 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 Karen Rose Gretler, and on behalf of the entire congregation, I'd like to extend a special welcome to any visitors who are with us today. Both here in the room and those joining us on radio or live stream, welcome all. We're a welcoming congregation, so whoever you are and wherever you are on your life's journey, we celebrate your presence among us. I have one little announcement here, and that is that Dorot was the only person who signed up to be an usher today. So if there are other experienced ushers who would be able to help her, please see Dorot, who just entered the back door there, please see Dorot and volunteer to help her so she doesn't have to run back and forth and back and forth. Okay, now this would be a great time to silence cell phones and to join together in a few moments of centering silence for contemplation, meditation, prayer, as we become fully present with ourselves and with one another. As we breathe together into the silence, may our hearts fill with gratitude for this time, this time together, and for the deep gifts of community. Our opening words from Kimberly Tomcek Carlson. It is not by chance that you arrived here today. You have been looking for something larger than yourself. Inside of you, there is a yearning, a calling, a hope for more, a desire for a place of belonging and caring. Through your struggle, someone nurtured you into being, instilling a belief in a shared purpose, a common yet precious resource. And so you began seeking a beloved community, a people that do not put fences around love, a community that holds its arms open to possibilities of love, a heart home to nourish your soul and share your gifts. Welcome home, welcome to worship. And if you will rise now in all the ways we do, as we join together in the words printed in your order of service, as we light our chalice, may the flame we now kindle, light the path back to our center, back to that place of belonging again to our deepest self. And may our chalice remind us that we are held and welcomed whole, without the need to hide a single piece or part of who we are. Let us remain standing for our opening hymn, number 188, come come whoever you are in the gray hymnal, 188, come come whoever you are, we'll sing it once through all together as a group in unison and then we'll break into a canon with those on my left being group one and those on my right being group two. If you don't like the group to which you've been assigned, you may switch groups. We invite you now to take a moment to turn and greet those around you. And now we invite the young and young at heart up for a message for all ages. If you'd like to find your way to the front of the sanctuary. Come on forward. We've got a good story to read together over this way. Yeah, yeah. Welcome. My name is Claire. Nice to see you all here this morning. So the story we're going to read this morning is called the memory balloons. The memory balloons. We got one more person coming up. Look at all those balloons. Look at all those balloons. I have lots and lots of balloons. Way more balloons than my little brother. Way more balloons than my little brother. This one's my favorite. I tell him pointing to the birthday filled with my last birthday party. When I look at it, I can still see the pony again and I can still taste the chocolate frosting. Can you taste chocolate frosting? Whoa, a lucky kid. He had a pony in chocolate frosting and mom and dad have a lot more balloons than I do because they've been around a lot longer. They're older. Grandpa has lived so long that he has more balloons than all of us together and the stories of those balloons. They're better even than ponies and chocolate frosting. What's in that yellow balloon? What's in that yellow balloon? Grandpa's eyes light up in these smiles. Well, your grandma and I had just come back from picking blackberries along the muddy banks of the creek. Well, they just didn't pick blackberries. They ate them too when the juice ran down their face and when they got back to the farm, our berry-splattered faces gave Aunt Nellie's cow such a fright she didn't make milk for days. What about the blue balloon? Grandpa, what about the blue balloon? Well, that's the time I lost my favorite dog, Jack. Grandpa chuckles. I found him chasing butterflies next to the schoolhouse. Only Jack, my favorite dog, could get me to go to school on a Saturday. And that one, I point to a balloon above his head. Grandpa smiles, a big smile, his face just alive with remembering. That's the day I married your grandma in the little church on Cedar Lane. We danced and danced and danced under the night stars and oh, how I loved your grandma. How I loved your grandma. I don't have to ask him about the silver balloon because I have one too. So Grandpa and I both have a memory balloon that's silver. That was the day we stood on the dock till the sun went down, feeling tug after tug on our lines. Grandpa and I must have caught a thousand fish in one day. Wow, that's a lot of fish. Yeah. So Grandpa ruffles my hair like he always does and says, that's one of my favorite balloons too. And his grandson says, yeah, me too. I remember that day. But Grandpa's been having problems with his balloons lately. Sometimes one of his balloons will get caught in a tree and he'll tell me the same story over and over again. So one story that he tells me about over and over is let me tell you about the Christmas. I