 Yeah, make sure to put the matches back there because they did a special candle for... Please join me for a moment of centering silence. And now please remain seated as we sing our in-gathering hymn, number 68, in your hymnal, come ye thankful people and we will just sing the first verse. 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 for each individual as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. My name is Karen Rose Gredler, and on behalf of the congregation I wish to extend a special welcome to visitors. We are a welcoming congregation, so whoever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life journey, we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers and others are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library which is directly across from the back doors, center doors of this auditorium. Bring your drinks and questions. Members of our staff and lay ministry will be on hand to welcome you. You may also look for persons holding the teal stoneware mugs. These are members knowledgeable about our faith community who would love to visit with you for a while. Experienced guides are generally available to give building tours after services as well. If you would like to learn more about this sustainably designed addition or our national landmark meeting house across the parking lot, please meet your guide up near the large glass windows on your left after the service. We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service. However, it can be a little difficult for some of us to hear in this lively acoustical environment. So we suggest our child haven in the northeast corner back there and the commons area outside the auditorium as great places to go when your child needs to talk or move around. The service can still be seen and heard very well from those areas. This would also be an excellent time to silence any electronic devices that could disrupt the service, especially cell phones, please. And now I'd like to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly. At this service we have... Sorry. Mike Linault on sound and smiley as our lay minister. Marcy Bradley as our greeter. And as ushers we have Ron Cook, Allison Brooks, and John and Nancy Webster. And making coffee and refreshments for us. I know there's some hot chocolate back there that smelled good. Is Jeannie Hills and Gene Sears of our staff will be helping her because there was only one person who signed up for hospitality this hour. So remember you might want to do that another time. Let's see here, I lost my place. Please note the announcements in our red floors insert in the order of service. This thing. This provides information about upcoming events and more about what's going on this weekend here at the society. I do have one particular announcement to read to all of you. Parents and children. Please note that there are no religious education classes this weekend. Following our intergenerational message today, pre-K children may be brought to the childcare room for playtime. Children in kindergarten through fifth grade may gather in the courtyard classrooms A and B for simple yoga and breath exercises. This is a hip place, you know, so that's why we start young. And children in sixth grade and older are invited to remain for the full worship service. There will also be no classes next Sunday, and we hope that families will join us for our annual Winter Carl Festival. Again, welcome. We trust today's service will stimulate your mind. Touch your heart and stir your spirit. With thankful hearts, we come together to celebrate the bounty of the day. To bask in the warmth of this community. To share with friends the tides of our lives. To entertain perennially our hopes for a better future. We join together this day as always to resist injustice and inequality wherever they may be found. Our hearts are touched by the need we feel around us, whether far away or within reach of hand. We come here to be together because this is how we believe our lives are best lived. In questioning and in conversation, in compassion and in service, in gratitude and in joy, in companionship and in love. May we join together this day in the spirit of gratitude, service and love. And if you will rise now in body or spirit to join in the words of Chalice Lighting. For daylight and darkness, for sunshine and rain, for the earth and all people, we offer deep thanksgiving. We kindle this light in celebration of the life that we share. And before we join together in song, if you'll take a moment to turn and greet your neighbor. For the story to come on up. Did you have a good thanksgiving? We have a story about thanksgiving to share with you today. We're going to have some pictures up there so that everybody could see them because they are some good pictures. So this is called the Thanksgiving door. Now it was Thanksgiving day and Ed and Anne were home alone preparing Thanksgiving dinner when something terrible happened. Now if you look at the picture, can you tell what terrible thing happened? Uh-huh, their whole dinner burned. It was ruined. Now Anne felt terrible that she had burned Thanksgiving dinner. So she decided to just pretend that it was any other regular ordinary day and she was just going to go and do her