 I'm already a couple of days from the sea already. I work on it for two and a half hours. Maybe a year. Something. Yeah. It's really hard to get a job. It's hard to get a job. It's a big, big job. You know? Yeah. It's a big, big job. I mean, somehow, if you're going to do a career here in the off-cash, it's a little bit of a blow-up. Of course. They want to know that you love them. Right. They're gonna really love them. Right. I invite you to join in a moment of gathering silence. Let's join in singing our hymn number 338. 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 Dorit Bergen 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 happen to be on your life journey we will celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library which is directly across from the center doors of this auditorium. Bring your drinks and your questions. Members of our staff and lay ministry will be on hand to welcome you. You may also look for persons holding teal, stoneware, coffee mugs. These are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community who would love to visit with you. Experience guides are generally available to give a building tour after each service so if you would like to learn more about this sustainably designed addition or our national landmark meeting house please meet near the large glass window on the left side of the auditorium immediately after the service and I'm now going to ask if we indeed have a tour guide. We do so if you will meet Pamela over there after the service. We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service but if a child leads to talk or move around the child haven there or the commons are good places to retire the service can still be seen and heard from those areas and speaking of noise this would be a good time to turn off all electronic devices that might cause a disturbance. I'd now like to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly. Sound operated this morning is Mary Manoring. Your greeter was Mary Elizabeth Kunkel. Your ushers are Biss Nitschke and Susan Carson. Coffee is being made by Nancy Kassif. And I have several announcements but now says the Onesler. Now that you're here the word of the lorex seems perfectly clear. Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot nothing is going to get better. It's not from Dr. Seuss the lorex. There's a spot for you and me and maybe even the lorex in one of 176 slots in 13 service Saturday projects. Many are family friendly including our arboretum prairie restoration cookie baking for a homeless shelter storm sewer labeling John your elementary school gardening. Alan Centennial garden help and talk a Farley Center work party letter writing literary literary council assistance a veteran's hospital visit and more. And who can resist the congregational picnic at 430 back here with Celtic musicians. There are only six days until August 26th see the commons table after the service for more information or you can sign up on the F. U. S. website. The outreach pride parade is today at 1 p.m. We will gather as Madison Unitarian Universalists in the 600 block of State Street behind our standing on the side of love banner. If you would like to carpool there from F. U. S. meet at the front doors to the atrium immediately after the 11 o'clock service. If you would like to join our proud bicycle caravan meet at the green bike rack near the center doors immediately after the 11 o'clock service. F. U. S. is in the process of beginning a search for a new music director. The committee involved in that search would like to know your thoughts regarding music and its role here at F. U. S. either this week or certainly starting next week there will be a table set up in the commons to visit before and after services. Please take a minute to stop by and talk to the people at the table or to fill out a little note about any ideas or wishes you may have regarding music here. Again welcome. We hope that today's service will stimulate your mind. Touch your heart and stir your spirit. Order of service. It says that our opening words are from Walt Whitman. They are not. These are some words from a prayer written by Maureen Killaren. Spirit of life in this time of turmoil and pain in our country and in our hearts. We pray this day for the courage to be humble in the face of inequity, outrage and pain. To know that the power has been given us to make a difference. We pray for the courage of endurance to keep acting, to keep trying, to keep hoping. May courage give us patience and may we ever know love's healing presence at the heart and center of our days. The lighting of the chalice is responsible. I have just discovered. You're reading the bold print please. Would you stand? Existence is beyond the power of words to define. In the beginning of heaven and earth there were no words. And whether we dispassionately see to the core of life or passionately see the surface, the core and the surface are essentially the same. If name be needed, wonder names them both. From wonder to wonder, existence opens. And please take a moment or two or three to greet your neighbors. Ages is going to