 Please join me in a few moments of centering silence. And now let us lift up our voices and sing the in-gathering hymn, number 349. The words are printed in the order of service. And 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 March Schweitzer. 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 or whatever you happen to be on your life journey, we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library, which is found 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 can also look for persons holding teal stoneware coffee mugs. These are 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 to our landmark auditorium, please meet near the glass window on the left side of this auditorium. Children are welcome to stay for the duration of the service. However, should they become restless and talkative, our child haven and commons are excellent places to see and hear the service. And speaking of noise, this would be a good time to turn off all those pesky electronic devices that might cause a disturbance during the service. I'd now like to acknowledge those individuals who help our service to run smoothly. The sound operator is Mary Manoring. The lay minister is Dorit Bergen. The greeter is Mary Elizabeth Kunkle. The ushers are Gail Bliss, Paula and Bob Ault, and Marty Hollis. The hospitality this morning is provided by Chip Quadi and Tim Potter. Please note the announcements on the red floors insert in your order of service. I've been asked to call your attention to the following announcements. Today following the 11 a.m. service, former FUS member Pat Holt will share her story of a remarkable friendship with Lila Wabag, a courageous and enterprising Palestinian woman whose work to improve the quality of life and during the JDN refugee camps is featured in this book, A Committee of One. This highlights what she learned of and from this remarkable and indefatigable individual. Signed copies of the book will be available for purchase and snacks provided during what is for many the lunch hour. Or if I can find it. As many of you know, today is the day of our annual Art in the Right Place Art Fair. This is a fundraiser for our children's religious education program. We hope that when the service ends, you'll head over to the landmark building. There you'll find nearly 40 local artists selling beautifully handicraft items. Many of the artists are our fellow FUS members. This is a great opportunity for holiday shopping or for finding something special for yourself. And if you're feeling too hungry to shop, no problem. Stop by the right cafe in the Gabler living room for our bake sale. Scrumptuous breads, cookies, pies, and more will curb your appetite and increase your waistline. The art fair lasts until four o'clock p.m. Again, welcome. We hope today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your hearts, and stir your spirit. Enter this sanctuary, all who are saddened by life's caprices. For in this place, you will find sympathy and you will find understanding. Enter this hour, all who are burdened by worry and doubt. For in this time, you can find comfort and renewal of strength. Enter this community, all who are grateful or joyous. For in this gathering, you can find encouragement and kinship. Come, come, whoever you are, for there is space enough to hold you, time enough to unfold you, and love enough to share. I invite you to rise in body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice. And please join me in reading together the words that are printed in your program. From every disappointment after which we have new growth, for every disillusionment after which we have a relighting of hope, for every disaster after which we have a resurrection into new birth, we light this chalice. And now I invite you to turn to your neighbor on this warm November morning and exchange with them a warm greeting. Please be seated. This is the time of the month when we typically set aside a few minutes during the beginning of the hour for the sharing of joys and sorrows. A time for members, friends, and even visitors to our midst to relate to the entire gathered community some special event or circumstance that has affected your life or the life of someone close to you in recent weeks or months. General announcements, news items, and partisan appeals are discouraged during joys and sorrows. And so for the next few minutes, anyone who wishes is invited to step forward to the front of the auditorium and light a candle and either one of the candle lobby to my left or to my right and then using the microphone provided by Dorot, our lay minister, share your name with us if that feels comfortable as well as a brief message. Please note that our services are webcast, so listeners are not restricted to those who are sitting in this auditorium. You may also step forward and wordlessly light a candle of commemoration and simply return to your seat. And so now I open the floor for the sharing of these important and personal matters of our lives. A year ago my daughter moved to Maryland and she and her husband are moving back to the Fort Atkinson area. For my father who passed away a few weeks ago. Even I would like to thank the share of the care people who came to help us this fall when we were going through a most trying time. Eva had surgery from which she is recovering nicely. Led by Sharwolf and many others who came to help us at a time when it was most unexpected and most welcome. We profoundly thank you from the heart. And I just want to say that of the many cards and prayers and the shawl ministry which I was able to unfold myself with love. You're wonderful. Thank you. Five years ago I completed radiation and chemotherapy for cancer of the throat. I am joyful today to say that I had an appointment with my oncologist last week and I'm completely free of the cancer and that I probably have no