ironing. Can you see her up there? Have you ever had one of those days where you thought, forget it, I'm just going to pretend it's a regular day? Yeah, me too. But Ed, did you see Ed up there with the coat? Ed was hungry. So Ed said, let's go and see if that new restaurant down the street is open. All right. But it won't be the same. The door to the New World Cafe was open. Hurray said Ed and he quickly hung up their coats. Anne looked at the middle of the table and she said, is this a Thanksgiving decoration? This looks like a pilgrim but who's the dancing man with the hat and the beard? I don't think we should be here. Nonsense said Ed. The door was open. Now many unhappy eyes peered through the kitchen door. This is horrible, Leon whispered. Who left the front door open? We can't have customers today. Our party will be ruined. Let's get rid of them, said Tatiana. I'm going to bang these pots together. The noise will scare them away. Now grandmother had heard enough. She dropped her peeled potato into the pot and she said, in the old country, we would bang pots at wolves. Not hungry people. Today is Thanksgiving day. Our family cooks a turkey as big as a dog house. But we don't share. And she shook her head. Grandmother is right, said Olga. Go get some chairs. Olga showed Anne and Ed to the best seats at the table. Aunt Sophia brought two more table settings and grandmother said, happy Thanksgiving and welcome. We are glad that you are here. And that's how Anne and Ed found themselves as the guests of honor as this family celebrated their first Thanksgiving in the New World Cafe. Now after dinner, Ed did what you always do after dinner in a restaurant. He asked for the check. But everyone pretended not to understand his question. No, no, no. We're going to dance now. Please stay. Anne and Ed had never heard of anyone dancing on Thanksgiving. But they were having such a good time that they just said yes. Ed followed the men upstairs to help move tables out of the way. And Anne stayed with the women and got to hold the new baby Sonia. Uncle Carl struck up the band and the young dancers got things started. Everyone joined in. Even Ed, who had never danced a lick in his life, kicked up his heels. Now Anne loved to dance and she knew all the steps. She taught everyone the conga. And in no time at all, they were dancing in one huge conga line. It was a hit. It was really late when Anne and Ed said their goodbyes. Grandmother gave Anne a table decoration. Papa and Ed traded hats. Anne gave her telephone number to Sonia's mother in case she ever needed a babysitter. They all said, thank you for making this such a very special Thanksgiving. Now when it was time to lock up the cafe, Papa could not get the front door to close. When he looked down, he found a raw potato jammed under the door. Get here. While grandmother said, in the old country, the Thanksgiving door is like the happy heart. It is opened up big and wide. Welcome to all who want to enter. The potato. The potato was good for that. You're right, was all Papa said. Now when they got home, Anne lit the candle from the cafe and made tea. What are you most thankful for on this wonderful Thanksgiving, she asked. And Ed thought, and he thought. Many things crossed his mind, but what was he most thankful for? Well, he said, I guess my dear, I would have to say that I am most thankful that you burned our dinner. Oh Ed, she said, me too. Thank you all for listening to our Thanksgiving story. We are going to rise in body or spirit and sing you out. Welcome for Thanksgiving. Hard it is this anxious autumn to lift the heavy mind from its dark forebodings, to sit at the bright feast and with ready cheer give thanks for the harvest of a troubled year. The clouds move and shift, withdraw to new positions on the hills. The sky above us is a thinning haze. A patch of blue appears. We yearn toward the blue sky as toward the healing of all ills. But the storm has not gone over. The clouds come back. The blue sky turns black and the muttering thunder suddenly crashes close and once again flashes of lightning startled the rattling window pane. And once more pours and splashes down the cold, discouraging rain. God bless the harvest of this haggard year. Pity our hearts that did so long for peace. Deal with kindly. There are many here who love their fellow travelers. But cunning and guile persist. Ferocity empowers the lifted arm of the aggressor. The times are bad. Let us give thanks for the courage that was always ours and pray for the wisdom which we never had and this important notice. The newsletter editor of the first parish in Wayland, Massachusetts, recently ran her favorite New Yorker notice, which came from a Warrington, Virginia newspaper ad. Important notice. If you are one of the hundreds of parachuting enthusiasts who bought our easy sky-diving book, please make the following correction. On page eight, line seven, the words state zip code should have read pull rip cord. I worry about things like this during the holiday season. Had I been a parachuting enthusiast and had I breezed through easy sky-diving during the months of November or December, I'd still be flying through the air picking up speed shouting my zip code. Zip codes aren't all that important. Rip cords are. During