be presented by our lay minister Karen Rose Gredler. So invite all our children to come up front for a story. I'm sure there we go. This book is called This Moose Belongs to Me. Any of you own a moose? Wilfred owned a moose. Actually he hadn't always owned a moose. The moose came to him a while ago and he just knew that it was meant to be. He thought he would call him Marcel. And look, he hung a little name tag on Marcel's antlers. And that's silly. He began following Marcel explaining the rules of how to be a good pet. Much of the time it seemed as though the moose wasn't listening, but Wilfred knew he was. Mostly because he followed rule number four very well. Not making too much noise while Wilfred plays his record collection. And older people will know what that means. Sometimes the moose wasn't a very good pet. He generally ignored rule number seven, going whichever way Wilfred wants to go. The moose had a very good sense of direction and Wilfred did not. And because the moose was particularly poor at rule number seven, section B, maintaining a certain proximity to home, Wilfred quickly learned to bring some string along on their outings so he could find his way back again. See how he has that little ball of string that he would unravel as they walked along. Kind of like leaving breadcrumbs to find your way back, except birds won't eat the string, so that's better. Sometimes the moose was an excellent pet. He had no trouble with rule 11, providing shelter from the rain. Or rule number 16, knocking down things that are out of Wilfred's reach. See Wilfred standing under Marcel during the rainstorm? And see Marcel knocking apples out of the tree? No doubt for himself to eat, but Wilfred gets some too. One day as Wilfred discussed their plans for the coming year on a particularly long walk, he made a terrible discovery. Someone else thought she owned the moose. Rodrigo, you're back! Wilfred was dumbstruck. This moose was Marcel, not Rodrigo. The old lady was mistaken and Wilfred thought it only proper that he correct her. Hey, this moose belongs to me, he explained. See there he is, and there's this sweet little old lady who thinks she owns Rodrigo. And to prove it, he called to Marcel. He'll, as if Marcel were a dog. But the moose did not respond. He seemed more interested in the old lady, who of course had an apple for him. Good Rodrigo, she said, as he ate the apple. Well, you can imagine. Embarrassed and enraged, Wilfred rushed off for home. But in his haste and miles from anywhere, he tripped over his string and got all tangled up. There he goes, ah, over the hill. And there he lay. Wilfred was beginning to get a little bit worried. It was getting late and he was afraid monsters might get out soon. Of course, we know there aren't any, but he was afraid. See, there he is. All tangled up and it's getting dark and he's kind of scared. However, he had ruled out the last of his options for escape when along came the moose. Whatever his name is. And the moose performed rule 73 brilliantly, rescuing your owner from perilous situations. Picked him up string and all. Yeah, kind of scooped him up by the antler. Looks like, well, all was forgiven. And perhaps Wilfred admitted he'd never really owned the moose anyway. That was a good lesson. Oh, and he tore up his name tag. I didn't miss. Didn't see that the first time. With that in mind, he and the moose reached a compromise. The moose would agree to all of Wilfred's rules whenever it suited him. So maybe we don't own animals after all. And the very last page is a funny picture of a priest saying, Dominique, you're back. So all those folks think they know the moose own the moose. I like that story. Did you like it? Maybe we don't own animals and other living things, but we can respect them and enjoy them and have fun with them. So now while you go off to your summer fun, we are going to sing hymn number 77. Is that right? Okay, have a good day, you guys. Good to see you all. Is taken from the words of novelist Margaret Atwood, Canadian author best known for her novel The Handmaid's Tale, recently serialized on HBO. I am very happy to be here because they let me across the border. Artists are always being lectured on their moral duty. Afate other professionals, dentists, for example, generally avoid. Writers, because of the isolation inherent in their craft, are psychologically vulnerable. The pen is mightier than the sword, but only in retrospect. At the time of combat, those with the swords generally win. So why do I do such a painful task? For the same reason that I give blood, we must all do our part because if nobody contributes to this worthy enterprise, then there won't be any just when it's needed. Now is one of those times never has American democracy felt so challenged. There are still places on this planet where to be caught reading you, or even me, would incur a severe penalty. I hope there will soon be fewer such places. I am not holding my breath. I will cherish this lifetime achievement award from you, though. Like all blessings, it is a mixed one. Why do I only get one lifetime? And where did this lifetime go? And our