroling, holiday preparations, all living alongside the ongoing concerns of the world outside my four walls, leading me to think peace is for some other person in some other time. That this is the season of peace, of sacred rest in the growing dark, of planting seeds and dreaming new dreams. So what do we do when we know our time is fleeting and precious and that the messiness, the complexities of this world are not going away? What do we do and what do we choose? I often think of the words of the Dalai Lama when he said we often talk of world peace and this is very important. But it needs to begin with mental peace, with genuine tranquility, individual transformation and a good heart is the foundation. I think this is what Jan is trying to tell us as well. In the chaos of the world we need to find the calm within, because the calm within can become the calm without. Peace doesn't need a serene, perfect environment. It can happen anytime, anywhere, even in the chaos and the messiness. It can happen in the heart that truly commits to it. We need to be aware of the pain and the suffering in the world and to be able to take it in. We must first recognize that deep and true well of peace that lives within each of us. So in the days ahead, may you take a moment to connect with that peace living within you, to stand in the surf or sit on a rock or lay your body across the earthy loam and be quiet. And from that place, even in the busiest and messiest of times, may you arch yourself like a rainbow and create a more beautiful world. Peace my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet. Let it not be a death but completeness. Let love melt into memory and pain into songs. Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest. Let the last touch of your hands be gentle, like the flower of the night. Stand still, O beautiful end, for a moment and say your last words in silence. I bow to you and hold up my lamp to light you on your way. In order to move forward, sometimes we must reconcile with others. I think we call that closure. As hard as this is though, it can be easier than reconciling with ourselves. Peace between is the natural result of forgiveness and sometimes selective forgetfulness. But peace between is rarely possible without first making peace within. When we must, we make peace with our past. And when we make peace with our past, we may have peace in our future. Peace my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet. Let it not be a death but completeness. Sometimes making peace with our past means growing beyond it. Robert Frost in his poem, Mending Wall, points out the irony of feeling secure rather than being at peace. He writes, there where it is we do not need the wall. He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, good fences make good neighbors. Mending is the mischief in me and I wonder if I could put a notion in his head, why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Something there is that does not love a wall, that wants it down. I see him there bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top in each hand like an old stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me. He will not go beyond his father's saying and he likes having thought of it so well, he says it again. Good fences make good neighbors. It is good to remember the wisdom of the ages. There's a time for that but when we rely on it blindly, unquestioningly, peace is delayed another generation but some people are more comfortable letting walls create a sensation of security within than they are doing the inner work of peace which begins invariably with the scary process of self-discovery. Socrates says the unexamined life is not worth living. That's a bit of an overstatement which is understandable since he was literally on trial for his life when he said it and probably feeling less peaceful then he might otherwise. But his point is well taken. Looking inward we discover ourselves and in discovering ourselves we consider how we might better enter the world. If we are to have peace we must first make peace but in order to make peace we must be at peace. Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest. We are forever ending one thing and beginning another in its place. May your endings forecast your beginnings. This next reading comes from the Unitarian Universalist Minister of the Reverend Adai Karaba this holiday season. Let this holiday season be a time for engaging heart to heart. For those who like the innkeeper turned us away. For holidays that didn't live up to our expectations. For ghosts of Christmas past that haunt us. For those who gave us gifts but never their presence. For gifts we yearned for but did not receive. For things we received but never wanted. For those who offered us cheer when we needed comfort. For those who offered us love that we could not accept. For those we rejected offering no room in our hearts or homes. For ourselves who could not give through fear. For the times we saw a star in the east but failed to follow it. For the times we followed the star but it did not lead where we hoped. For miracles gone unnoticed. For the men and women whose gifts we rejected. For all these we remember, we forgive, we love. In doing so may we be granted an abiding peace. Oh to be granted an abiding peace. But ghosts of Christmas past do indeed haunt me at times. Do they haunt you? Here's a story of one of my ghosts, a small ghost but I was about eight or nine years old and the holiday did not live up to my expectations. I woke up that Christmas morning realizing I had not yet got a gift for my oldest sister Luana. I went to my mother in tears. Tears of frustration, tears of embarrassment, tears of disappointment. My mother didn't seem at all phased by this situation. Now I calmed down enough to hear her and agree to her solution. But before I tell you how we solved this dilemma, I have to