the holiday season, it is all too easy to confuse one for the other. The zip codes of the season. Replacement bulbs. More and more sticks of butter or sacks of flour. The fruit by mail catalogs. The party shoes. The lists and lists. These have our attention. And before we know it, we're picking up speed and shouting out these zip codes without ever asking why. Perhaps we should look to our rip cords. Our lifelines at the holidays, as always, are our inner quiet. The love we exchange with family, strangers, and friends. Our recognition and thankfulness of all our blessings. And our efforts to make the world more whole. We can slow the descent. We can take in the view. And if we remember to hold on to our lifelines, we can anticipate a gentle landing of a stone mason. And how he finally discovered happiness in his own life. There once was a stone mason who hated his job. He worked long hours for low pay. He wished he were rich and could loaf all day. Then one day he heard a voice saying, you are what you want to be. And he immediately became rich and he was happy until one day a king passed by and the man thought, I want to be powerful like the king is. And as if by magic he became king. What power everyone obeyed him. He was happy for a while. Then he saw the sun in the sky. The sun is more powerful than I am. I want to be the sun. And so he became the sun and was happy until he realized the clouds below him were freer and flexible. And he wished to become a cloud. Soon the cloud condensed into raindrops and struck a rock of granite. The rock had been there for centuries so firm and solid. The rock absorbed the drops of rain. How wonderful to be a rock. And he became a rock. He believed he had found completeness. The sun warmed him. The wind refreshed him. Until one day he saw a man approaching with a large hammer. A stone mason who began striking the hammer against the rock. How I wish I could be a stone mason the man said. And he once again became a stone mason. But this time he was happy. There was nothing better to be than what he was. He felt a revelation he had never felt before and never wanted to lose. He felt gratitude for being who he was. This story reminds me of the words of Lao Tzu. If you look to others for fulfillment you will never be truly fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have. Rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking the whole world belongs to you. So much has been written about the power of gratitude. Scientific research has shown that when people regularly engage in the systematic cultivation of gratitude they experience a variety of measurable benefits psychological, physical, interpersonal. Gratitude can lead to transformative life changes. Now when I was a child my father tried quite unsuccessfully to infuse more of a thankful spirit into our family life. When my mother would complain about cleaning the house he would say, let's be grateful that we have a house to clean. When she would sit down to pay the bills and start to moan he would say let's be grateful that we can pay the bills. If my sister and I complained about homework his response would be let's be grateful that you are getting an education. And on and on it went. Let me say that this tactic does not work. Less than a spirit of gratitude and more of a spirit of patricide was in our hearts. Now couple this less than effective message from home with my childhood desire to be a saint. And by this I do not mean a really good person. I mean a bona fide written about in books canonized saint. And then you might understand that gratitude and I have had nothing less than a rocky relationship. I would sit in my bed and read the lives of the saints and from their stories I received a belief in perfectionism that has been hard to shake. Those of us afflicted with the pesky perfection bug suffer from the view that we are never good enough as we are in our humble human imperfect state and therefore must try as hard as we can to do everything to absolute perfection. We believe that if we do everything perfectly then the world will be okay. But we all know that we and our messy world despite our best efforts are far from perfect. Gratitude has been an antidote for me. A balm for my sense of inadequacy and lack by allowing me to tap into the spirit of abundance. When I can switch from what is wrong to what is right the fullness of gratitude, the acceptance of life and myself the way it and I are right now. I am seized by a joy for this crazy mixed up world and a recognition that I am a part of it a child of the universe perfectly acceptable in my imperfection. The Broadway musical lyricist Oscar Hammerstein wrote an essay for the This I Believe radio program in the 1950s. He used his great eloquence to tell us why he believed he was a happy man. I am a man who believes he is happy. Why do I believe I am happy? Death has deprived me of many whom I loved. Dismal failure has followed many of my most earnest efforts. People have disappointed me. I have disappointed them. I have disappointed myself. Further than this I am aware that I live under a cloud of international hysteria. The cloud could burst and a rain of atom bombs could destroy millions of lives including my own. From all this evidence could I not build