second reading is from Winter Hours by Mary Oliver. What I mean by spirituality is not theology, but attitude. Such interest nourishes me beyond the finest compendium of facts. In my mind now, in any comparison of demonstrated truths and unproven but vivid intuitions, the truths lose. I would therefore write a kind of elemental poetry that doesn't just avoid indoors, but doesn't even see the doors that lead inward to laboratories, to textbooks, to knowledge. I would not talk about the wind and the oak tree and the leaf on the oak tree, but on their behalf. I would talk about the owl and the thunderworm and the daffodil and the red-spotted newt as a company of spirits as well as bodies. I would say that the fox stepping out over the snow has nerves as fine as mine and a better courage. I would write praise poems that might serve as comforts, reminders, or even cautions if needed to wayward minds and unawakened hearts. I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family, and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing or a few things and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the plate river, and ourselves, we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other's destiny. I am spiritual to be just the opposite of what Jim illustrates, the openness that we fear about theological. But I am spiritual is very much of a contemporary mantra. Being by nature a skeptic, I've long had my suspicions about that saying. As a young priest, members of the parish unfamiliar to my eye would tell me apologetically, well, father, I don't get to mass much, but I worship God out in nature. I think they might have been talking about golf. I have spent many hours playing at a game which from a distance kind of resembles golf, but I don't remember many moments which I would describe as worshipful. So when someone says I'm not religious but I'm spiritual, I have to ask myself, what does that mean? I don't believe in the supreme being. I don't belong to a religious congregation. I don't think of myself as a bill in the denominational blank. I'm not sure. What's the positive content of that statement? As Jim pointed out, surveys recently show a marked decline in religious affiliation over the past 30 years. This is a big shift. Americans have always ranked very high among nations in self-reported faith and this decline began to show up both in church membership in the 70s, particularly in the traditional churches, both Catholic and Protestant. There appears to be a marked political dimension to this shift of affiliation. During recent political primaries, Ted Cruz led Donald Trump by 15 percentage points among faithful church attenders. Trump led Cruz by 27 percentage points among those who were not regular church attenders. It may be the passionate affiliation of alt-right and deep-rooted members fulfill many of the functions of church membership. There's a thought. In addition, according to Pew Research, white Republicans who seldom or never attend regular church services are 19 percentage points less likely to agree that the American dream still holds true. To me, this reads as a profound loss of hope. Does this give a non-doctrinal denomination like universal unitarianism some kind of edge? I'm not sure what the polls show on that one. Let's look for some non-churched examples of hope-filled people. Our reading from Margaret Edwin's speech, Candid Bray and Ironic, like her writings, suggests that the Novelist feels a strong moral imperative to write what she writes because it's doing her part just like giving blood. Good writing is very like giving blood. Her religious background, none that I can find, she's a member of the American Humanist Association and describes her religious point of view as secular humanist. As for Mary Oliver, her vivid words need no further elaboration. But I particularly like you to meet Alexander von Humboldt, born in about 1769, a passionate naturalist whose work influenced scientists across disciplines and across the world. I stumbled across Andrew Orwell's recent book, The Invention of Nature, a biography of Humboldt learned a lot of amazing stuff. Humboldt began his career before scientists became rigorously confined to their own narrow disciplines. At the time, naturalists interested in botany were committed to classification, finding new species and naming them and locating them in a hierarchy of botanical classes. Humboldt did this to a fairy tale, collecting, measuring, naming, but he always knew there was something more, the relationship between plants and different plants and climates and soils and altitudes. Dare I say it, the interconnected web of all nature, our seventh principle, right? And Humboldt said it first, about 200 years ago, before Darwin, before Mendel, before anybody. And for Humboldt, and you'll hear an echo of Mary Oliver here, for Humboldt, it was far more than a dry scientific hypothesis. It was a passionately held conviction which drove him in its early 30s to spend much of his newly acquired inheritance on an expedition to Ecuador to climb Mount Chimaboraza, an inactive volcano then thought to be the highest mountain in the world. Abandoned by porters at the snow line, carrying dozens of heavy measuring instruments but no oxygen, Humboldt and his three companions stopped frequently to gulp for air and to take scientific measurements and botanic observations. 