went to Aunt Nelly's farm, Grandpa said, even though he just finished telling me that story, he's telling it to me again. Other times a balloon will just float out of his hand. A memory balloon floats up into the sky and he won't even know that it's gone. He's lost a memory balloon. It's okay, Grandpa. I'll run after it and I'll catch it. Every time I just about reach it, but it always slips away. That memory balloon floats up into the sky. Something's wrong with Grandpa. I tell my parents, he can't hold on to all his balloons anymore. And mom looks at me with sad eyes. That happens sometimes. When people get older, they start to lose some of their memory balloons. Grandpa's balloons start floating away faster and faster. Running down streets and up hills, I watch the balloons get smaller and smaller as they disappear into the sky. Grandpa's memory balloons are floating away. He finally loses our favorite one, the silver one. I watch it float away until I can't see it. Do you remember the silver one was about catching all the fish? A thousand fish in one day. Why did you let it go? I yelled. That was our balloon. And then I sit down in the sidewalk and I cry. I feel Grandpa pat my back, but he doesn't ruffle my hair like he used to. Why are you crying, child? There's nothing to cry about. One day, I go to see him and all his balloons are gone. Grandpa, I say, but he doesn't look at me. I don't know what to do. It'll be okay, Dad says. Look up. So he looks up. I have now a lot of memory balloons, a yellow one filled with blackberries and a cow, a blue one filled with Grandpa and his favorite dog, a purple one filled with their wedding day. I have Grandpa's memory balloons. See, Mom says, now Grandpa's memory balloons. Now they're yours to share. So I climb into Grandpa's lap, give him a big kiss and a hug, and begin telling him about my memory balloons. So thank you for listening. So he was able to tell his grandpa who couldn't remember things, but he remembered them. So now he could tell his grandpa the stories, just like his grandpa used to tell him the stories. Thank you for listening. Now it's time to go to class. As the children go to their religious education classes, let us rise in all the ways that we do and sing them on their way with him too. Excuse me, him 10, 53 in the teal hymnal. We'll sing this twice through. You were anything less than beautiful? How could anyone ever tell you? You were less than what anyone failed? That your loving is a miracle? How deeply you're connected to mine? You were anything less than beautiful? How could anyone ever tell you? That your loving is a miracle? How deeply you're... Please be seated. In a poem titled Red Brocade, Naomi Shihab Nye writes, the Arabs used to say, when a stranger appears at your door, feed him for three days before asking who he is, where he's come from, where he's headed. That way he'll have strength enough to answer, or by then you'll be such good friends you don't care. Let's go back to that. Rice, pine nuts, here take the red brocade pillow. My child will serve water to your horse. No, I was not busy when you came. I was not preparing to be busy. That's the armor everyone puts on to pretend they have a purpose in the world. I refuse to be claimed. Your plate is waiting. We will snip fresh mint into your tea. This poem has always spoken to me of radical hospitality. Usually we think of radical as extreme. It also means returning to one's foundation. Radical hospitality is about returning to this ancient practice of welcoming strangers into your home with no questions asked, and taking extreme care of them. Rather than asking why are you here, radical hospitality asks, how can I serve you? Religious communities often speak of themselves as being places of radical hospitality where all are truly welcomed in, where space is made for anyone who wishes to enter, where whoever you are, and wherever you are on your life's journey, we will make a place for you here among us. Yet studies show that congregations trying to be open in this way, to find ways to bridge social divisions have a very tough job. Paul Lichterman in his book Elusive Togetherness says that congregations attempting to bridge strong social differences mean well, but are most often not successful. He says when those in his study tried to do outreach work with marginalized communities, the differences in social customs and in styles of relating made it nearly impossible for faith-based efforts to close the gaps. He said that the single group in his study that did succeed constantly evaluated and reevaluated what they were doing and why they were doing it in order to understand their own cultural underpinnings and those of others. In other words, he said they played close attention to how they were talking, interacting and engaging on a daily level. They learned to approach others as partners rather than as people they were helping. Success, he said, depended not on ideology, even less on organizational structure, but depended upon the content of their conversations. And so today we're inviting you into a conversation in which we hear from two others how we can increase our awareness, our openness in the hopes of moving closer to that welcome of which we speak. This is indeed difficult work. It is spiritual work. Radical hospitality means seeing through the eyes of the guest, to become aware of when we talk in code, when we mention people's names as if everyone knows who they are, or when