likelihood of its return. And I'd like to thank my wife Amy and Michael and many people of this congregation who joined me in my battle with the horrible disease. Thank you. This is for my mother or grandmother who just successfully got out of hip replacement surgery and is doing really, really well and up and walking already. So personal note and to reflect what the two individuals just said I think all of us feel the same way. This is thanks to modern medicine which has improved the quality of our lives and preserved those lives past where many of us would have expected to live had it not been the case. For my dear friend Monica who just lost her infant son and was then diagnosed with breast cancer to give her the strength and support that she so dearly needs right now. I like this candle for Pete Jeffress one of my former runners who perished on a mountain hike in Colorado last week. Good morning, I'm John McGavin, a new member here at FUS and I just wanted to rise and let a candle join my brother Peter down in Greenville, South Carolina who underwent successful double bypass heart surgery and a valve replacement. He is now in our recovery and slowly but surely making some progress and hopefully we are cautiously optimistic that all will go well and he'll recover fully. Thank you. Hello, this is for Kate who is undergoing treatment for breast cancer and for Jim who is ending his life with ALS. Hi, my name is Amalia Hicks and my father was diagnosed with leukemia about a year ago and in a couple of months probably over Christmas he'll be having a pretty dangerous bone marrow transplant so I just want to let a candle in the hopes that it will all go well. And so Dorit if you will light one more candle to symbolize all those unarticulated joys and sorrows that may have occurred to any of you as others were speaking. We hold those with equal compassion and concern in our hearts. I invite you to join me now in the spirit of meditation. We have gathered here this morning in this familiar place gathered as a communion of kindred spirits a people committed to ongoing spiritual exploration a people dedicated to living with ever greater integrity and compassion listening closely and sympathetically to one another may we grow in mutual regard and empathy may the pain and sorrow expressed here remind us that in life's darker moments we need never feel alone and may any revelations of recovery and good fortune we have heard may they make us more aware of the beauty and goodness in our own lives deepening our appreciation for these gifts of grace we have gathered as a communion of kindred spirits may this communion serve to nurture us inspire us and heal us may it be so. And now as our children depart for their classes I invite you to join with me in singing hymn number 17. The first of our readings comes from the well-known grief and loss counselor author of many books on the topic, Earl Grohlman. Every grief counselor has heard a similar statement oh my God, the holidays are coming how am I ever going to get through it? Fear, dread, anxiety may all be well founded significant holidays and occasions can be especially difficult birthdays, anniversaries, Mother's and Father's Day Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year's Eve looking back at former jubilant shared experiences can be mementos of wrenching memories, lost dreams and fear for the future special occasions may also elicit negative feelings that we may still harbor unresolved quarrels with the deceased may suddenly lurk like monsters in the closet casting shadows on their past turbulence how do we persevere through the holiday that now only intensifies our feelings of grief? Some mourners feel that they should be sad during the holiday to demonstrate their love for the one who has died they awfulize the day denying themselves any feelings of joy whatsoever but no one should feel guilty about enjoyment with the belief that overwhelming grief is the truest measure of love the highest testimonial to our loved one's memory is our ability to endure through adversity and to live creatively and as meaningfully as we can and so find creative outlets to remember and honor your loved one a particular prayer light a memorial candle look through old photo albums write a poem or a letter to the loved one make a contribution to his or her favorite charity but above all respect each other's uniqueness don't compare one's feelings with another give permission to express emotions whether they are happy or sad make the best decisions and compromise as possible and more than ever you the mourner need an interlude of emotional and spiritual rest by leaving spaces in the day to get in touch with old memories take a quiet walk, meditate or pray there is healing in solitude for respite, reprieve and recreation recall Ralph Waldo Emerson's words can bring you peace but yourself and so chart your own course by doing the things that give greatest satisfaction and consolation for all your family members remember each day you open new doors and walk new paths you turn feelings of helplessness into a sense of hopefulness and promise and then the second selection from the Irish poet John O'Donoghue when you lose someone you love your life grows strange the ground beneath you gets fragile and your thoughts make your eyes unsure some dead echo drags your voice down where the words have no confidence your heart has grown heavy with loss and though this loss has wounded others too no one knows what has been taken from you a sense of absence deepens flickers of guilt, rekindle, regret for all that was left unsaid or undone there are days when you wake up happy again inside the fullness of life until the moment breaks and you are thrown back onto that black tide of loss there are days when you have your heart back when you are able to function well in the middle of work or some encounter