 Yes, I can. I'm sorry. I find it ridiculous. I'll be putting you on the back. Yes. Yeah, you can go on. San Francisco. Yeah, San Francisco. Yeah, it's so interesting my wife. Um, I'm just gonna go on. I'm just gonna go on. Oh, I'm gonna put you on the back. I'm just gonna put you on the back. I'm just gonna put you on the back. I'm just gonna put you on the back. I'm just gonna put you on the back. I'm just gonna put you on the back. I'm just gonna put you on the back. I'm just gonna put you on the back. I'm just gonna put you on the back. I'm just gonna put you on the back. I'm just gonna put you on the back. I'm just gonna put you on the back. I'm just gonna put you on the back. I'm just gonna put you on the back. I'm just gonna put you on the back. I'm just gonna put you on the back. Check, check, check, check. Check, check, check. Two feet. Two feet. Two feet. Two feet. Good morning. 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 Bringleton, and on behalf of the congregation, I would like to extend a special welcome to visitors. We are a welcoming congregation, so whoever you are and wherever you are on life's journey, we celebrate your presence among us. As we gather in this place and in this time, let us remember we are all visitors. We come together to find meaning and hope with all the other visitors in this life. Let us join our hearts and minds together as we celebrate life together. I invite you to silence your cell phones as we move into our time of worship, and for our moment of centering silence, in the theme of this morning of trusting our voice, I offer you this throat chakra meditation. I listen with my whole self and think before I speak. When I speak, I don't back away from what is true or right. I share and communicate effectively and respectfully with others. I express myself fully and creatively. I invite you now to join me in a few moments of silence for contemplation, meditation, prayer as we settle in and come fully into this time and place together. I invite you to turn to number 188, come, come, whoever you are. You are invited to rise in all the ways that we do. Good morning. Those on my left, when we go to a round, we'll sing first. Those on my right will follow. Let's sing together first. Come, come, ours is no caravan of despair. Again, come, this side first. Come, let's follow that. Come, come, again, come, one more time. Come, one more time. Come, come. We are waiting for the lighting of our chalice. The words are printed in your order of service. Together we say, we gather to receive blessings of trust. May the relationships in this room help us notice we do not walk alone. May the quiet we share help us connect to trust our deepest self. May the music offered help us feel and hold tight to the restorative rhythms of the world. May the words offered remind us that we too have a voice, one that must be trusted and shared. I invite you to turn towards each other and offer a warm greeting. All the young and young at heart can come forward for a story. This is a popular book. It's new to some people and well-known to other people. This is a book about giraffes. I have a question for you. I have a question. How many of you like to read books? Read your hand. Okay. Books are fun things. Okay, put your hands down. Now, how many of you like to sing? Raise your hand. Yes, sort of. We have some sort of people. Okay. Some people don't like singing. Some people love singing. Here's the final question before we start our story. How many of you like to dance? Oh, yeah. I love dancing, someone says. I love dancing. Okay. Okay. One last question. How many of you are giraffes? They have a story for you today called Giraffes Can't Dance. Gerald was a tall giraffe whose neck was long and slim, but his knees were awfully crooked and his legs were rather thin. Very good at standing still and munching shoots off trees. But when he tried to run around, he buckled at the knees. Now, every year in Africa, they hold the jungle dance where every single animal turns up to skip and prance. And this year when the day arrived, poor Gerald felt so sad because when it came to dancing, he was really very bad. The warthogs started waltzing and the rhinos rock and rolled. The lions danced a tango that was elegant and bold. The chimps all did a cha-cha with a very Latin feel and eight baboons then teamed up for a splendid Scottish reel. Gerald swallowed bravely as he walked toward the floor, but the lion saw him coming and they soon began to roar. Hey, look at clumsy Gerald. The animals all sneered. Giraffes can't dance you silly fool. Oh, Gerald, you are so weird. Gerald simply froze up. He was rooted to the spot. They're right, he thought. I'm useless. Oh, I feel like such a quad. So he crept off from the dance floor and he started walking home. He'd never felt so sad before, so sad and all alone. Then he found a little clearing and he looked up at the sky. The moon can be so beautiful. He whispered with a sigh. Excuse me coughed a cricket who had seen Gerald earlier on, but sometimes when you're feeling different, you just need a different song. Listen to the swaying grass and listen to the trees. To me, the sweetest music is those branches in the breeze. So imagine that the lovely moon is playing just for you. Everything makes music if you really want it to. With that, the cricket smiled and picked up his violin. Then Gerald felt his body do the most amazing thing. His hooves had started shuffling and making circles on the ground. His neck was gently swaying and his tail was swishing round. Yeah, that's a fun picture. He threw his legs out sideways