we form up in clicks at our fellowship hour like middle schoolers at uncomfortable after-school dances, or when we enforce our unspoken rules. Guests are keen observers of these things. This is spiritual work because as we become more welcoming and open to others, it will most definitely cause a wholly disruption in who we think we are, who we believe this community to be, how willing we are to grow and be changed in the process. Remember we all arrive here with a desire for a place of belonging and caring. We arrive seeking a beloved community, a radically welcoming place that does not put fences around love, a community holding its arms and its hearts open to possibility. May we be about making that community here, now, together. I'm very happy to be here with you this morning. A lot of people I love and know and some of you new faces. I love this community, whether I'm greeting and listening to the choir, sitting in the audience, or up here speaking. Some of you may know that I have a diagnosis of dementia and right now my diagnosis is Lewy body dementia. However, my journey reflects that of many. The process of getting a diagnosis can take a long time and change and can be stressful. This is certainly a time to reach out to loved ones and the person and their family that are facing this process. Sadly, we're often on the outside. We don't even know what's going on. We're not aware. So why is it that we don't know what's going on? With dementia, I think there are feelings like shame and fear that cause people not to be able to talk about it with us so that we can reach out a loving hand. One heartfelt belief I have about a community of caring and belonging is that we can both accept the vulnerabilities in ourselves and be safe enough to share them with others. Sometimes this sharing is in our small gathering like journey circles, chalice groups, classes, or perhaps here in services during joys and concerns. When we do this sharing, we open our tender hearts, our very tender hearts, so that we can feel compassion not just for ourselves, but for others and for the universal suffering in this very troubled world. If we close down, turn away, we can become numb with a frozen heart and we may just isolate physically and or emotionally. Both those of us with dementia and those loved ones and families with dementia. Sharing our vulnerabilities is a sacred giving and receiving. If we open our hearts and listen, it is an act of generosity. We can become sacred witnesses for each other. Now sometimes there's some confusion especially with those of us that are older between what's dementia and what's typical age-related changes. So this is just a short list and there are copies in the back that you can pick up on the way out. So typical things that happen to us when we age. We make a bad decision once in a while or we may get caught in some kind of scam from a phone call or on our computer. We may miss a monthly payment. Sometimes we forget what day it is and remember later. Sometimes we forget words and what word to use. It just slips out of our mind and we lose things from time to time. And I leave things behind from time to time. I am frequently going back to where I come from because my keys and stuff are not with me. But the signs of something more serious, the signs of when somebody should go in for an evaluation are really poor judgment and decision making. The inability to make a budget, pay bills, write a check, losing track of the date, or even more important, the season, having difficulty carrying on a conversation, misplacing things, and being unable to retrace to figure out where they were. So there are really many, many kinds of dementia. Dementia can come from other than primary dementia, so illnesses can often cause dementia, which is kind of a different whole set of causes. The actual illness can cause the dementia, as in, well, skip that. So let's talk about what the primary diagnoses are. Alzheimer's dementia accounts for 60% of the dementia cases. Vascular dementia, 25%. And dementia with Lewy bodies, 15%. Dementia with Lewy bodies is also associated with Parkinson's disease. But you know, all of these illnesses are on a spectrum, and everybody's journey on the spectrum is different. So often when we think about dementia, we think about somebody that can't talk or maybe sitting in a chair like this, but that's not true. That's just not true. So we may realize that some of us are able to live productive lives for some years before the illness and confusion makes life more limited and challenging. And certainly in my own life, I live alone, so that will be one of my issues that I need to face pretty soon. At each stage in the inevitable progress of dementia, there are different needs, concerns, ways of coping. But one thing remains constant. And that is that the person and the family is treated with dignity, dignity, compassion, and love. And that is what I believe we all want in our lives and with others. And there are kind of well known stages that this spectrum of dementia goes through. And as I said, it's totally unpredictable what the journey is going to be, which also makes it a little bit more scary. So we have early dementia. And I think some of the emotional issues associated with that are fear and the fear of loss of control. And model, excuse me, middle or moderate dementia, there's still fear because a person knows they are losing their memory. And it becomes a time of the fear of loss of