suddenly with no warning you are ambushed by grief it becomes hard to trust yourself and all you can depend on now is that sorrow will remain faithful to itself more than you it knows the way and will find the right time to pull and to pull the rope of grief until that coiled hill of tears has reduced to its last drop gradually you will learn acceptance with the invisible form of your departed and when the grief work is done the wound of loss will heal and you will have learned to wean your eyes from that gap in the air and be able to enter the hearth in your soul where your loved one has awaited your return all the time Thank you Amber and Paul for programming such perfect compliments to today's theme The third chapter of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes begins with these very familiar words for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven and that line is followed by a series of dichotomous observations reflecting the human condition we are born, but then we are destined to die but then we pluck up what is planted we love, but then at times we hate and what many of Ecclesiastes contrasting pairs highlight is the inevitability of loss there are references to things breaking down becoming unraveled, being cast aside and thus we must accept that tears and grief are unavoidable and in fact a necessary feature of our lives yes there are times for dancing but for grieving as well or as it says in the Beatitudes blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted not that scripture is entirely consistent on this point in the ninth chapter of Luke's gospel an admirer approaches Jesus wishing to become part of his growing entourage follow me Jesus urges the man but then the latter hesitates asking if he might first be permitted to fulfill certain religious obligations to his recently deceased father expressing little sympathy for the man's loss Jesus in effect tells him hey get your priority straight let the dead bury the dead he says and as for you go proclaim the kingdom of heaven now to be fair throughout the gospel accounts Jesus does display a sense of urgency and he demands a very high level of commitment from his followers and I doubt therefore that he intended this casual remark let the dead bury the dead to be interpreted as a general rule and indeed the bible contains plenty of evidence to the contrary upon the loss of loved ones those early biblical heroes Joshua and David they wept freely they tore their clothing they fasted publicly unashamedly announcing their grief to one and all and this is of course a far cry from the attitudes and the customs that prevail in today's modern world impatient with the amount of time required to recover from a significant loss afraid of getting stuck in a quagmire of painful and negative emotions we routinely seek to avoid circumvent or sort-circuit the grieving process writing in 1946 shortly after that horrendous war that claimed the lives of tens of millions of men women and children rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman of Boston's temple Israel complained that we moderns have assimilated from our environment a sense of shame about emotionalism and a disinclination to face the tragic realities of life and while this is certainly not true in every case one must concede that the culture at large is not very receptive to or supportive of those who need to grieve as C.S. Lewis complained after his wife a love that this lifelong bachelor had discovered only in late middle age after his wife had died Lewis said an odd byproduct of my loss is that I'm aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers during my 35 years in the ministry I have presided at hundreds of memorial services I have spoken with countless family members and close friends about the deceased and in many cases I have watched as people tried to cope with and recover from their losses it is hard to generalize because some people are very open and expressive about their grief while others are more quiet and closed down some are very deliberate and thoughtful in their approach to mourning while others want to leave it all behind as quickly as possible now from an ethical standpoint there is no right or wrong way to respond to a major loss but there are I would suggest better and worse ways to respond but at this point before going further let's draw a distinction between two terms that are often used interchangeably grief and mourning they're closely connected but they refer respectively to a subjective experience and its objective manifestation grief represents those powerful upwelling emotions images, memories, thoughts that beset us when a major loss has occurred Alan Woefelt, a recognized expert in this area defines grief as the constellations of internal thoughts and feelings that arise under such circumstances think of grief as a container he says for all this powerful all of this unsettling stuff mourning on the other hand occurs when we take that grief stuff that we have on the inside and express it outside of ourselves in any number of ways mourning, Woefelt says, is grief gone public the rituals of mourning in whatever form they take are vitally important because like the physical therapy that we receive following a bodily injury those rituals promote the healing process without active mourning the grief lingers stays bottled up or becomes repressed but it is not resolved and it creates significant problems further down the road and that's the reason why traditional cultures develop elaborate rituals for bringing grief out into the open and to ensure that individuals were not left isolated and bereft of support Judaism's rabbinic literature prescribes a mourning process consisting of four stages that lasts up to a year and the objective Rabbi Lieben says was to create an unashamed atmosphere of sorrow and so for instance during the