19,000 feet, no birds, no plant life, they moved slowly through the fall and shrouded the top of the mountain and stopped at the edge of a crevasse which ended their climb at 19,413 feet. Suddenly the clouds lifted and standing close to what he took to be the top of the world, Humboldt began to see the earth as one great living organism with which everything was connected. He conceived a bold new vision of nature that still influences the way we think about the natural world and he came to believe that a great part of our response to the natural world should be based on the senses and emotions. Humboldt wrote that nature must be experienced poetically through feelings. Did you get that sense in your biology classes? If so, lucky you. How influential was Humboldt? Well, he numbered among his admirers Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Thoreau Emerson, Rachel Carson, and particularly James Lovelock who formulated the Gaia Theory of Earth as a self-renewing ecosystem. A 19th century historian called him the second most famous man in Europe after Napoleon. So was Humboldt a card-carrying Unitarian? Well, no. He was not a card-carrying anything as far as I can tell. All nature was his church, if you will, and he didn't play golf. But speaking of sports, let's look at a rather different view of spirituality from an unlikely source. Phil Jackson, NBA All-Star player, coach of the Chicago Bulls to three consecutive NBA championships whose notion of coaching was imparting the practice of mindfulness, selflessness, selflessness, and compassion. We're talking professional basketball here. In his book Sacred Hoops, Jackson writes, in basketball as in life, true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way. Of course, it's no accident things are more likely to go your way when you stop worrying about whether you're going to win or lose and focus your full attention on what's happening right at this moment. As Jackson puts it, the day I took over the Bulls, I vowed to create an environment based on the principles of selflessness and compassion. I'd learned first as a Christian in my parents' home, sitting on a cushion, practicing Zen, and studying the teachings of the Lakota Sioux. More than anything, I wanted to build a team that would blend individual talent and practice it. After listening to their complaints, he would just look at them, saying my implication, you know what we need. Sometimes it worked. After the Bulls won two back-to-back championships, Jackson was forced to invent the awkward term three-peat and make good on it in the following season. He envisioned the game in the spiritual terms of mindfulness and flow, openness to and engagement with the possibilities of the moment. In his book, The Joy of Sports, Michael Novak, a Neocon-Catholic-Lake theologian, there's a whole series of contradictions built into that introduction. Maintains that sports is somehow a religion. Like religion, sports are built on cult and ceremony and a notion of fate. Sports embody the almost nameless dreads which religions make explicit. A few years ago, the NFL, in all its power, tried to replace the game-ending term sudden death with the more cheerful formula, sudden victory. They failed utterly. The fans preferred the drama. For Novak, the symbols and arcana of sports of themselves understandable in religious terminology, religious imagery, sacred space, lambo field, sacred time, the play clock, the two-minute warning, the bond of brothers, the lost one place, agon, the inspired struggle, competing in self-discovery. Novak concedes that sport is not the highest form of religion, and Jews, Christians, and others will want to put sports in second place. But when human beings actually accomplish victory in sports, it is for me as if the intentions of the creator were suddenly limited before our eyes. As though into the fiery heart of the creator, we had momentary insight. Novak's words, not mine, I don't like that. We didn't quite put it that way at my alma mater, Notre Dame, back in the 50s, but the link between faith and football was quite palpable. We knew that convents full of nuns crossed the nation, prayed for Notre Dame on football Saturdays, particularly when we played Southern Methodist. And sometimes we wondered how they divided up when Notre Dame played the Jesuits Boston College, the institution where Doug Floody threw the famous Hail Mary pass. Need I say more? Recently, a state journal reporter interviewed a freshman woman at the UW and asked her what experience had made her feel most connected to the university. Without hesitation, she answered, but jump around. That was it. As a longtime college teacher, I cringed a bit at that answer, but I think I might have to reconsider. The jump around, like the wave, requires the intense involvement of the whole body, together with hundreds of others expressing