independence. Because this is often a time when a change of where somebody lives or needing full time help in the home continues. And in the late stages, often unless you have a very close family that can take care of somebody with dementia, people end up in nursing homes or on dementia units. And even at that point in time, one can still communicate with people. It may be by a look in the eyes. I remember being at a memorial service for a woman who died, and her husband had been in the dementia unit at Oakwood. And I went over to him after the service. He was pretty much nonverbal. And I said to him, your wife was so very helpful to me and my mother. And he looked up at me and clearly said, she was the love of my life. One of my favorite and heartfelt books about dementia among dozens and dozens of online resources is this book, My Two Elanes. It's by Martin Schreiber. For those of us over a certain age, we might remember that he was Lieutenant Governor here in Wisconsin. He speaks all over the country. He's on the road a lot. He donates all of his profits from anything that he gets from the communities he's speaking to and his book to research on dementia. A story that I heard last year when he was in a Madison was very powerful. His wife is now in memory care and with advanced Alzheimer's. And it has been a very long journey for himself. In fact, he almost, which often happens, had so many health problems that he might die before his wife went to memory care. But anyway, at this point, she was there and they were having lunch. And she said to him, I love you as much as I love my husband. His response, I love you too. So simple, so true. And she kept a journal in the early parts of her dementia. One memory from her, one from her journal, I'm so lucky he is a good cook and seems to enjoy making healthy and delicious meals. It's a good thing as my Alzheimer's isn't getting any better. So cooking and baking with steps that need to work are no longer easy for me. I hate to think I'm getting worse, but I must be. And later on in her journey, Marty is still a very good husband. And I can't blame him for being a little short sometimes. It has to be a huge problem for him. It puts more responsibility than he can handle sometimes. But he knows I'm trying my best and tries to help me. And I know it is no easier for him than for me. But you know what? One thing that we can think about is this is all doom and gloom. But there is a lot of joy and humor. I find that when I make a mistake, instead of saying I'm losing it, I can kind of just laugh and say, oh well, I'm going to walk back up to my apartment 46 steps to get my purse because I don't have it with me. And there's joy. The joy of holding a baby. I'm a volunteer at the healing house. And there was a mother who had had a C-section and just a two week old baby. And one day I was volunteering there and she came over and she said, do you want to hold your baby? So she handed me this beautiful child. The joy of being with people you love. The joy of a sunrise. The joy of a favorite meal. Especially for people that are in places that don't have good food. The laughter of an old joke or a funny memory. So bringing joy as well as compassion, love and dignity for all involved. I'll end with a poem by Sarah Merriman, a dementia friend. Who do you see when you look at me? I'm not the person I used to be. At times I will not know your name, but really I'm not to blame. Dementia has changed a part of me. A part that you can't even see. It has an effect upon my brain, but deep, deep down I'm still the same. I can still feel and laugh and cry. So when you see me, don't pass by. Without a word or a wave or even a smile, please just stop and chat a while. You'll cheer me up and make my day. Maybe we'll laugh at things I say, for there's still humor to be found. It's not all doom and gloom all around. So please, please, please treat me just the same. The word dementia is only a name for a condition that I've got, but I can still do such a lot. I may just need a little bit more time. So please be patient when in line. I'm struggling at the shopping till. I'll get there in the end, I will. So take a moment, pause a while and then give me a nod, a smile, and maybe then your hand you'll lend. For now, you're my dementia friend. Good morning. It is my delight to be here with you this morning. I'm Denise Jess. I'm the CEO and executive director of the Wisconsin Council of the Blind and Visually Impaired. The Wisconsin Council of the Blind and Visually Impaired is a private nonprofit organization that serves a statewide mission to promote the dignity and the empowerment of people who are blind and visually impaired. And we do that through primary goals. One is advocacy. We do that at the state level with legislation and policy work. We also empower folks to do it at the municipal or lower or local level. We do education work to open hearts and minds and to support those who are on the vision loss journey to find their way through their journey with that dignity and that sense of empowerment. And we also do vision services in partnership with organizations like the Office for the Blind, which is a state agency, and the Department of Workforce Development DVR Division of Voc Rehab to support folks staying in employment as they're losing vision loss and to allow folks to be able to continue the activities of daily living that open the heart and the soul and allow people to age safely in place. So it