several days following burial when Jewish mourners are confined to their own home friends and neighbors visit but conversations are strictly limited to praises of the deceased and this provides the mourners with an opportunity to articulate their sense of loss, Lieben writes the Irish tradition responds to death in a similar fashion when someone dies, John O'Donohue writes everyone in the village goes to the funeral and they all come to the house to sympathize neighbors gather around to support the family to help them and it is such a lovely gift and in Ireland he says there are also these people mainly women who come in and keen for the deceased and the narrative of this high pitched wailing is actually the history of the person's life as these women had actually known him or her it's certainly heartbreakingly lonely but it makes a hospitable ritual place for the mourning and the sadness of the bereft family it helps people to let the emotion, the loneliness the grief flow out in a natural and uninhibited way dramatic but powerfully liberating communal rituals such as these are far less in evidence today and the reasons for this I believe are several first our culture does discourage overt displays of disquieting emotion the expectation is for the individual to keep a stiff upper lip to show that they have the inner fortitude to keep it all together even when they feel that their life is falling to pieces around them and I have often witnessed this resistance when meeting with a family to plan a memorial gathering now it is our practice as many of you know in Unitarian Universalism to invite friends and family members to participate in these services offering their own personal tributes to the deceased but quite often those who are closest to the person will decline to speak because they are afraid that they'll get up there and they will become too emotional thus embarrassing themselves and others and even when I often offer reassurances that these displays of heartfelt feelings in this particular context are both natural and completely acceptable most people still demure now I agree that taking this step is hard but in so doing in making a public profession of one's sorrow and one's gratitude for the person's life one testifies to the depth of affection that they felt for that person and this in turn really does touch those in attendance and it elicits from them greater sympathy and support which is important in today's culture because most of their traditional public indicators of grief and mourning have disappeared they're notably absent how many of us today after the death of a loved one don black clothing how many of us place a black wreath on our front door or display any other overt sign of our bereaved status just the opposite there is often a presumption that once the funeral or the memorial service is over life should return to normal as quickly as possible and unfortunately then the individual is left to stew in his or her own juices and in the absence of such outward forms Judith Martin writes the bereaved are unprotected from the demands of normal social life which they will be unable often to handle indeed they are frequently encouraged to plunge back into social situations where joviality is expected and then if they happen to succeed in behaving as if nothing happened they are deemed to be heartless etiquette's codifying behavior under bereavement allows a period of readjustment free from the prying judgments of others as well as from any social expectations a second contemporary cultural value that gets in the way of effective and meaningful mourning is the emphasis that we now place on convenience and efficiency now while we might expect that people would modify their expectations in this regard when a friend or a loved one has been lost our overbooked schedules and our native ingenuity keep pushing us ever forward toward more and more convenient solutions thus in recent years we have seen the advent of drive through mortuaries where visitors can view the deceased through a plate-grab glass window never getting out of their automobiles memorial websites have also become increasingly popular every funeral home now has one and there are these independent websites such as muchloved.com forevermissed.com that families can use those websites to tailor them to their own requirements I have occasionally logged on to these to read comments posted about recently deceased members of our congregation and I do understand that they serve a valid purpose that they allow distant friends and relatives to quickly convey a message of condolence but they are not a substitute for meaningful human contact as the columnist Mitch Album wrote back in 2002 at the very beginning of this developing trend the very thing he says these websites spare you is the thing the mourner needs most human contact which is better achieved through a phone call or a handwritten letter you are supposed to be inconvenienced by death sure he says I dread the whole funeral thing but it's a part of paying respect he died he was not deleted and many of us today are in such a hurry and so it's not all that unusual for me to observe people ducking out of a memorial service before it's over and of course forgoing the reception afterwards families are always asking me advice about the amount of food that they should order on such occasions and they are often surprised when I say cut the estimated number of attendees in half or you'll be taking an awful lot of that food home with you many of us do not seem to realize how comforting it can be for a family to be surrounded by a virtual crowd of well-wishers in such a difficult time in their lives I'm not suggesting that we should adopt a specific protocol or institute uniform mourning practices people have different temperaments families have their own distinctive histories and expectations and