their unity and like-mindedness. Maybe intellectual content is a bit superficial, but the experience isn't. It's sacramental, technically. So where does that leave us? Is it possible to be spiritual, passionately committed to a cause to the point of self-sacrifice, to have a world-encompassing vision, and to act in support of that vision without the need of a church membership? Obviously. But it also can be argued that Atwood and Humboldt had communities, spiritual communities, which supported them. Atwood would have readers, Humboldt would have scientific colleagues and admirers across the world. And the three-feet Chicago Bulls had a passionate, if somewhat mystified, fan base. Most of us don't have that kind of community, but we do have this community. Let me digress for a personal story. You'll notice that in this style. When I discovered in the midst of a Catholic retreat, which I was conducting, and much to my surprise that I was no longer a believer, I realized that my Catholic priestly ministry was not very much to the point. I divested myself of my vestments, literally, and my ministry, and I divested myself of church altogether. I acquired employment, credentials, a wife, and ultimately, a long-time teaching post at Ironically, a Catholic college for women in New York. I worshiped that as the work in the pages of the New York Times. I developed a kind of liturgy organizing that vast Sunday document, sorting out the sections that I didn't want to read, then getting to work. Front page, sports section, because it would date by noon. Entertainment, because that was my work. Opinions, because I had so many of my own, and so on. After years of this, my wife and I were persuaded to check out the community Unitarian Church in White Plains, New York. With considerable reluctance, I agreed to but why? I already knew that Unitarians didn't believe anything. We scuttled into a back pew, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. I stared at the unfamiliar hymns, and my wife plucked out a folder which listed 50 propositions to be submitted for consideration at GA, whatever that was. With surprise, she turned to me and whispered, we agree with all of these. There were more twists and turns, of course. She's watching, I think. But we had found a spiritual home. Spent the spring and summer of 1988 on sabbatical in the Madison area. Well, here we are. And given these anxious times when, once again, we are trying to figure out collectively what this nation is about, in Lincoln's words, testing whether this nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated and long endured. In the face of overt, violent, racist demonstrations, we hear the ambivalent responses of many of our leaders. And when we learn of and watch the repeated incidents of international terrorism wearing it away in our sense of shock and horror. We need support for our spirits. I'm glad to be here. I need to be here. To experience connection around the things that we believe. What we do here is a simple concrete liturgy of spiritual practice, not alone, but together. There's a principle in theology, like Sogendi, like Credendi. I had to work some lab. Meaning, if you want to understand person's belief, don't ask for credo statements. Ask what they do in their religious practice or because of their beliefs. It's more authentic than the statement. What we do is what we believe. Here, we bring the gong and then we get present for the congregation and center in silence. Sometimes when you really get into that silence, then the service suddenly continues. You feel just a twinge of disappointment. How's that? You were getting in touch with the realm of the spirit. You could try this at home, but you can't borrow the gong. Sometimes when the last musical selection is played or sung and it's perfect and you don't want to break that moment of thought and silence, that's the realm of the spirit. And we are healed and lifted and rammed by those moments. They don't happen routinely, but what we do here can feed the spirit, can give us hope, can give a sense of purpose and focus for what we do out there. That's spiritual enough for me. Now, with our offering, we begin the transition from in here to out there in hope. Our collection today is dedicated to the support of our congregation's activities and presence in the community. To this time and place, we bring our whole and our nervous sounds. We carry with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past and seek a place where they might be received, be celebrated, be shared. We take a moment now to share these joys and these concerns that are living here within our congregation. There are no entries in the book, but we all know that they are there. May we enlarge the reach of our compassion to embrace all those with us here, all those beyond these walls, all who share with us this miracle of planet Earth. May we have the courage to reach out in kindness and attention and the courage to ask when we are the ones needing support for listening here. I think we have a hymn to sing. Number 347. Let's carry the messages from today. Give us strength to share our