keeps us plenty busy. Some of you may recognize me as your child's teacher if you had kids at Wingra School in the mid-80s and early 1990s. I don't know what happened. Those kids became 30-something-year-old adults and that's awesome to reconnect with them via social media. That's one of the gifts I think of social media. Some of you may also recognize me as the consultant who spent a couple of years working with FUS leadership and lay leadership to shape the Quest program through one of its many iterations. And for others of you, I'm new. I happen to be white and short. It's very exciting not to have a step stool. Last night's service, I had to stand on a step stool. I am also an avid knitter and dabble in lots of fiber arts. Some successfully, some were a great experimentation. I have been blessed to be in a nearly 30-year loving relationship with my now wife. Kelly was our officiat once we could legally marry in the state of Wisconsin. And I'm the proud mother of two young adult daughters. One a senior at Northland College, one a freshman at Ripon College, and those two young women are doing their part to change the world. I'm also a long believer in sustainable living, having canned most in frozen and dried and all of that and much of my family's food while my daughters were growing up. So why in the dickens on a morning when we're talking about radical hospitality and the focus is on disability, would I take the time to share all of that with you? I could have simply said, I'm the director of the Wisconsin Council of the Blind and Visually Impaired. By the way, I'm legally blind. By the way, I'm one of a few elite folks, I guess you would call it elite who is a woman in leadership with a disability in this country. That's a pretty unusual thing. Why didn't I just stop there? So frequently people with disabilities, whether our disabilities are visible like mine or they're known or they begin to reveal themselves, are seen by others only through the filter of our disability. It's so easy to forget the complexity, the multiplicity of our identities and so as we're talking this morning and as you go out into your work and your life this week and the weeks to follow, my invitation is to remember the complexity and the multiple dimensions that people with disabilities bring and the multiple talents that we bring as well. So who are people in Wisconsin who are living with vision loss? There are approximately 100,000 of us. We would guess that there are more, the 100,000 is about what we can safely estimate. In the past, I would tell you that many people living with vision loss were folks like me who had been born with a congenital birth defect. I've been legally blind since I was born and that used to be the majority population and then we would grow into working-age adults and into elders. However, we're seeing that population shift somewhat as genetic disorders become more well known and understood. We see young adults, adolescents, young adults, middle-aged adults who are experiencing diseases like star guards and retinitis pigmentosa which have life-changing visual impact. However, the highest growing population of people with vision impairment are our elders and so here's the connection to Claire's words around dementia and memory loss. As the silver tsunami continues to spread and reach its way across our beautiful state and our country, vision loss often goes hand-in-hand for many of our aging elders. Macular degeneration, retinopathy from diabetes, glaucoma are the most common forms of vision impairment. Many of these folks did not live with vision impairment until somewhere in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. So they too, just like the rest of us, have been impacted by the beliefs, the societal beliefs around vision impairment. Somehow that people with vision impairment have less to contribute to society than do our sighted peers and so that often keeps people with vision impairment especially our aging adults silent and trying to kind of cover up or closet their vision impairment as long as possible. You'll hear code like, I don't see as well as I used to and certainly as we age, vision changes, we need more light, you know, we need bigger print, all of those things are the normal spectrum of aging but for many adults with hearing that phrase is a message to you that maybe their vision is more impacted than just normal aging. You might hear other things like, why don't we put the lights on in here, it's so dark and the lights are on, you know, because as we age our eyes need more light, someone experiencing significant vision loss is highly dependent on more light in order to be safe or things like, I would like to take, you know, my husband's arm, I met a man recently who calls his wife his seeing eye wife and as we talked and he went to the bathroom, she said to me, would you talk with him about getting a cane? He's scared. I'm like, yes, I would absolutely talk with him about getting a cane because it's easier and there's perceived less shame to grab someone's arm than there is to use a cane because the cane is still a stigma symbol in our culture even though it's absolutely a tool of mobility, orientation and independence. So when we're thinking about creating radical hospitality for people with disabilities of any sort and today, you know, my expertise is in vision impairment, there are two areas that I think we have the ability as individuals and as organizations to really powerfully