and he swung them everywhere. Then he did a backward somersault and leapt up in the air. You love this story. Gerald felt so wonderful. His mouth was open wide. I am dancing. Yes, I'm dancing. I am dancing, Gerald cried. Then one by one each animal who'd been there at the dance arrived while Gerald boogied on and watched him quite entranced. They shouted, it's a miracle. We must be in a dream. Gerald's the best dancer that we've ever, ever seen. How did you learn to dance like that? Please, Gerald, tell us how. But Gerald simply twirled around and finished with a bow. Then he raised his head up and looked at the moon and stars above. We all can dance. He said, when we find music that we love. So there is music in your life everywhere and there's dancing opportunities. And in fact, we are going to sing you to your religious education classes with a song called Go Now In Peace. So you can dance to class if you want. Go now in peace, go now in peace. May the spirit of God surround you everywhere. Let's sing that again. Go now in peace, go now in peace. May the love of God surround you. Everywhere, everywhere. So this month we're talking about trust. And today we're looking at trust from the viewpoint of one of the most scary things that many of us do. Singing. You know, I think a lot of us when we were kids, we got a message somehow not to sing. Maybe our parents said, would you please just be quiet and we happened to be singing. Maybe we auditioned for a show, a talent show, a musical, a choir, and we didn't get in. Or we auditioned for a solo and we didn't get it. And we interpreted that as, oh. Then I can't sing. And you know, I think that that's dangerous, that we've gotten into that mindset as a society that if you're not good at something, you can't do it. Right? Can you drive stick shift? Yes, I can. Do you, should you? No, I should not. But that's more of a safety and money saving issue, right? When it comes to singing, if you're terrible at it, that's a victimless crime, right? Same with dancing. And what, I love that story. I read Giraffes Can't Dance to my kids so often. And my daughter was kind enough to loan us the book to make the pictures. She thought I was going to peel them off though, I thought. She thought she was never going to see the book again. But she's okay, she's all right. But what I, one thing that bothers me a little bit about the story is that when Gerald goes to dance, he takes a deep breath, he gets up his courage, he goes out to take that risk, and before he can even try, they laugh him off the dance floor. Maybe they knew him and knew he was clumsy, or maybe they just said, a giraffe dancing, that's ridiculous. Only, I guess, hippopotamuses and rhinoceroses can dance. So they laughed him off before he even had a chance to succeed or fail on his own. And what would have happened if they just let him dance? Well, he hadn't met the cricket with the violin yet, right? So he might have been pretty terrible. And so, so another mindset other than if you can't do something very, very well, then you can't do it. That's erroneous, right? There's another one. And that is that if you're not certain, you shouldn't even try. And that needs to go away too. So I've set a goal for us and as a staff member here. And the goal is to improve your level of confidence in singing, yours, the congregations. And when I stand up here and lead the hymns, I look out and I see sort of what you would expect to see. A lot of hair, you know, or if they're holding some squinting, because those words are really small. And then I see people just staring back at me like they're gonna pounce or something. And they're just not even singing. Well, when the worship committee talks about what our worship themes should be and how we should approach them, we're always talking about how many different ways can we approach a certain topic. And so if you miss out on the congregational singing, you're missing one of those ways and you're not getting the full impact of that worship experience. Now, I don't know why some of us don't even try. Maybe it's because we think we're not good and therefore we shouldn't do it. Maybe we think no one's ever taught me to sing, which is kind of a strange thing, right? Did anyone teach you to talk? You learned to talk by doing it, by observing, modeling, mimicking, right? Everybody can sing. And a lot of people tell me, I hear the same jokes over and over again as a vocal teacher and choir director. People say, oh, you don't want me in the choir. I can't carry a tune in a bucket. Yes, I know it's not that funny anymore because everybody says the same joke or the less frequent. The only instrument I can play is the radio. Well, I do want you in the choir and I hope you'll join. But even if you don't, I want you to have a better worship experience than you might be having now by shying away from your singing of the hymns. So about 530,000 years ago, there were several species of humans on the planet. And right around that time, every one of them developed the hyoid bone. For some it had been cartilage and now it was evolving and became bone. For some it was there, but it was getting bigger. And shortly after that, anthropologists believe we gained the ability to speak. And they guessed that the first speaking was done from mother to child. Well, babies fall asleep more easily when they're sung to sometimes. Some children really respond to lullabies and it's easy to imagine a scenario where a mother would be speaking and start to change the pitch of her voice, get a little higher, get a little lower to see what would work. And we know that