up a strong case to prove why I am not happy at all? I could but it would be a false picture as false as if I were to describe a tree only as it looks in winter. I would be leaving out a list of people I love who have not died. I would be leaving out an acknowledgement of the many successes that have sprouted among my many failures. I would be leaving out the blessing of good health, the joy of walking in the sunshine. I would be leaving out my faith that the goodness in humanity will triumph eventually over the evil that causes war. The conflict of good and bad merges in thick entanglement. You cannot isolate virtue and beauty and success and laughter and keep them from all contact with wickedness and ugliness and failure and weeping. I don't believe that anyone can enjoy living in this world unless he can accept its imperfection. He must know and admit that he is imperfect, that all other mortals are imperfect and go on in his own imperfect way making mistakes and riding out the rough and bewildering, exciting and beautiful storm of life until the day he dies. Oscar Hammerstein presents a persuasive and compelling argument that the only place gratitude can exist in this world is in the midst of a complicated imperfection or in the midst of, as Edna St. Vincent Millay so aptly said, an anxious autumn of a haggard and troubling year. We, 60 years after Oscar Hammerstein so beautifully expressed his sentiments, we are constantly reminded of this truth. We live in a world that is complicated and imperfect. What words of gratitude can possibly be spoken this year? As recent events have once again made us keenly aware of the continuing toll of oppression in our world. How do we say thank you while the embers of anger and frustration burn hot in so many hearts? Sometimes it may feel to us that gratitude is incompatible with protest and our work to challenge and end oppression. But what needs to be remembered is that gratitude is an important step on the path toward justice and opening to grace that makes justice possible. For when we open our hearts in gratitude for the lives and the work of others, how can we turn our backs on their needs and ours for justice and peace? Many years ago, my colleague Bob Doss wrote these words, when giving thanks comes hard for you and things are grim and hope runs thin. Recall, despair is a door to pass on through and not a home for living in. When thanksgiving fills your cup and those you love are all about, look at your blessings. Count them up. Give something back to a world without. Giving thanks may be hard for you today, but remember that despair, anger, frustration, these are doors to pass through, not homes to live in. Gather them up and with thanks in your heart for the love and the blessings that surround you, give something back. Now on Monday evening, Michelle Alexander, author of the remarkable book, The New Jim Crow, sent out this statement. As we await the grand jury's decision, I want to take this opportunity to say thank you, a deep heart-wrenching thank you to all the organizers and activists who took to the streets following Michael Brown's death and who refused to stop marching, raising their voices, crying out for justice. It is because of them, their courage, boldness, vision, and stamina that the world is paying attention to what's happening in a suburb called Ferguson. And their cry has been heard around the world. No matter what the grand jury does, let us remember that true justice will come only when our criminal justice system is radically transformed. True justice will be rendered when the system as a whole has been found guilty, and we as a nation have committed ourselves to repairing as best we can the immeasurable harm that has been done. Now what I love about her statement is that it ends with a call to action, but it begins with a profound and heart-wrenching thank you. What I read in that thank you is thank you for connecting, for paying attention, for making this a piece of your lives, for relating to this story, for being there, for listening to the voices of the marginalized, the unheard, the hurt, the scared, the lost. This is where I feel the power, the revolutionary force of gratitude, in the power of gratitude to create relationship. Michael Brown's parents' statement said this, while we understand that many others share our pain, we ask that you channel your frustration in ways that will make positive change. We need to work together to fix the system that allowed this to happen. Let's not just make noise, let's make a difference. We need to work together. We have received an immeasurable gift. To be alive in this beautiful world, to participate in the dance of life is a wonder beyond words. To have the ability to reflect on what is happening in our lives and in ourselves is an extraordinary privilege, and we can use our gratitude to take part in the healing of our world. Gratitude is the wellspring of all religions and Unitarian Universalism is no exception. Galen Gingrich, minister of all souls, our congregation in New York City, has claimed that gratitude is the defining religious discipline for Unitarian Universalists. He suggests that gratitude is especially important for us because we have a covenantal faith. We are bound together by