impact. One is physical welcome and the other is emotional or spiritual welcome. The physical welcome includes things like, you know, painting the edge of the steps white so we can see where the step begins and ends. Falls among our population are very high. Wisconsin in general has some of the highest fall risk of any state in the country and we know that when people fall, there's a whole cascade of other issues that come with that. So reducing fall risk by some of that painting or marking of step edges or putting rails in or having really good lighting. So my invitation as you go about your business and spend time in this beautiful, beautiful place is to look at it through the eyes of the guest. I love that phrase. And imagine that you don't see as well as you do now. Where might be the things that we could give tender care to so that folks who visit, folks who are members here already can find their way through with ease. I will share with you as someone who experiences mobility hurdles on a daily basis that it's exhausting work to navigate a world which has lots of tripping hazards in it. And I'm pretty skilled at navigating. So when we as collectively can look at ways to remove or reduce some of those barriers, we allow folks to just go and breathe a little bit of a sigh of relief that they could get to where they need to go with just a little bit more ease. And that allows us to be much more fully present. I think one of the things that's probably the bigger lift actually than that physical welcome is emotional and spiritual welcome. There's I think still a lot of fear of am I going to say the right thing? What happens if I say something and I hurt their feelings? Believe me I'm pretty good and I think a lot of other people with disabilities are as well as discerning the mistake that comes from a compassionate heart which we're like oh yeah we all make those. You're just doing your best to the being ignored. Even if it's polite ignoring it's still ignoring. So I'd much rather you make a mistake from that place of compassion and trying to do your best and then together we can work on how to do it differently. That to me is what opens my heart. As I do my work both here in Madison around the state there are so many ways that people's discomfort with disability show themselves. Often if I'm going somewhere and I'm with a sighted companion other my wife or a member of my staff and we're meeting people and the person that we're meeting might direct all of their conversation to the sighted person. They turn their body so that they're facing the sighted person. They maintain facial connection with the sighted person and I'm like hey over here I'm right here. I don't think I put my invisibility cloak on but check me if I'm wrong and I think it's like if I don't I don't quite know how to interact with you I don't know quite where to look and so I won't interact with you but I'll interact through you with to you through this other person. My heart sings when someone turns to me and they give me facial contact and they engage with me as in an equal amount to what they're engaging with my sighted companion. It's a simple thing to do. Handing me things is a simple thing to do there's been many many times it happens on a regular basis where someone has something to give to me but they'll hand it to someone else could you give this to her even if I'm standing right there and I'm like well I just you know let me know that you want to hand me this thing you know hey Denise I'm reaching out with the order of service okay great and then I can take it from you. So that that pass off directly to the person with the disability. The other thing is to really modulate and pay attention to how you're talking. Even in this day and age I notice that that kind of the type of conversation that's often directed to me is at a more superficial level than it is with my sighted companions. So they might start a conversation with a sighted companion what do you do for work you know what things are of interest to you and then that conversation bounces to something more simplistic to me and I cannot tell you how many times people don't ask me what I do for work because I think the assumption is I don't work. Tone also matters so that just keeping that tone consistent you know as we're talking because I notice when your pitch goes up just a tiny bit you know talking to me as if I were a small child and please let's not talk to small children that way either but it's very it's very fascinating to just notice the very subtle ways that say I'm uncomfortable I don't quite know what to do here and so I'm trying to manage it the best I can and really the managing it the best you can is to greet and welcome and then to ask the beautiful question of how might I help you feel comfortable here or some version of that when I walk in someplace and people say welcome I'm so glad you're here what do you need so that you can be comfortable here I'm like yeah that's awesome and then I get to be empowered to tell you what I need you don't have to guess which I think is a huge burden and I can let you know hey I would love a large print order of service ah fantastic here you go and that can be handed off to me I'd love to know are there stairs getting to the sanctuary so that I can proceed safely no you can go in at this level and sit up above or you can take the stairs down and there are railings on both sides you don't have to guess what I need I can tell you