feeling, don't we? Parents of go to sleep, what will help you? What will help me? You know, you get a little desperate sometimes. And if changing the pitch of the voice helps or the loudness or the softness or any of those elements of control, then a mom is going to try it, right? And eventually we can imagine that that slowly turned into singing over time. Probably lullabies at first. And I wish I could have been at the moment where we realized that singing as a group was particularly powerful. That that experience of sitting around a fire with everybody else in our tribe and singing brought us closer together. And that's one of those things that's easy to agree with but difficult to prove. That singing together in a group brings us closer together, right? We build a sense of camaraderie. It's one of the ways that we can do that. And music has many other uses that we discovered over the years, right? We can sell products with it, you know, et cetera. But we have started to categorize the arts into entertainment or art. And sometimes those things overlap. But we are so used to thinking about a good singer is one I find entertaining, right? Or I don't like that kind of high-brow music. If you're going to sing in German, I'm going to stay home, you know. But there's another category, and that's you. That's the category of singing together, tribal singing, congregational singing. It's a special shared experience. Of all the shared experiences we can have, it's a special one to sing together. So in this particular context, the worship context, there's also a message involved. And if you're not singing, you might miss the message. Here's another way you can miss the message. Following, singing, okay? And missing a word. Messing it up, singing the wrong word. Maybe even a word that changes the meaning of that text. And a lot of us, to that point, we make that kind of mistake and we mess up. Instead of just keeping going, forgiving ourselves immediately and moving on. And taking that as maybe one more sign that we shouldn't sing out too loudly because someone might hear us make a mistake. I had a different experience with dancing than Gerald had. Gerald needed to find music that he loved. In order to dance. And then, sort of bizarrely, he needed everybody else at the dance to change locations to where he was, right? Okay, so Gerald solved that problem, got solved. Kudos to the cricket. My situation was different. I probably had a situation with my dancing the way more similar to many of you. When I was in junior high and we started having dances, right? And you had to come to the dance. I mean, I have to, and I'm making you, but you kind of had to go to the dance, right? And so I would get so nervous because I thought I wasn't a good dancer. And I thought for sure that everybody was watching me dance out of the corner of their eye and judging me for that. For being a bad dancer. And suddenly I realized after a couple of years of that torment, I started realizing I actually don't care if people think I'm a bad dancer. I don't care if they're judging me, right? I just don't care. I'm going to go and I'm going to dance my way and have fun. Interestingly, more than one person came up after that next dance and said, you're a really good dancer. And that's an important lesson too because confidence plays a role in how well we do things, right? If we go in fearful, we tend to make more mistakes at anything, driving, singing, dancing. So what I want to do today, I want to just get the ball rolling on this goal of mine to help you be more confident in your singing. What I want to do today is start peeling away the fear. Start peeling away the apprehension that you might have in singing our hymns so that you will have a better worship experience, a more complete worship experience here at FUS. So I've talked about some things, some reasons that people might be shy, a shy singer, but you might have a different story about why you don't sing out. Maybe you didn't come from a musical family. Or I was just never involved in music in school and then it just felt like it was too late. There are so many, I've heard so many different versions of what it kind of boils down to. So what we need to do is strip away that and adopt a different mindset. We need to get rid of the, if I'm not great at it, I shouldn't even try that mindset and instead go for I don't really care if the people around me think I'm a good singer. It's not the point of the congregational singing. Absolutely not a performance. It is not entertainment. And even though there might be some artistry built into hymn writing and if you ask a hymn composer they will say there absolutely is you don't necessarily need to have that experience either. What we need to do is get you to a point where we can sing fully out in the congregational songs find the expressive elements the meaningful elements in the text and start for ourselves on an individual basis tying the service together. Because that's what we talk about in our meetings when we're preparing these services for you. We're trying to sew it all together and I want you to be able to do that for yourselves also. So we're going to do a little experiment if you'll take out your hymnal and turn to hymn number 108 hymn 108 it's one that we know very well and it's one we're going to sing later in this service but before we do I want to rehearse it a little bit. Now if this were an actual choir rehearsal which it's not but if it were we would start with a going from our head voice to our chest voice and our head voice if you aren't familiar with those terms that's our Mickey Mouse