needs there is no one-size-fits-all approach to end-of-life planning what is important I think is to be more intentional recognizing that grief must be given its due and that certain rituals ought to be developed and observed the poet John Dunn once observed that he who has no time to mourn has no time to mend for earlier generations this was pretty much self-evident but in North America today Alan Woefelt remarks we are often encouraged to think around our losses rather than feeling through them and thus the individual never fully assimilates his or her loss and it remains an unresolved issue now when mourning is absent when inadequate, painful emotions get trapped and the bereaved begins to wonder why am I still feeling this way am I going crazy am I abnormal or if that's not the case when the emotions go underground and they are repressed you don't even recognize they're there perhaps for years that's what's called carried grief and studies have linked carried grief to depression, anxiety, confusion and even severe physical ailments Harvard's Dr. Eric Lindemann worked with patients at Mass General Hospital in Boston and he discovered a close relationship between the onset of ulcerative colitis and the loss of an important person in the patient's life and after these people had been encouraged to express the pain and the sorrow that they were still holding in sometimes for decades the condition of many of them improved dramatically now it's often supposed that if we surrender to the strong emotions and thought patterns of grief that we're going to be overwhelmed, incapacitated unable to find our way back to sanity again but while the ability to think and to act and to feel normally will indeed be compromised at certain intervals when we're grieving giving into one's feelings is almost always a better option in the long run instead of managing the grief Wolfelt says the grief should be allowed to manage the individual or as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote more than 2,500 years ago the soul has its own source of unfolding now it's hard to do this kind of major grief work well if we have not been willing or able to work through the lesser losses that are a part of all of our life experience children leave home, we become empty nesters a career ends and with it an enterprise that gave a great deal of meaning and purpose to our lives a marriage breaks apart even if amicably there is still this serious sense of something lost and if we have been in the habit of blithely bypassing these difficult life passages it's not surprising that we're not going to know what to do that we come up short when a loved one, a dear one leaves the scene and so perhaps if we recognized our ordinary grief sooner Ken Wilbur writes this is the room for the greater griefs now the fact that grief has become such a foreign country that we just as soon never visited all that has some implications for our community our civilization and our planet as well as for us as individuals how can we muster the courage how can we maintain the commitment to promote economic and social justice to heal the earth we cannot get in touch with our sorrow when things don't go the way we hoped that they would here's an example over the past year we have learned of a profound equity gap that exists in our progressive community of Madison and Dane County and this is a reality that has troubled African-American and white citizens alike but the former, our African-American brothers and sisters are far more likely to feel that injustice and to respond to it at an emotional level and thus the Reverend Alex G. wrote passionately about his justified anger over this long-standing state of affairs and although our community's white leaders have certainly expressed their share of dismay and concern they began moving very quickly toward remedial actions and practical solutions I heard very little mention of any grief any real regret that they might be feeling whites were embarrassed and perhaps appalled by Madison's failures but shouldn't we also be deeply, deeply saddened African-Americans may be skeptical about the white establishment's commitment to change because our more recent meeting of minds has really not been accompanied by a meeting of our hearts a number of years ago the Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh was asked what must we do to save our world and his questioners expected him to offer them some specific instructions but instead Thich Nhat Hanh said simply what we need most to do is to hear within us the sounds of the earth crying the fact is every major transition whether in our personal lives our social and political arrangements our relationship with the planet the dear planet that we inhabit every one of these transitions is likely if we will allow it to induce grief and to invite us into mourning and Forrest Church shortly before he died from cancer said that such grief is a sacrament and it's the sacraments that bring us together the measure of our grief testifies to the power of our love we empty ourselves that we might be filled we lose ourselves that we might be found we give our hearts away even knowing that they will be broken and when they are we remember that pain spiritual as well as physical is a sign of healing may it be so as you know we are collecting turkeys today for the St. Vincent de Paul food pantry and we are also sharing our offering with St. Vincent de Paul today as well a portion of all of your gifts today will be given to the St. Vincent de Paul food pantry which is the largest one in Dane County please be generous if I had only good moments it would be the same as having only bad ones only in having both can I know what the truly good is I am sad because I have lost that which made me happy but in being patient with my sadness happiness will return again please be seated for the post-lune