reveal an important cultural fact about my family of origin. We placed a high value on disguising presence. The fun part of gift giving was in stomping the gift receiver so that they couldn't guess what was inside the wrapped present. So in this case creating a handmade gift certificate and putting it in an envelope would not have been a satisfactory solution. But my creatively minded mother had been around the block by then and here's what we did that Christmas morning. We took an empty toilet paper tube, we put the cash right inside and then we wrapped it up. Kind of a simple solution I would say, but when I think about the symbolism of this as I reflect back on this solution I see that these wrapping materials were symbols of the verbs we referenced in the reading I just read to you. We forgive, we love, and in doing so may we be granted an abiding peace. The wrapping paper was the forgiveness. My mom surrounded me with forgiveness for my falling short in the gift giving department. She did not belittle me or my family for messing up on the timing. It was not a blame and shame moment. I was already forgiven even before the gift was offered. The toilet paper tube was love, strong, durable, functional love for each other, giving shape and form to our time together. An infinite circle of love surrounding me and my family. Inside it all was a little bit of peace. Peace to be at ease with the situation. Peace to be okay with the outcome. Peace to just let it be. So more than giving and receiving cash that holiday my sister and I got peace. Through forgiveness and love we experienced peace in a whole new way. So my wish for you this season is that you may have the forgiveness and the love in your lives so that you too may experience peace. For my reading this morning I will enlist your assistance. If you would take the gray hymnal and turn to number 602. 602. I believe that Lao Zhu's words will best serve us if we voice them together. If you would respond in the italicized portion of the text in 602. If there is to be peace in the world, there must be peace in the nations. If there is to be peace in the nations, there must be peace in the cities. If there is to be peace in the cities, there must be peace between neighbors. If there is to be peace between neighbors, there must be peace in the home. If there is to be peace in the home, there must be peace in the heart. One of the most unwinnable and pointless arguments that I have been baited into more often than I would like to admit is the foolish one that pits someone who is a champion for peace in the heart against someone who is a champion for peace in the world. And then asking me to argue which is the morally superior or more important. A foolish waste of time, energy and breath I always think and yet I bite again and again. The thing is if we step back we have plenty of evidence that suggests the following. One, and it is hardly a new idea, Lao Zou lived about the fifth century before the common era and he told us that the absence of violence and the presence of justice and equity and calm and deep powerful resonance with all that is is not a singular relationship but an interdependent relationship with all that is our lives. Everything from the deepest part of who we are to our families to our neighborhoods to our country to the world all of them deeply interrelated and it is the nature of that relationship all of them that makes the difference. Two, that we know that even the most gifted person that has focused on any one of those interdependent layers of peace any one of them spending their entire life doing its work has not solved peace in that realm alone. There is always more work to be done than anyone person can complete. And three, we have learned again and again that human beings come with a strongly situated aptitude a distinctive perspective realms that appeal to them individually life realities that deeply shape what they perceive what they are attracted to what it is that irks them. People will be very different in what they will do and even what sphere of influence they are able to do their work within. So if it is clear and it is at least to me that the task is always larger than any one person can achieve in the first place that we are likely to be working for peace that might be better understood as the full span of all that we are on this planet together and that we each have our own energy and skill and perspective in which we will do our best work then I would conclude that what I would ask you to think about on this day and any day is so similar to what I ask you when we began the month of December and looked at all of the layers that this month can bring into our lives and we into it with it all start where you are start with who you are honestly what else can you do where else is there to begin any important worthwhile work but in that place and from that place to find what we are called to do. It may be in that moment that you are at work and you find yourself in the midst of an argument and you know somewhere inside of you that you have something to say that might bring a little bit of greater peace. It may be beginning with sitting at the breakfast table and realizing that you feel nothing but antipathy for the person that you love most sitting across from you. That may be the place of peacemaking that day. It may be in the way that you engage the largest issues or the smallest. It may be the way you make your way through this month. That is a little less hectic and overwhelmed. Whatever it is in every moment we are offered peacemaking opportunities. In 1513 Fraggi Avani on Christmas Eve a monk wrote these words there is nothing I can give you which you have not but there is much very much while I cannot give it you can take. No heaven can come to you unless our hearts find rest in it today and so take heaven and no peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant and so my dear people take peace and the gloom of the world is but a shadow and behind it yet within our reach is joy and the radiance and glory and darkness could but we see oh to see and take joy I beseech you to look and see what is really within and around you welcome it grasp it know it for the gift that it is so whatever this season brings to you this year whatever your own predilection towards peace only you can choose what to do with this one precious span of days and so I beg of you when you are asked to choose between anger and acceptance err on the side of acceptance when you are asked in some way large or small to choose between retribution and peace why not try choosing peace when you are struggling to the bottom of your soul between despair and hope let go and lean into hope when you feel most alone and worry whether you are loved lean into the love that you are whatever it is that you are experiencing let that be the place of peacemaking let that be the gift of this day this moment this season what is it you will do with this sweet while precious life and when asked to be a blessing to the world and a peacemaker choose it now by being who you are may that be what carries us through this time amen and blessed be over and over again we are offered choices so much of what we do in our worship service gives us a chance to think about practice how those choices are made and what they may do for ourselves in the world the offering is exactly that a chance to think about all of the choices that we're offered the gifts that we have in our lives the resources in what this precious moment this precious time is asking of us and I remind us that on this day we have the opportunity in addition to supporting the work of this congregation to support the work of community support network there is more information in the red floors about their important work in helping adults with developmental disabilities to lead full and empowered lives I hope you'll find out more about that may we find in our own way a connection with our sense of generosity and as our offering is given and received this morning may that generous place lead us to abundance that offering will now be given and received in joy and love we are so grateful for all the ways that you give to this community through the giving of your financial gifts your presence here among us and your talents I want to give a special thanks to those who helped make our collaborative service possible our greeters this morning were Lynn scoby and Corinne Perron our ushers who are still busy at work include Mark Hill Samuel Bates and Elizabeth Barrett our sound operator this morning is Richard scoby hospitality provide is provided today by Richard DeVita and Jeannie Hills Lois even sin as our lay minister and at our welcome and information table you'll get to meet Ann Moser I'm going to point out that in the red red floors insert you too can sign up to be a volunteer particularly we're looking for volunteers for the Christmas Eve services that are happening Monday the 24th and you can fill out that form and put it in the basket in the table in the comments across from where you'll get information about our share the plate recipient we also have a table this morning for the Bayside UU family camp where you can get more information about fun for the summer thank you we join together each week a community who gathers with joys and sorrows written on our hearts in this place we love and are loved we give and we receive in turn we come together to find strength and common purpose turning our minds and hearts toward one another seeking to bring into our circle of concern all who need our love and support and seeking to bring into our circle of joy all who choose to rejoice with us I have two joys Chris playing lute in our service I'm not sure if there's been lute here before but I love the instrument I'm glad to have you here and he will bring his guitar organization to play another concert here as he did last October and he may or may not have realized we have a new piano this piano is a seven-foot Steinway Model B built in 1911 and donated to us by a congregant Bill Wortman who passed away recently it's been completely rebuilt was delivered this week and we're very very happy with it and grateful this week we remember all those homeless know that they are loved and cared about charlotte wolf asks us to share the sorrow and the love she remembers her beloved howl who left us nine years ago on December 15th gaol bliss writes I'm grateful that although my sister's breast cancer is back after 22 years the treatments available have improved dramatically since the 1990s and susie debirers writes my sister-in-law is under treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma in maryland love and support to her and all the joys and sorrows too tender to share that live in the fullness of our hearts may we remember that we are part of a web of life that makes us one with all humanity one with all the universe may we be grateful for the miracle of life that we share and the hope that gives us the power to care to remember and to love would you rise and join me in singing our closing hymn number 388 dona nobis pochum we'll sing it one time through all together and then we'll break into a round if you are in the vicinity of reverend dug you can be a one if you're somewhere in the middle a two with karen and reverend kelly will lead the threes onto victory ones back to the beginning please two's back to the beginning please it would be peace to rest to reflect to make ready for the coming day that the full force of your creativity and love might be released and shared i do wish you peace we extinguish our chalice flame but not the warmth of love the light of compassion or the fire of justice these we hold in our hearts until we gather together again blessed be go in peace and please be seated for the postlude