voice guys and Sopranos and Altos it's a little harder to find but you kind of have to feel it but for us it's up here hello goofy that's our head voice and we might go ah and this serves two purposes one our larynx can change pitch in two ways it can tip forward and backward and then the vocal what we call the vocal chords or the vocal folds can stretch or loosen to change the pitch so there are two different ways and that exercise gets the larynx doing both right and that's the first purpose the second purpose is it allows us to make some silly sounds together because that is one way that we can remove that fear but we're going to make a silly sound together would you mimic me ah go that was very silly good job alright so the second thing we would do and we're not going to do it but I just want to let you know what their experience is is we would have back rubs we turn one direction and we have a group back rub alright and then we switch to the other direction so that builds community through touch as well but it also helps kind of loosen us up because we carry a lot muscularly don't we when we're stressed when we have old memories of in this case being told we can't sing so let's just loosen that up if you're with somebody and they want to give you a back rub you can either let them or not but let's shake out our shoulders a little bit and maybe roll your head just a little bit alright and then we would start doing some vocal warm ups and we're going to skip that good I like the back rub alright so now we're just going to jump right into our rehearsal of of how can I keep from singing my life flows on in endless song let's sing the first two phrases and what I want to do because my goal is to start removing removing fear and apprehension from our singing whether you sing or don't I want you to sing out and I want you to sing as poorly as you can if this sounds good you have failed you are going to sound terrible so you may imitate somebody or just kind of do the sort of shout chanting that we tend to do when we sing happy birthday now I'm not sure why happy birthday to you I'm not sure why that's a thing waiters can sing happy birthday but I understand so let's go ahead and sing this badly just the first two phrases one and two and my life flows on in endless song above earth's lamentation good that's terrible I hear the real so far off that has a new very good thank you for taking that risk I appreciate it and you followed my directions really well that was awful alright who cares you still got the words you still were singing with with your fellow congregants so now let's go ahead and sing sing it for real and if you are a little closer on the spectrum toward what we just did then you would like I would like for you to just not care and keep going don't sing softer don't sing slower don't stop just go for it and if you already feel like you have been going for it with the hymn singing I want you to try going for it even more okay so let's try again loud and proud if you are going to make a mistake make it one you are proud of two and we go my life flows on in endless song excellent I hear the real though far off him very good thank you I am going to end my talk with two very quick readings the first is from Henry van dyke and he said use what talents you possess the woods would be silent if no birds sang except those who sang best and the second is from Khalil Gibran sing and dance together but let each one of you be alone even as the strings salute our alone though they quiver with the same music I am deeply grateful for the power of singing and for music in our worship services and as I thought about the way that I connect with it there are so many ways that I am grateful but as I really moved to the heart of what I felt music and especially singing does in our congregations I realize that the way I want to approach it is more in the spirit of a meditation and so I invite us to enter into the words that I offer in that spirit and like much like singing itself it begins with the body and the breath and so I invite you as we prepare to find a way of sitting in your chair that feels well balanced if you're okay impossible both feet firmly on the ground well centered and grounded deeply connected with the earth itself and in a way that is comfortable but allows your upper body to feel open and your breath to move freely and for just a moment as we move into this time which invites you just to bring all that you are receptively to what is offered I invite you to become aware of your breath to notice where it is in your body that you feel your breath most distinctively perhaps it is in the nostrils as you bring it in or through your mouth or as you feel your rib cage expanding maybe it goes all the way down to the core of who you are and you feel the air pushing down wherever that is just for a moment bring all of your attention to that breath and to this moment bring all that you are to the words of the 9th century Islamic poet Rabia Brasra in her poem it acts like love music it reaches toward the face touches it and tries to let you know the promise that all will be okay it acts like love music and tells the feet you do not have to be so burdened my body is covered with wounds this world made but I still long for God even when God said could you also kiss the hand that caused each scar for when you do you find me it does that music helps us forgive in this open state of deeper listening to all that is within and around us there is somewhere within us that voice that was born with us sometimes we use it when we sing sometimes we use it when we cry but always