relationship, not by belief. What keeps us together is the promises on how we will be together, how we will walk and act together. Relationship as this central piece of our religious identity underlines our dependence on one another, on the very fact that every living thing on this planet depends on another life, and the act of saying thank you reminds us of that dependency. When I say thank you for being here or thank you for reaching out to me in times of joy or struggle, I acknowledge that my life would be very different if you were not here. Yes, our precious world is in crisis. Our systems are broken. Our relationships are shattered. We are disconnected from one another through systemic walls and walls of our own making. This, in no way, diminishes the preciousness of the gift. On the contrary, as eco-philosopher Joanna Macy tells us, to us is granted the extraordinary privilege of being on hand, to take part if we choose in the great turning to a sustainable life-affirming, life-giving society for all. We can let life work through us enlisting the power of gratitude to strengthen us so that life itself can continue. There is so much to be done, whether it is the justice system, climate change, income inequality and poverty or systemic racism, whatever your passion is, you can proceed out of a grim and angry desperation or you can proceed from an attitude of thankfulness for life. This way links us to our deeper powers and lets us rest in them. And this is how we, we gathered here in a covenantal faith recognizing and acknowledging and making so central this interdependence, we make a difference through gratitude for the miracle of life, for one another, for the ability to form relationships with those we know and those we want to know. We can listen, we can connect, we can reach out to the marginalized and the unheard and we can listen. Reverend Barbara Merritt said, we are here on this earth partially to practice empathy, to honor honest work and to ceaselessly embody that central Unitarian Universalist principle, the dignity and worth of all human beings. This practice of radical equality is measured by the respect with which you treat others and by the kindness in your heart. And then comes the leap. When you become the giver of kindness, you are more likely to become aware of the kindness flowing toward you. Gratitude is not about the things you do or do not receive. It is about relationship and interdependence being a response to the messy complications of life itself. We can live from grateful hearts, grateful for the gift of life, for the opportunities of this day to come closer to what is real and sustaining, grateful that no matter how far we wander or how many times we stumble, grace will find us and we will be blessed. May our hearts be opened by gratitude as well as grief, that we will become agents of healing in a fragmented and hurting world, that we will not shut down in anger, in fear, in despair, but rather rise up together as new life is meant to do, sparked by a dream as yet unrealized and unseen, but known so well by grateful hearts unshielded from one another. And I now invite you into the giving and receiving of today's offering. It is an outreach offering. You can find out more about the recipient in your Order of Service. We thank you for your generosity. Each week is a community with the joys and sorrow of others in this world written on our hearts. We seek a place to share these matters in safety and in love. This week, we remember all families and friends during this holiday season, our hope that they have the love and the support they need. And we are also going to light this candle, a candle for the city and the people of Ferguson for their turmoil and their hope. We light this candle for Michael Brown, who died too young in a street without comfort. We light this candle for Officer Darren Wilson, whose action took the life of another and changed his own life forever. We light this candle for Michael's parents, who mourn the loss of a child and who pray for change. We light this candle for all the mothers whose children have been taken too soon and for all those whose lives have ended in violence and heartbreak. We light a candle for all those who believe the system is broken and all those who do not see the structures that create and sustain violence and fear. We light this candle for our nation and for all who call this country home. We light this candle in hope that the fear or the shame or guilt or anger that have built the walls between us will disperse so that we can find ways to break down those walls. We light this candle for all those who work day after day to build bridges of love and understanding that cross the separation and bring hope and peace into human hearts. We light this candle for those who breathe in suffering and breathe out compassion. May the light of this candle bring us strength, guidance and courage this day and in all the days to come. And if you will rise now and body your spirit to join in our closing hymn, number 121, and filled with the resolve to share them with all, may we hold precious one another and the world which provides us with life and beauty. And may a song of thanksgiving be on our lips this day. Blessed be and please be seated for the postlude.