what I need simple simple things so my invitation as you go forward is to to listen to yourself through the filter of the guest how do you sound how's that sense of creating space spaciousness having everybody own it together how is that the last thing I want to say this morning is I want to invite you to come visit us at the Wisconsin council of the blind and visually impaired sometimes coming through those doors is another form of liberation and um we live right at the corner of willy and um Livingston and have a parking lot which is a benefit on willey street and we have a small retail store which has lots and lots of adaptive devices in it and sometimes sighted folks find those devices as useful as folks who are losing sight or have lost sight so you might have noticed I have a magnifier in front of me it has a light in it and I can look down and easily track where I am on my remember notes and not have to worry about trying to keep track of that we have things like check guides that you can place on the checkbook and they give spaces for you to write and help guide that writing because that's one of the things that folks often say is my writing looks terrible and I'm embarrassed I'm ashamed of it and so those those guides can be really helpful signature guides so lots of everyday tools to help people continue to live with dignity and have control of the things on their lives that they want to have control we one day had a gal come in and she sat down at our sewing center and she said I am not leaving here until I have things that I can use so I can continue sewing for my church and I'm like alright sister let's figure this out and brought one of my store staff over and got her the things that she needed so she can continue sewing so come visit us and check that out we also have an art installation currently from artists around Wisconsin who are blind and visually impaired and that will be set up through the end of November the week before Thanksgiving to be more precise every year we partner with Madison Museum of Contemporary Art on Gallery Night to offer our exhibit this year Isthmus chose us as the number one gallery in the city to visit which was awesome and we had a lovely Capitol Times article that morning so come see the beautiful art that is created by people living with significant visual impairment some of it is 3D tactile masks others is ink on dye bond photography and oil and acrylic painting and if you happen to stop in let's staff know that you're you're there and ask if I'm available if I'm available I would love to come down and personally tour you through the art exhibit help lessen the time between when someone gets that diagnosis and when they reach out for vision support vision rehab support often folks will wait up to five years between the diagnosis of mac macular degeneration or glaucoma or retinopathy before they reach out they think that their vision isn't bad enough yet to get help when it becomes bad enough at that point to get help we're still there but there's so much we can do to support that transition because we know that people living with disabilities in general and vision impairment in particular run a fantastically high risk of being isolated depressed and anxious and our goal is to create the best quality of life for people living with vision impairment so thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you this afternoon I will make myself available after service as well if you have any questions that you would like to ask thank you a few quick words about today's offer tori next tins by Johannes Brahms we will be singing in German so I wanted to tell you what we're going to be singing about and I also wanted to point out that this does not have anything to do with our ministry theme today this is just a little preview of Halloween this is a been described by scholars as a nightmare set to music so it's short but like a fleeting vision at night but here are the words that we'll sing the english translation at night the deranged deceitful specters awake and perplex your mind and then the second verse it has to do with frost killing the flowers and just as night kills happiness and then the third verse at night grief and sorrow entrenched themselves in your heart and the morning looks upon tears so with that intensity I will just say that my daughter is going to be a flying unicorn for Halloween and we're going to try to sing with a flying unicorn style smile on our face but it will probably end up looking like a jack-o-lantern and we do invite you into today's offering our outreach offering recipient is community support network you could read more about their good work in the red floors and we thank you for your generosity and I now invite you to rise in all the ways we do our closing hymns number 151 and we're going to sing verses two and three when I say go in peace I don't mean go in mindless oblivion when I say go in peace I don't mean go without challenging yourself or others when I say go in peace I don't mean go in utter ease and comfort when I say go in peace I mean go in peace seeking justice go in peace committed to equal rights and opportunities for all I mean go in the peace that is created when together we build communities of true solidarity deep compassion and fierce unrelenting love we we extinguish our chalice knowing its light lives on in the minds and the hearts and the souls of each of us and I do mean go in peace please be seated for the postlude