it is that vibration of our deepest self Mark Nepo wrote as long as we sing the pain of the world cannot claim our lives he wrote through cancer through growing up in America through learning about the innumerable struggles for freedom around the world all different but the same through being with the people of South Africa it has become very clear that giving voice to what is inner is essential to surviving what is outer no matter where we live or whom we love no matter what we want or what we can't have this is the lesson I cannot repeat or learn enough when everything in life presses from outside of you you have no choice but to sing like a scared child relying on their song to stop the pain it is that form of our voice it is that meaning of the song that keeps the pain of living from snuffing out our lives and so when we join our voices in singing together there is at least a little bit of that deeper voice that is possible and by combining our voices however timid or half-hearted we take part in the larger voice of the congregation and by the repeated participation in that larger voice which magnifies what is possible the sound the song that is possible each of us somewhat paradoxically finds our own voice may be strengthened not always our physical singing voice but very often by the power of the music in this space we find our inner voice strengthened we find ourselves in some way called to sing our own song with greater courage with deeper conviction in some important area of life it may be in our own song the song of justice it may be that our voice is trying its best to find the right song but you have music within you you have a voice that is already growing in its identity and power it will never be should never be perfect but it is always inviting you to grow and to risk and yes sometimes to fail and pick yourself up to sing again what is that inner voice longing to sing how is it calling you forward in your life now Paul Robison wrote I shall take my voice wherever there are those who want to hear the melody of freedom or the words that might inspire hope and courage in the face of fear my weapons are peaceful for it is only by peace can be attained the song of freedom must prevail and we draw in a deep breath again aware of being present in this place and release that breath before we move out of this time of openness we are reminded that when we gather in community another way that our voices come together is in the truth of our lives whether it be a song of joy or of sorrow we sing that song in some way when we are here and we hold each other's song and so for a moment I invite you to think about what songs of joy have been in your heart this week and what songs of difficulty and loss and how has the song been for those that you care for both in joy and sadness we know that there are thoughts and joys and songs and voices that are still too tender to be heard but we remember on this day with gratitude that Janine Nussbaum's flowers are left over in the time of deep memory yesterday as they celebrated the life of her son Ron Valenza in all the ways that we share our life together may we be deeply deeply grateful may we be called to service and love amen and blessed be as we move into the time of the offering may we recall that 50% of what is gathered today will go to Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and in this particular time in our country we are especially aware that there are forces and voices that are threatening the power of choice and its importance so it is especially important that we find our own generosity in a spirit of openness and generosity given and received the offertory is written by songwriter Eliza Gilkassen and she writes this about the words you're going to hear when I wrote this I wanted to do an invocation to the great mother archetype I kept looking around for female deities that were symbolic of a mother Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist but I kept coming back to Mary and it just seemed right since she is kind of the western archetype that is the energy that I wanted to evoke and she wrote this in memory of and support of victims of natural disasters past, present and future with deep gratitude we give thanks for the many gifts that are shared within this community of treasure, time and talent we especially want to thank those volunteers who helped make this service possible this morning our greeters were Claire Box and Joyce Carey our ushers this morning were Marty Hollis, Liza Monroe Michael Lossy and Dick Goldberg hospitality is being provided by Bliss Nitschke and Sandra Flisch and our lay minister this morning is Ann Smiley if you stop by the welcome table across from the coffee you will get to meet Dorit Bergen I want to also point out in your news from the red floors there is a mayoral forum coming up on Saturday the doors open at 6 o'clock and the forum starts at 6.30 with those thanks and announcements I now invite you into our closing him, number 108 you know this him already please rise as you're able and now as you go forth from this place may you find the power of your voice and learn more and more to trust in it may this be a place that allows you to practice that life art again and again we extinguish the power of your voice and learn more and more to trust in it may this be a place in and again we extinguish this chalice but not the light of deeper wisdom the warmth of love and community the fire of our commitment to what matters to us most these remain in your life until you gather in this place again may we return to our seats and receive one more gift of music